Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Global Game Jam 2011: Thoughts / Post-Mortem

  • "Extinction" wasn't a good theme. Too many people easily rationalized it to "any mechanic where you kill NPCs" which is, like, every single game ever?
  • Non-digital games were tolerated, but not really accepted. It was impossible to adequately demo a board game during the 2 minute final presentations at the end. In this case, it really encourages bigger games where players actively stand up and move around / perform... which might've been interesting to make. Damn.
  • There should be semi-mandated playtests / progress checks. Just sayin'. As it is, people talk sometimes but mostly just stay in their groups to work.
  • Keita Takahashi's keynote was pretty awesome, though.
  • Two games is easily doable and I highly recommend making two to everyone... Unfortunately, me and my teammate were a little too relaxed and ended up working only for 24 of the 48 hours. Oh well. 
  • Here are my entries, collabs with Eddie Cameron: a 2 player board game about the extinction of love and trust in a marriage (Polymer) and a Unity-powered FPS about the extinction of print media (Goldblum).