My First Game Jam was Great. Here’s How it Could Have Been Better.

Global Game Jam 2016 was my first game jam. I stumbled, fumbled, and scored a number of times in a few days. And so, I give you a sort of journal entry on how I would score more — and fumble less—in my next round.

I wouldn’t overlook game design as much as I did.

I’m a graphic designer. My skills are primarily visual. I knew we were going to create everything from the ground up and that I had a lot of work to do. Using predesigned assets would have limited my learning experience. After the theme “Ritual” was announced and we settled into our space at the NYU Game Center, we went straight for big ideas. We locked something down in an hour and went straight to building.

So, while we built fast and tested the basic mechanic we designed, we didn’t really do much in terms of designing mechanics and play systems. Just went with the first few ideas and ran with it. I think we could have afforded ourselves a few more hours of thinking through gameplay design. We were never pressed for time on our game.

The good: We made significant progress on day 1.

The bad: Here’s hoping the idea was fun.

They’re not joking, keep it small.

They tell you early on to keep your game small. Immediately you think, “games are hard to make, so if we want something playable, we should keep it pretty small”. In retrospect it’s less about just playability. It’s about gaining perspective on all parts of the process. Even more, it’s about seeing something through to the end. Delivery is a huge part of successful game making. Don’t just make something, make something completely.

The good: We definitely kept it small and delivered our “full product”.

The bad: We let the final deadline for the event be our deadline. We should have tried for something earlier so we could have iterated.

Get sleep.

Independent game developers are often burning out. It’s easy to take very little care of yourself in pursuit of your passion. Unfortunately, that burnout will read clearly on your finished product. Personal health and well-being must factor into our work. We have to stay interested and focused. We have to enjoy the things we do.

You can get a lot done in 2 days, but it’s very small and very time-constrained. There’s a false notion that time=good work. It’s becoming a big problem in the game industry. It’s good to put this into practice in a game jam. Luckly, we stuck to this. It would have been a disaster if we hadn’t, as one of our developers what fighting a sickness and we would have likely lost him if he hadn’t rested.

The good: We kept ourselves rested.

The bad: I should have eaten more healthy. It effected my energy and performance.

Contribute with your talents, but do something you’re uncomfortable with.

I was initially uncomfortable with going to the Game Jam in the first place. I had never done anything like it. If my life has taught me anything, it’s the uncomfortable moments that really can help you learn the most. Knowing this, I elected to not just do what I knew. Since I was the go-to visual guy on my team, it meant trying some animation.

I knew I didn’t want to take it beyond my capabilities so far that I let my team down. This is the negotiation. Where you say, “okay, I’ll do this thing I don’t really know how to do, but I’m going to hack it to work in a way that I can deliver”. This is a magical place. It’s forcing learning a new habit while simultaneously putting your own talents into it.

The good: I surprised myself with what I was able to do considering how hard animation can be for a complete newcomer.

The bad: I went out and blew $200 on a Wacom tablet to be more efficient. I couldn’t afford to hold my team back with inadequate tools when my basic skills were already a cost to us.

I wish we would have play tested much earlier.

Despite getting a quick and impressive start to Sportsballgame, we didn’t efficiently play test. On the other end, we discovered a few key problems that should have been changed before delivering the final product. It would have changed a LOT. For example, we had a clever but confusing device for beginning the game. Ultimately, it stopped a lot of players from getting it and even the judges seemed annoyed by the time they got the game started. We lost a lot of players there.

The good: Hard to spin a lack of play testing as a good decision. I guess we kept focused on the finish line.

The bad: The cost of not play testing eclipses the time taken to get it done right.

Refine it, even after the jam.

My team doesn’t know I’ve been tinkering with my work since then. I’m not sure I’ll tell them I want to keep working on the game. I’m making the calculated decision that, while it was a powerful learning experience, I need to focus my precious little time elsewhere. However, I’m still working on in.

You get the greatest amount of feedback at the end of the jam. People start to finally see what you build and try it out with the notion that it’s “done”. I took notes on the hour of playing I saw people do. I learned a TON. Here’s what I would have changed that day if the jam was another day long.

• Better wave alert. It was never really clear to most players when to do the wave.
• Score stay up top at end. The score disappeared right after the game ended. Player’s eyes were fixated to the game and would often miss how well they did.
• Multipliers. The game is ultimately about momentum and keeping it flawless. A multiplier could have been a more exciting way to up the stakes.
• Visual changes for multiplier status. Creating subtle visual cues to indicate your multiplier is getting higher would have been good. Maybe environmental changes… a blimp goes by? More confetti? Spotlights?
• Animation on title. Most players seemed confused on how to start the game. The initial screen looked like the game was stuck.
• Slowly change colors to night. A nice touch would have had the visuals progress from day to night to show the progress of the game.
• Levels. We had one level and one difficulty… a baseball game. Would have been great to have a basketball arena, maybe a swim meet, or even a political rally?
• Another axis. There was one axis that the hot dog vendor would cross to toss out hot dogs. Difficulty could ramp with one going up and down stairs on the side.
• Bottom rows can be too fast to respond to. The bottom rows needed some kind of adjustment so that a vendor didn’t toss to a section he was right in front of. That required too quick of a response.

The good: Players don’t see your game as you do. This is an amazing gift. You can see whether or not they feel joy. Refining it means you get to design the joy back into it.

The bad: You need to make a hard decision. Is the thing you made valuable enough to keep working on. Tons of developers get stuck on an idea and don’t have the heart to abandon something. I’ll refine SBG enough while it’s fun in my free time, but letting go will be the key here.

Maybe this is a selfish post. A concentrated learning experience like a game jam can really lost without deep reflection. More importantly, sharing the experience and knowledge is my way to hopefully inform future jammers on what they could do to make it work best. I saw some amazing output at the Global Game Jam this year. I’ll take these parts with me and will definitely show up next year.

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Collin is the CEO and Founder of PlayWell.

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