Hello everyone!! It's your co-host Lysander here to finally gush at ya'll about how amazing this experience has been!
Let's get business out of the way first: Take this exit poll to help us improve the next jam we do!
Any comments, compliments, concerns, or complaints: send them to the jam tumblr, anon is fine!
Also check out the jam-end post on tumblr for more useful links!
We'll be hosting another MFGJ in the summer, so look out for us in a new months!
First of, let me thank each and everyone one of you for taking that leap of faith and joining us, especially those of you who were afraid, nervous, and clueless— you've been working, persevering, and you were all amazing and brave! It's a big step to go from the want to to have done, but you did it! And I couldn't be more proud of you!!
When J first asked me to co-host this jam, I immediately agreed since we'd been talking about doing something like this for a little while, but I honestly had no idea how big it would get! An unbelievable number of likes/retweets, some from well-established artists and programmers, and nearly 480 interested participants! That number was far from what I was expecting, and it's incredible that so many people put aside the time to try something new, or to pick up an old project to finally breathe life back into. And now— 98 entries later, I'm finally seeing the fruits of ya'll's effort from these last two weeks. Every single entry is something to be proud of, and I hope you guys are as proud of yourselves as I am of you. Congratulations! You've done something— even if that doesn't sound like much, that's more than many people ever do.
Now to get into the meat of why I believe doing jams like this is important— why we need to encourage non-developers to start making games. I've spoken on Twitter about this a few times, but the AAA game industry is depressingly stagnant in the way that it can be an unfriendly place to those who aren't familiar with programming or development. Being a gamedev is hard. Getting into it professionally is even harder, as such a field requires study in subjects that are difficult for many people. Because of this, the diversity in the game industry is pitiable. Now, one should take my words with grain of salt— I'm no gamer. Never have, probably never will be. But as someone who loves to create, I believe games are an excellent way to tell a story, to add personal agency to an experience which utterly changes the impression it makes on the audience. This was the thought imprinted on me as a 12 year old, sitting at my desktop and playing Yume Nikki and being utterly in wonder of how simple, 2d backdrops and music could so thoroughly transport me to another world. I believe we need more games like this— games that are arguably not games, but still, interactive things that give you an experience. And as someone who loves to create, I know there's so many people out there who have entire stories, universes, characters locked away in their heads, and they think about bringing them to life, but just don't know how, or are too intimated to try. There's people who, for one reason or another, have been locked out of a path of game development because of stereotypes, discrimination, being told that you can't do it because of some reason that is absolutely arbitrary.
I think that's all bullshit. I think anyone can make a game. The difficulty in doing so depends on what kind of game you want to make, but a game can be as simple as some words on a screen. It can be as complex as you want it to be. But the thing is that all these games, created by people who never made any before, present a different narrative— a different perspective than big-name titles or companies. These little homebrew things are as personal as it gets, and it's that intimacy that I love about the indie game developer. And I sincerely want everyone to know that, and to be brave— tell your stories, make your games, heck, it doesn't even need a story. But make something. Share yourself with the world. It's scary sometimes, like I'm sure many parts of this jam was. But the joy of completion, the joy of seeing people interact with your work— the idea that you actually made something— these are all these you deserve.
I love you guys! <3 Thank you for everything! I can't wait to play everything you all have made.
If you'd like to keep in contact, I'll keep the game jam chat on discord open permanently, and/or you can always get me on twitter @kreutzerland.