Thank you to everyone who has joined. My name is Zane Everett. I am one of the organizers of this year's unique Athens Game Jam. Other organizers include Stephen Borden, AJ Plante, and Karen Williams. Stephen and I have been organizers of this event for many years (mostly Stephen). However, this year presents some new challenges and we ask for your patience with any hiccups that may arise.
Due to COVID-19, this jam will be done remotely in its entirety. Unless participants already cohabitate, we ask that everyone work remotely. All communication from organizers will be done through the Itch Community page for this game jam. We recommend that teams use some kind of private messaging service to communicate with other team members. For text communication and image sharing, platforms like https://app.slack.com/ or https://discordapp.com/ work well. For video and screen sharing, zoom.us has been popular recently, but given security concerns, my company has found Google Hangouts to be just as effective. Slack does have a video call service, however, it lacks screen sharing on free accounts. Athens Game Jam has always been about personal growth and helping others grown in their game development craft, therefore, it is encouraged for a team that has a problem they are finding difficulty solving on their own to ask their other teams if they can help. There will be a dedicated space for asking for help on the jam's Itch Community page. If you are a programmer, it is recommended you go ahead and set up a version control repository for your team, even if you do not yet have a team. You may wind up being your team's repository owner or you may not.
We do expect lower numbers than usual for this jam this year given the current situation. If you know others you think would like to join, ask them. It has also not been unusual for organizers to participate in the jam. All submission will be done on Itch. Due to the remote nature of this jam, we would encourage all digital entries. The Athens Game Jam has always been board game development friendly, and if you can make a creative video with a print and play version, we look forward to seeing your board game creations.
Friday, April 24th at 4 PM EDT we will start a Google Hangout, https://meet.google.com/ybw-icff-jwr, where participants can meet each other and form teams if they are not already part of a team. We will be announcing the theme on this hangout. Feel free to introduce yourself on this thread.
Stay safe. Wash your hands. Happy gaming.