New to joining a team for a game jam? Here's some hot tips on working with others during a game jam.
- Have a hub for your team to all be able to communicate together. A lead can communicate one-on-one with different teammates, but having a place to talk as a group can make it easier to keep everyone up to speed at the same time. Examples of group hubs are forming Group Chats in Discord (you can add up to 10 friends in a group chat), making a Trello board and Inviting people to it, or using Google Docs.
- Reach out to give updates at lease once a week to your team. Not replying to messages and not giving updates for a prolonged amount of time (over a week) is known as "ghosting" and can give you a negative reputation. Even if you have bad news to give (like something unexpected has come up, making it impossible to complete the work on time), it is better to let people know than to leave them hanging. Not communicating will make the other team members unable to make a decision on what to do moving forward, as they won't know what your situation is. If you prefer not to get into personal details, you can use more vague expressions to explain your situation ("Something came up irl beyond my control," etc).
- If you are the team's lead, communicate what the project will become as clearly as possible. This can be a challenge when the project has been made yet, but showing or explaining things about it can really help others picture it in their heads. You can give a plot summary, show concept art, or (if the art/music isn't ready yet) even post images of other works *like* your project, and explain how they are similar. Also try to be clear about potential content warnings and things team members might not be comfortable with.
- Give teammates all the info they need to complete tasks. Let them know what file types they need to save in, the dimensions of art assets, and where they need to send it. Try to clearly explain the context of character's lines to voice actors, and what should be included in the art assets to the artists.
- Give teammates enough time to complete their roles. A script needs to be completed for the voice actors to record lines, which in turn, need to be edited, which in turn need to be programmed into the game, which in turn need to be sent to playtesters to test. Not not leave things to last minute for others to complete.
- Be honest with how much you can take on during the jam. Let the project's lead know how roughly how many art assets you can make in the amount of time, etc. A project can be scoped down accordingly if the project is too big to finish in in the time of the game jam.
- Celebrate milestones throughout the jam and show screenshots of your progress. It helps to show everyone how the project is growing and coming along and it's important to make the process fun and an enjoyable experience.
Also, take a look at this talk on working with a team online. (Go to 1:17 for the start of the talk.)