Can you DM me on Discord? GP#5178
Given that there are no prizes for this jam, I'd like to make a case for unlocking everyone's submission pages:
1) I recently participated in a game jam that did this during the voting phase and it made the jam SO much better because devs could actually incorporate the feedback they were getting. There was still an incentive to perfect your game as soon as possible because people were already voting & rating your work; but it made the judging phase feel more worthwhile because we could see our input impact these games to make them better. It created a stronger sense of community and engaged everyone in the process. (It's the only jam I'm still getting feedback on, even though voting ended forever ago.)
2) This also better mirrors modern game development cycles as most devs patch & update post-release.
3) Most important of all, feedback from the professionals won't be as useful if we keep submissions locked. By the time they jump in, we will already know what is wrong with our games because we already went through this whole round of player feedback. At that point, whatever they say will mostly be mentally brushed off with, "Yeah, I know, but I wasn't given the chance to fix that".
It's better to be able to put your best foot forward and see what feedback you get on the game you want to present rather than the version you presented simply because you ran out of time.
Given this, I humbly request that you consider unlocking everyone's pages and let them continue updating during the voting period. Thank you.
Thanks for your request and the time you spent exposing it.
Generally, I would agree with you. We considered this option while organizing, but then discarded it.
When you receive a test after a job interview, you usually have a fixed deadline to respect. You will not be able to do updates or fixes.
This jam goal is to expose talent to the industry, so we want to weight what any of you can do in a week. We need to value the skills of every team, and that would become tricky if constant updates are made during the rating period.
As the judges are all professionals, be sure they have knowledge and experience to understand what a team suffered with. Furthermore, they are surely aware that the most of you are not aged developers, so their evaluation considers that as well.
As someone with 20 years of professional experience in the game industry, I find it interesting that you compared this jam to an "interview test". I've been fighting to kill interview tests in our industry because they hurt more than they help.
My favorite example of this was a struggling mid-sized studio that was in desperate need of a solid coder. They ignored all the evidence that these tests are bad practice and refused to change their ways. They ended up turning down a coder with the exact experience they required just because he isn't good at tests. That game studio no longer exists. The coder was quickly snapped up by Blizzard and is now a high-paid dev with credits on some of the industry's biggest tiles.
Also, in my experience, most of the devs will probably not take into consideration how long someone has worked on something or what their experience level is. Since most professionals specialize in a single area, their personal background may prevent them from taking those things into consideration. (It's unusual for an art director to know how long it takes to code a complex feature, just as few coders know how much time it takes to animate a difficult walk cycle.) I've seen devs tear down student projects with a team of 2 the exact same way they would a professional demo with a team of 20. In fact, if they really are looking for potential employees, they will probably be harsher than normal.
Most studios care more about dedication than raw talent because so much of game development is a boring slog of bug fixing and minor adjustments. Letting people continue working on their projects demonstrates dedication better than a one-off jam competition. I know if I were hiring right now, I would be more impressed by someone who has gone out of their way to incorporate user feedback and improve their project than someone who just gave up and moved on to the next shiny new project.
TL;DR - I support the idea of either unlocking people's submission pages or permitting everyone a one-time update prior to bringing in the pros. Just my two cents as an industry professional.