Startin’
What went right
-The organization
It was amazing. Thanks to the ISART and Anne-Laure, the facilities, food and everything else were absolutely top-notch.
-The people
Geeks and nerds and laptops. It’s always working.
-The theme
“Extinction”. Not easy, brought a lot of constraints which is a good thing to do a game in 48 hours.
What went wrong
-Differences
From students who never have participated making a game to people who are doing it since 10 years and more. Doing a game in 48 hours is hard so I think that it really doesn’t help to have such a big difference of experience. That’s why I felt that it’s great to introduce people to game dev and not push my game concept –which wasn’t good enough to really stand out anyway- but help and just “be around”. It’s always a good feeling to see some young blood and explain to him what’s going on with his eyes lightening up. But at the end it kind of frustrates me to not have a team of people that can output something really nice because they all know the process and can maximize the 48 hours. I think there are two things you can do in 48 hours of game jam: you can develop a neat and original mechanic with no or almost no polishing OR something more traditional but with a little something in the polishing that is original, would it be with a render technique, a sound implementation etc. It’s super hard if not impossible to get there with a really heterogeneous team.
-Sausage fest
It’s really sad. Two courageous girls for like 60 dudes. It just brings guns, aliens and shit we saw three gazillion times. It’s hard to design, again, some sounds for skeletons. And explosions. And death. It’s just so hard to get dudes out of this that I just don’t try. The Global Game Jam is a celebration, not design courses by Harold P. They’re all too happy and excited to do something for bros like fart jokes and all that it’s hard to be the one to say “C’mon guys”, especially 30 hours in, when your brain starts to melt. Maybe I get old. Maybe 10 years of this meat fest is really getting on my nerves. There’s so many themes to reach out. And no, the answer is not to do a Global Game Jam Women. It’s to change ourselves.
That makes me think that I will need to contact a very mature programmer for my project.
-Technique
We did a HTML5 game it’s “the future” yadda yadda yadda. It’s fucking bullshit. It’s supposed to work everywhere. It’s not. In 2011, I cannot produce sound that can be played properly in two different browser, way to go developers and manufacturers. It’s beyond lame. Look at the notes on Wikipedia for HTML5 audio format support:
WebKit on Mac OS X uses QuickTime, and supports whatever formats that does.[w 3] This includes H.264, MP3, AAC and WAV PCM, but not Ogg Theora or Vorbis. These are supported only if installed as third-party codecs, such as XiphQT. Google Chrome supports Theora, Vorbis, WebM, and MP3.[w 4] Chromium can be compiled to support anything that ffmpeg supports, and may or may not support patented formats such as H.264 and MP3.[w 5] Origyn Web Browser for MorphOS uses also FFMpeg for playing HTML5 media content.[w 6][w 7]
You really want to edit the Wiki and say STANDARD MY ASS YOU ALL FUCKING SUCK. We tried everything. At the end it wasn’t working and we used a Flash player. Which can only get MP3. Which is a file format that can’t loop. And remember, it is just about playing sound files. No fancy features or filters. Just basics.
It’s particularly depressing to see this when you know that any fucking piece of computer hardware bought in the last five years or even the last ten years, can play a goddamn wav PCM audio file of any resolution and loop it without a problem. It’s ridiculous to have computers with enough RAM to store HOURS of sound, enough raw power to apply über complex filters on it and not being able to play a simple 16s looping sound. It’s because of politics and money that I’m screwed in my work. Sigh.
Anyway. Good times and may I encourage you to do it next time!
Flickr Set of the Global Game Jam 2011 in Paris.
Global Game Jam Paris Games. (I know, the website sucks hard, jump to France Paris-Paris)
I think we look good after 48 hours sans shower. Don’t smell me bro!