saw this and thought 'oh hey, we make almost exclusively poly romances' but then saw the long list of rules and decided 'we'll just keep making our own thing instead xp'
I think its admirable that your trying to bring light to the poly scene, but there's so many rules that would restrict art, writing, and creativity. Like why can't you have a story start out as a love triangle, look like its going to be normal and chose only one person but then boom, they all fall in love instead. I can name at least one trigamous pony story that did that fairly well... actually a few. (The Teacher, the Sorceress, and the Wonderbolt comes to mind) but I'm not gonna go through all the rules one by one and point out how you could still achieve your goals with x, y, or z. Just gonna say that it's way too many rules.
This isn't spooktober jam, it should be more relaxed. (but hey, I'll keep an eye out on the entries because we seriously need more poly love.)
Ehh… On the one hand, I can see where you’re coming from, but the jam is clearly focused on one thing and one thing only: positive representations of polyamory. All the rules exist for that purpose - and, importantly, they’re written for people who don’t necessarily know what polyamory is or what a positive portrayal might look like.
For example, the trope of a “love triangle” isn’t just two characters in love with the same character, it’s generally also associated with jealousy and competition between the two love interests, with the idea that one of the love interests will “win” and get the girl or boy. That’s not polyamory, but people unfamiliar with the concept might mistake it as such, so that’s why the rules call it out.
I can’t speak for the jam hosts, but I imagine a situation that starts out as a typical love triangle but ends with the connecting character choosing both, or with the three of them falling in love with each other, would be just fine. (This kind of situation is even one of the examples provided in the description of the jam.)
Hey, appreciate your feedback. The thing is, if I didn’t list the rules, I’d end up disqualifying or removing entries that had any of it listed anyway. So better to just list it before anyone submits a game.
I said it a couple times before. But because I a poly person have to read every entry, I don’t want to be subjected to harmful tropes. Feel free to make poly romance with any of these tropes if you’d like in your own time. I just don’t want to read it honestly. And that’s fine, it’s perfectly normal to just have different things we like to read.
I do think it’s a bit unfair to tell me, that my own jam is too strict. It’s like saying my boundaries and opinions are too strict. They’re just what I like.
Just figured we'd provide some critique in case you were looking to expand the network to include more authors/creators. You can have any rules you desire, but it may limit what kind of stories or games you will see, and while that might be the goal, this is the first time we've seen a poly focused game jam, and realized that it might be cool to have more games rather than fewer. But we understand wanting very specific types of stories(that is very relatable to us and our own interest in romance).
We are also a poly person ourself, though that shouldn't have to be mentioned in order to provide some feedback or ideas. (from our own experiences, there is a lot of good and bad mixed together, and the bad experiences can be the shadow that makes the positive experiences so much more powerful. Our first experience with IRL relationships in this field was a bad one, but our second was very positive, if not for the bad experience first, the good one may not have been something we can value so highly)
Again, still happy to see a poly-focused game jam, that's really cool, though I can name a few of poly romance games (mostly on itch) we desperately need more. You should hopefully get some good, though highly specific results here, and we will look forward to playing said games when they come out.
We wish you the best of luck, and are excited to see where this jam goes in the future. XD