Well the GGJ 2013 is done and over. 321 sites across 63 countries and over 10,000 people created 3090 games. At our JCCC site we had 14 jammers including myself create 5 games, with two of those being solo projects. So overall it was a big success with everyone finishing a game. So what went right this time and what went wrong? I’m going to look at this from two point of views; as a producer and as a jammer. Because really I wore both hats. So with that…
What Went Right: Producer version
I asked for help. In the past I’ve ran the events completely solo. The only reason I could even partially get away with that is because I don’t keep the site open for the full 48 hours, even even with a 8 hour break Friday and Saturday nigh, it was still brutally draining and I was mentally gone by the time Sunday hit. This year I had a fellow teacher (Thanks Jeff!) cover the Saturday morning shift, which really helped out. Hopefully next year I can get some more assistance. Russ. Looking at you.
Experience does help. This is the 4th GGJ that I’ve been the site lead on. For the first I was more team lead than producer, but for the last three I’ve filled a producer roll, helping my teams to ensure their games get made. Each time has gone a little bit better than the last. Not sure what I can point to exactly, other than this general sense of ease that I had this time. The main takeaway on this point is for those that haven’t started yet. Ya, the first time you try to act as a producer or site organizer you’re going to feel like a headless chicken, but you’ll learn. It will get better. But you have to start somewhere.
What Went Wrong: Producer version
Late Start. This year I started way to late in terms of getting things organized. I didn’t have the room reserved until the day of which was really taking a big risk. This impacted a lot of areas from not being able to get more help to not having time to try and find sponsors. Heck I didn’t even create the site on the GGJ web page until December. Really need to do better on this one next year. Related to this was my forgetting to contact facilities management and ask them to leave the AC on in the class room over the weekend. The room got uncomfortably warm at night both Friday and Saturday because most rooms have the vent system shut off during those times.
Overall Takeaway: Producer version
Practice makes perfect, and I’m starting to get into the swing of this site organize/producer thing. That said there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of organization and not leaving things to the last minute.
What Went Right: Jammer version
Scope Control. Perhaps it was because I just came off the Indie Speed Run where I failed at this horribly, but I did much better at scope control this time. My original idea had my head filled with visions of a third person action rpg game with sprawling levels, but quickly scaled it down to just the core combat mechanic and focused on getting that implement. Even then I scaled down the scope even further on Saturday when I realized that I still had to much to do for one person. Controlling the scope as well as I did is what enabled me to finish.
Leveraging existing assets. Very little in the game is my own original asset work. The terrain textures came from the Unity terrain assets package, the skeletons are from bisaniyehocam (how do you even pronounce that?) from the asset store, used Unity’s Gem Shader, terrain layout was generated using the Terrain Toolkit (Unity, why is that hidden now?) and the background music taken from OpenGameArt.org. Oh and the fonts used mainly came from www.fontstruct.com which is an awesome site for finding and creating fonts. I did create the model for the crystal heart, the abomination that is the heart beat bar, and the heart sound effect. Being solo meant I had to do everything myself, and leveraging existing items like this allowed me to have a game that looks semi-decent as opposed to nothing but untextured cylinders and blocks.
Open to other ideas. In the past two GGJs I stubbornly kept to my own idea. I could of course get away with that because I was doing things solo as an organizer. However I don’t think that it is a coincidence that the only two GGJs that I’ve finished, the first and this last one, were games that had ideas besides my own. This time around I had an inspiration from the web comic Dominic Deegan, specifically this one. However one of the ideas tossed out during the design phase was to do a rhythm based game. I liked that, but still liked my idea as well. So I combined them. I think this gave me a more interesting idea to work with, and helped keep my focus late Saturday when exhaustion started kicking in.
What Went Wrong: Jammer version
To much time spent looking at Mixamo. Not to say that Mixamo is bad, far from it. Major shout out to them for both an interesting product and supporting the GGJ the way they did! But between looking at models, looking at animations, and trying to figure out how to use the store because I couldn’t afford to make mistakes, I wasted way, way to much time. I should have kept to just the Unity store. And related to this…
To much time spent on sound. While I am pleased with how my heart sound effect turned out, it spent to much time on it and other sound effects that I didn’t use. Should have just grabbed the MP3 from the GGJ site and use it.
Overall Takeaway: Jammer version
Controlling your scope and leveraging existing assets can really help keep a project on track. Of course you have to be careful about both, don’t want to cut out the heart of a project by scoping back too much, and you don’t want to spend so much time looking for existing work that you don’t leave enough time to work on other things. It gives a very deceptive feeling of accomplishment, a false sense of progress, when you’re surfing the net looking for stuff to use. Because after all, you are working, right? Need to watch that. Also, brainstorming with other people is a very good idea. This worked well in the Indie Speed Run with my sons, and worked well again here.
So what’s next? Well there’s still the 12 Games a Year challenge. I’ll be taking my GGJ project and working it up into a full release to be used for my Feburary game. Not sure what I’ll do for March, April will depend on when Ludum Dare 26 happens. Also there’s a local group in the KC area that might do a jam, so who knows.
The games created for our site can be found here: http://globalgamejam.org/sites/2013/johnson-county-community-college/games
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