With Week 6 being Reading Week we had a somewhat easier week this week than in previous weeks. Nevertheless there was still a lot to do as the first game jam was still running and the guillotine deadline of the Wednesday Weekly Webinar was approaching on winged hooves.
I’ve already written extensively about the game jam in my post entitled Reflections on the first game jam already. In this post I’d like to take a step back to focus more on the bigger picture and follow-up with my takeaways from this exercise.
What I’m most proud of is completing the game jam and meeting the deadline. From the outset it was tough but achievable. I was my own worst enemy too as on the second weekend I leg my ego get the better of my enthusiasm and I entered the Unity game jam as well.
Lesson 1: Don’t run concurrent game jams!
Looking back this was never going to work and ended up, unsurprisingly, a massive fail (details in this post: Unity Game Jam — Where did I go wrong…?)
Entering it taught me a very valuable lesson: the importance of making quick, tough decisions and standing by those decisions. With the words ‘fail early, fail often, but always fail forwards’ echoing in my head I admitted defeat half way through and elected to abandon this project. I determined that my time would be more effective if spent working on the Falmouth game jam on the premise it would be better to create one good prototype than two bad ones.
Lesson 2: Game jams are really good fun!
Looking back at my Week 3 Rapid Ideation Reflection post I’m a little embarrassed. At the time I recall being nervous, even fearful of the prospect of our first game jam. As I mentioned in the webinar that week I was more worried about not being able to make the time commitment and thereby failing to complete the task. Encouraged by the words of my tutors I thought long and hard about what failure actually means and, more importantly, my relationship with it. I’m really pleased I spoke up now as had I not, I doubt I would have re-mapped my perception of failure (in this context at least). Doing so really allowed my to go into the game jam with a much more positive, ‘can do’ mindset and I feel certain this has had a huge positive impact on my performance over the last two weeks.
I’d like to go on record, here and now, and confess to really enjoying myself. I only wrote a small game but doing so was great fun and I’m really proud of it — Game Jam Beta Release 0.1.x.
Lesson 3: Own it, run with it, engage with it…
When I started this course I really wanted to develop RPG/RTS games as I’ve mentioned before but I went into the game jam with a blank canvas and an open mind, not knowing what I was letting myself into nor what I would be producing. I thought I was being naive at the time as listening to chatter amongst my peers, many had ideas in the direction they wanted to go before the theme was announced.
My ideation session came up with an educational game. This was not something I’d expected nor was it a genre I was particularly interested in. I really wanted to write an RPG but this sparked my curiosity. The more I looked at it, the more it morphed itself into the theme. I’m not sure if that’s commonplace or not but the theme became the game rather than the game becoming the theme. (I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this so please do leave a comment below and let me know.)
I had a choice to make: to abandon the ideation and bash the theme into an RPG or to go with the educational game. I remember thinking to myself at the time that this was “beautifully simple” and that “I can make this” so I decided. I chose the educational game.
Two weeks later I had a working prototype and a strong recommendation from my peers and tutors to develop it further
Lesson 4: Trust the creativity…
I could easily have opted for the RPG but instead I put my trust in the creative techniques we’ve been studying. My reasoning here was that if I ignored the output of the rapid ideation there seemed little point in doing it in the first place.
Ironically, with the Unity gam jam I deliberately set out to create the RPG and steered the ideation in that direction. I really struggled with the implementation and ended up abandoning the project entirely. Had I adopted a more organic approach I do now wonder if the outcome would have been different?
This is definitely something I will be exploring and researching further as the course progresses.
Conclusion
Both game jams have been very instructional, each teaching their own lessons: one from the perspective of success and the other from failure. I realise now how important it is to keep an open mind as well as approaching them with a ‘can do’ attitude.
The peer and tutor feedback I received was extremely useful for both motivating myself and harvesting ideas for additional features. At the time I volunteered to “throw myself to the lions” by answering the call to do a demo at the Week 5 Webinar I was very worried my alpha prototype was too simple. I felt I didn’t have much to show for a week’s work so I was completely stunned to receive so much positive feedback and encouragement from everyone. I’d been so focused on the detail I’d failed to see the bigger picture. (Maybe there’s a fifth lesson in there?)
What would I do differently next time?
- Work in a team — I’ve teamed up with a few others on the course to enter the GitHub game jam that runs throughout November. Working in a team will add a new dynamic and it will be interesting to see how we get on.
- Create some of my own assets — One of my weaknesses is in art and model creation and this is something I’d like to explore further. I don’t see this as a core skill but I do want to gain an appreciation for the work involved. This will be invaluable when working with modellers, animators and artists in the future.
- Set my sights higher — for the first game jam I deliberately set a low target as I wanted to build on success. I know I can do better and plan to raise my game for the next one.
References
Photo by Faye Cornish on Unsplash
