APRIL GAME JAM: Theme: DON'T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET

Great idea Ayretek.

I think only having the jammers themselves vote is far too small a pool for a community voting type setup. With such a small pool there’s just too much room for unfair results, I mean there are a few games that didn’t even receive a rating.
Also I felt that with such a setup, cover image and file size played far too big a role in whose games got played, everyone’s games should have an equal to be rated.

I like being able to vote, but I like a fair competition more.

Still had great fun participating in my first jam! :smiley:

Following Ayretek’s lead:

Epic Choice Award
Community Choice Award

Community Award is your top 5/10/etc. or finalists, and Epic Award for final judgement by Epic. Awards for all or just the final winner.

Have to streamline the voting, funnel to one location whom can be from many social websites, and in the end that is the goal anyways. Unless these game jams are only meant be kept within the Epic community. Even then it would be easier on the Epic staff if the voting was more automated and located in the same location; along with the advertising of the jam and the latest participants submissions. Archiving past submissions and the events themselves can be a good idea. A dedicated location for hosting events and voting on them can open up a lot of opportunities or give room for expansion.

Does anyone know when they are releasing the April Game Jam highlights video please?

Check the original post!

Apologies if this has been addressed, but is a jam something that will happen monthly? Thank you!

Edit: Search results point to yes. Sorry! :eek:

yes, psychopass, the next one will probably be announced & started on the 14th. barring any issues.

reply etc. to above posts: Thanks ** & Sandstrike & 3D Masons**

wanted to add, if it looks like something like this was to work out, the idea to include 's Stream for to view, being listed in the thread along with the Poll (or made available to view wherever it’s done at)
's stream shows gameplay plus has 's commentary on all the entries & I believe it demos the games pretty well, in fact good enough for most to judge the entries. giving all a fairer .

not sure if or where the entrants themselves could vote without interference but if this idea pans out and is acceptable to I’m sure will come up with some way to work it out.
we got faith in ya, :wink:

:slight_smile:

Here’s what I’m thinking for May (Thanks to Ayretek and all for the great suggestions!)

Three Winners

  • Epic Choice
  • Jammers Choice
  • Community Choice

I could make this work. What do you all think?

Also - Submission - there was some confusion in April regarding submission and it led to a bit more recon on my end to get everything straight. Heck, I even left Alexotronic’s game out of the initial showing of the reel! (Which I just feel awful about…) What would you all like to see moving forward?

Also! An update on swag packs - March and April will be sent out early while we wait on the shirt side of the world to work the details out. Design is now good and we’re going to print! Just have to, yknow, print, so it may be a little longer there.

First, thanks for all the work setting up these jams; I’m looking forward to May’s. As for winners, If all three pick the same is there only one winner? If not, what if Epic and Jammers have the same choice; who trumps? The only issue is then deciding who the other winner is which may be different between Epic and Jammers. So if you took Epic’s Pick for winner and Jammer’s second pick it may be different than taking Jammer’s first pick and Epic’s second. I think a diagram versus trying to type this out would work best; but I think you can probably understand. Whatever works.

Also, as for including Allars video, while it sounds good and Allars awesome for putting that all together, his video doesn’t provide an objective view point. For submission, each team should be required to submit a video of game play with a time limit, somewhere between 45 seconds to a minute; maybe even without commentary, and submit it as well to let the community watch it and then download it if they want. Just a suggestion.

Thanks for the ideas, and welcome to the forums! I think that once we’ve entered the realm in which diagrams are necessary, we might be complicating things beyond reason… Let’s keep the discussion going and see what works best for the participants.

Another thing to keep in mind is the forum polls have a hard 15 entry limit, one of the reasons we set up the original methods of placement the way that we did.

an offsite poll would be ideal, I’ve seen many over the past that might work although I would have to leave that to you, . plus I think you would be a better judge than anything I could suggest.

~ The ranking or winner selection was supposed to imply if there was a tie or discrepancy, that one or the other methods should provide an alternate winner.
The idea although in rare cases each might choose a different winner, is if 2 or even 3 of the Choice categories tied then one could fall to the next winner in that category, with (Epic) being the final judge in the matter.

Each category will have to have certain weights though, like Jammer’s Choice outweighs Community etc.
This might seem complicated but will work, say all chose the same winner, then 2nd place would come from Jammer’s if those matched the Community’s Choice then it would fall to the Community’s Choice’s 3rd etc. etc.
Choosing these winner’s & Final Judging should fall to Epic on all circumstances. We don’t need to see the inner workings we just need the final results. might choose to name the 3rd place at times deferring to the lol ‘better’ judgment of the Entrants & the Community for 1st & 2nd, plus he likes weird stuff . (that’s a joke, ) :wink:

~ As far as linking 's stream, although no one can be completely impartial, is honest and doesn’t pull any punches, that’s the reason I always try to catch his stream. but the game jam entrants would be partial, rather they thought so or not, and might show just the good things and leaving out any mistakes, errors, or bad parts, etc. that might show up, although posting one’s own videos isn’t a bad idea, but should be an option.

Having a video of 's stream to use as a reference, one could choose the ones that would most interest them and be their choices then they could download and try out the games to finalize their choices. The whole idea here is to streamline the voting process and this allows more to see the entries without spending a couple days playing them.
(shamefully I must add, I haven’t done much in the way of videos. I barely have time to upload a Screen Shot most of the time)(although it is something I must move up my To Do List)

~ I have to admit, when I first started, getting a monthly sub code from participating in the Game Jams was an excellent incentive, it helped me defer personal assets to where I needed them more rather than investing them into game development. Although after calculating it one time I discovered a made less than some child in a sweatshop probably did out of the deal. lol
But even then I had started to realize the true reason for participating in Epic’s Game Jams, they were Fun, a great learning experience, and was great to see what fellow Entrants came up with and it’s great being part of the community.

What you take away from participating in the Game Jams is priceless.

ps: forgive so much text but had to try to clearly explain it all
** just remembered the stream earlier today, get Canon (Pence) to make up the rules, that’s what he’s there for. lol (pls don’t sue me Canon) :wink:

I am excited to see how the next vote goes. Getting the community involved is something we all want. However, I know that I don’t want to sit through 60+ minutes to watch 15 games being played; I’m gonna go hang out with the physical beings I completely ignored over the entire weekend.

Creating a short video with each submission would ideally, at least to me, allow individuals to watch and vote from mobile devices quickly; think of the video as a commercial for the game. While full game play cannot be accurately judged, concept, artwork, if they are interested in playing it, and even some form of execution/completeness can be established. It may also lead to more people downloading and playing the games. And as for hiding the flaws, that’s what all game developers do; hence the patches.

The feedback would provide information such as whether they like the idea, game type, art work and if they would play it or not; that is valuable information to all of us. What kind of games does our community like? What do they want to see? The more feedback the better.

This is obviously something to possibly talk about a little more down the road, if ever, but I believe that “commercials” for our games would boost views and plays while also providing valuable feedback.

As for the game jams, I enjoy everything about them and they are priceless. However, I want to get more out of them and I think teaming up with some of you on a future jam would provide a great opportunity to learn from each other. If there are any interested parties for June let me know?

-James

Thanks for all the great feedback here. Putting an off-site voting survey seems like we’d run into some confusion - i’d rather keep it all here if we can.

Let’s roll back to the pre-April voting and submission for May since it’s almost here, and I’ll think about all the tools needed to get involved in a meaningful way :slight_smile:

Watch for the announcement post soon!