Game Jams unspoken guidelines

Every time that someone says to me "I'm interested in learning Game Development", I usually respond with "My condolences 🙏", and then "You should join a Game Jam".

Game Jams are events in which you have to create a game in a specific time-frame. That's it, no basic secret rules besides that. Game Jams might also include:

• Obligatory themes. Those are themes you have to somehow use in your game. Usually that's quite open-ended, and it can be an inspiration from a mechanic, story, art assets, anything you can link to the theme somehow.
• Optional themes. Things you can use if you want, but otherwise are just there as food for thought, something you might want to use to get inspired.
• Challenges. Limitations you can opt-in for your game (for example, only use a specific color palette for the entire game). They are usually there for funsies and hypothetical bragging rights.

Most important of all, Game Jams have a set date to end, which means you have to deliver your game before that. It's fine if the game is not complete, buggy, or if you only managed to spend a couple of hours (or minutes) making it. Game Jams are friendly events that exist for the love of making games, and everyone should feel invited to make games, and to present whatever they made at the end. The most fun part of the Game Jam is receiving feedback from developers of all over the world on something you created yourself.

If you're interested in participating in Game Jams, by far the easiest and most straightforward way is to login on itch.io and look for a jam in itch.io/jams. There is always an online Game Jam available, with different themes, requisites, and for different genres of games.

I'm not kidding when I say there is always a game jam happening.

But participating in Game Jams doesn't mean it's a free-for-all. Most of the times Game Jams are usually organized by the gamedev community itself, and specially on itch.io, there are some guidelines you should follow to create a nice environment for everyone participating, and to incentivize further participation at the end of a Game Jam.

Those are not rules per se, but some things I noticed from the many game jams I participated (making games and organizing the event) on Itch.io, that make life easier for everybody and create a good environment for jammers and organizers alike once a game jam ends.

Don't participate in multiple jams with the same game

Game Jams are the perfect way to have real people giving feedback on your game, and it's an amazing feeling to know people are playing your stuff. So one way to have even more people to play your game is to participate in multiple Game Jams at the same time and submit your game in all of them!

That is a bad idea.

Not that you can't, but if you do, you have really to pay a lot of attention, because:

• You should only join Game Jams that allow participating in multiple Game Jams (most jams forbid submitting your game in other jams).
• You should only enter in Game Jams that started before you started making your game, or Game Jams that allow using an existing project.
• You have to somehow justify the theme of the jams you are entering for a game that had no reason to use that theme at all, which sucks for every jammer that thought really hard on the theme.

Every time I see a jam entry that also entered multiple other Game Jams that so happen to end in a similar date, I check all the other jams to make sure they all allow posting the game in multiple events, and lo and behold, they usually don't. That's the case of people trying to "game the system" and participating in multiple jams just to submit their game and have some audience checking what they did, but I shouldn't need to say that's very asshole-ish behavior.

Give as many feedback as you would like to receive

Reciprocity is very important when a Game Jam ends, specially in itch.io. So if you want to receive feedback, start by sharing honest feedback with games that haven't received feedback yet.

In itch.io, the submissions page of the Jam you participated in will have a link for Submissions in need of ratings, a list of games with the least amount of ratings. An easy way to provide feedback on the jam is by starting with this list.

By giving feedback, you also make other developers aware of your game, and some of them will give feedback back as a jammer "thank you".

Be gentle but honest in your feedback

Most game jams have many people participating for the first time, and receiving harsh feedback for a game you might have spent so much time and energy on is quite demoralizing. But game jams are a great learning environment for people learning the ropes in game design and game development, so be honest about what you liked and didn't like about the game.

Usually what I do is to separate my feedback in two: in the first part, I always congratulate the developer on the game submission (after gruesome gamedev days, this is always something to celebrate!). The second part I start with is "Player feedback:" - and I recollect the times I had fun or didn't have much fun in the game. It's better to tell the player’s story than trying to suggest fixes or new mechanics yourself.

Make a Web build of your game

That pretty much depends on the Game Engine you are using, but if possible, upload a web version of your game for people to play. There are two reasons for that:

1. Not having to download a game is just easier for everyone giving feedback on each other’s game.
2. Not downloading and running an unknown executable in your computer is a very good idea.

Reason 1 is quite straightforward, but people often forget about reason 2. Unfortunately itch.io, as all the other storefronts, is also a target for malicious developers, and we can't never be too sure about what we are downloading in our computers. Specially if you are just starting out, if I take a look at your itch.io profile page and the first game you put out is a game that needs downloading, I'll only test it on a sandbox environment like a virtual machine on my computer - and that is going way farther than all developers that won't play your game to not risk their own computers.

If you can make web builds but their performance is bad, you can always do both (provide the web game, and an optional executable for people to download). That way you can at least give other jammers the option to try your game in the browser first.

Report games that break the jam rules

If you have seen a game that explicitly break the jam rules, or you have legitimate reason to think the game might be malicious or made in bad faith, you can provide a safer environment for all the other jammers by reporting the game on that game rating page.

To be fair, I never reported a broken game (I guess this is more of a warning for jam organizers, in Jams your submission has to work) - but unfortunately "Invalid Jam submission" and "Spam" happens more often than not (when the same game was also submitted in multiple game jams and the Jam didn't allow it), and sometimes "Malicious software or virus" if I can verify that on my own computer (in a safe sandbox, of course).

Reporting is not an insta-ban - the game will be reviewed by organizers, if it is the case of breaking a Jam rule. But don't go trigger-happy and report anything you deem suspicious; double-check if you have a valid reason, then report if that's the case.