Post by JK5000 in Rate 4 Rate - Feedback exchange

Brackeys Game Jam 2023.1 » Community

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My first game jam was about 8 year ago and it had nothing to do with corona, and it was by the way a .exe file, and yes WEB builds was also normal then. There is more then time enough if everybody understand that they have to do more. In my eyes is self promotion just a bad excuse to get all the attention. And when we give a little or no attention to most of the games, then the interest in doing anything will of cause disappear, so you could help you self by making them interested in being more a part of the game jam. And then will your self promotion not be necessary.

I know you don't like I am saying it, but it is about creating a culture where everyone (or at least most people) take more part of the game jam. And self promotion do not help here.

Kinda Good Games1 year ago(+1)

Okay, that's a pretty unique take on solving this issue, I tbh never heard anyone saying this before. I started game development way past this time that you were describing, how many people were participating in that jam, if I may ask?

Saying that we should recreate this type of culture is easy, but hard to fullfil, a lot of stuff has changed since then and also the motivation and standards have changed. How would you even do something like that, I'm quite curious how you would do that. But from the current view this just doesn't seem time worthy or doable. How are you even supposed to reach out to everyone and what exactly do you propose to do? And is it even timely possible. That's just not possible from my current view

JK50001 year ago

It's not a very unique take, but the self promoters do just yells very loudly.

There is many ways of doing this, and here is just some ideas.

1) Remove all self promotion from the Community page. Especially in the first week of the jam. The same should happen to all peoples that just write 'good game' to all or nearly games.

2) Use the Community page to make a positive and constructive Community, by telling what a jam is and how you are suppose to behave when you are part of a game jam. And use the Community page to;

Bring focus to games that need ratings and feedback.
Tell people how they can write better feedback. Tell them that good feedback is not about self promoting, and tell them that feedback is both to tell what is good, but also bad about the games.
Tell them that 'rating for ratings' is something we just have to do, and it's not something we need to ask for.

3) There should also be a video introducing how we should take part of the game jam. Here it's important that there should be more focus on the community part, then on the game making part. Of cause it should also have a focus on the game development.

4) I would love to see a price given to people fighting for making game jam communities better.

5) Streamers/youtubers that will focus on playing, rating and giving feedback to games that really needs it, could also help. They can also put focus on what we expect from game jammers.

6) I know when a jam starts here on Itch, it's possible to write a email around to everybody that tells things about the jam. Here you can write again what we expect you to do, when your are taking part of a game jam.

7) It's also possible to remined people, when you are given feedback, that they are expected to do the same thing. And I here don't say that you should self promote, but you should tell them to play, rate and give feedback to games that needs it.

8) When we first begin to have a better community, there is high chance that we begin to remind each other how we are suppose to behave. This is the culture I am taking about.

There could be done a lot more things, but the goal should be to make games jams better for everyone and not just for the self promoters. In the end it would create a even more active and better community, that is not just about ME but about US.

I strongly believe it would make game jams more fun for you, and it would make it more fun for everyone else. Self promotion at best helps you, but it does not help the community.

Kinda Good Games1 year ago

1) this is just extra unessicary work for the mods and and admins

2) This is already done in the discord a bit, feedback is usually not about selfpromoting, so idk why this should be relevant. R4R is still relevant, as you cannot force somebody to rate somebody elses game. This just wont work.

3) This is going to be way too much extra work, considering that brackeys quit yt. And not everybody will watch that video, since a lot of people are way to excited to play the games or to start developing.

4) Then people only would care about that and completely forget to rate and play games and besides that, how are you even gonna determine a winner in something like this? And what should the prise be, considering that brackeys nor the staff generate revenue using this jam.

5) Everybody needs feedback kind of, since live feedback is different than just a plain comment, there is no way of determine such a thing. Also how are you going to make the streamers do something like this?

6) This already exists and not everybody checks their emails frequently

7) this is just extra work, not everybody is willing to do that, this would have to be some sort of pop up from itch and I doubt that they would do that.

8) you are literally reminding other people constantly what they are supposed to do, so it's not really about how good the community is, but rather that you tell people the whole time what to do.

Again, just like in real life, if you work harder you get better rewarded. This would demotivate people too since, "why should i play and rate games, if person b gets the same result as me, or even better without even playing games". If you are going for a solution where everyone gets the same treatment, the jam can get demotivating, since you don't get rewarded for your work. As I've mentioned before, promoting your game is as important in jams as in real life, you can't expect to make the next big hit without even telling people about the game, how are they supposed to know about it. Your ideas sound good on the surface, but I personally think it's way more complicated.

JK50001 year ago

A lot of bad excuses for doing noting.

Kinda Good Games1 year ago

Just saying, it may cause jams to be more problematic, if you want to change something major, you have to make sure you aren't making it worse

JK50001 year ago (1 edit)

It will become much better.

JK50001 year ago

I do get it. You want all to keep the self promoting, because you think it's natural and a good thing. I think it bad for game jams, and we loose a lot what game jam should be.

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