Anyone up for discussion with the purpose of encouraging more fair reviewing / ranking?
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All that said, as a reviewer, it can be a challenge to mentally separate the pre-jam elements from the ones made during the jam. I had a bit of trouble doing this on Jam #1 (on top of being pressed for time). That's why I actually wish no pre-jam content was allowed, but this doesn't appear to be a popular desire, so I'll just have to suck it up and deal with it. Maybe it's not a severe issue, but I'm just saying it does make fair reviewing / ranking a bit more of a task.
Thoughts?
What's fair ?
Is it really fair to let a talented professionnal graphics designer with all is paid softwares and hardwares and thousands and thousands hours of practice and regular jams participations compete against a noob with nearly none practice, just the MS paint program, and as input just the pad of is crappy notebook participating for the first time in a jam? (yeh I like picturing it to the extreme
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to be honest, every jammers is going to reuse a lot of pre-made. (even if not as a final game sprite, but all the other stuff, knowledge, practice, hardware, software, even brushes, or effects, etc... with scripting and procedural generation, you can get so much.)
and that's just for graphic, I'm not event talking about sound or game mechanic.
objectively; no way to get something perfectly fair. It's something very subjective.
About pre-made, or externally made; choosing the right asset instead of place holders or crappy homemade (as long as it use is legal) for me earn already some reward. IMHO wise decisions that are made to make the game better and the player experience more entertaining must be rewarded. I don't see the point of always overboosting the gamemakers ego with an elitist DIY mindset. Where is fairness when the most skilled graphic pairing with the best dev want only to compete against less skilled ?
Not final, but I think my review protocol, it's going to be something like that:
the most important factor is "entertainment factor", how it feels. (?/100 pts)
yep, I'm going to use arbitrary, subjective and full personnal preference judgement.
plus: a bunch of optional "pros" categories
?/10/category : graphics and music being the most often appearing, story or humor are some examples; but for each game they appear only when I feel it worth mentionning it. Like PROS categories for that specific game.
two special categories specific to the GMjam: devlog and use of theme
minus: the CONS (-1/category)
just need to know how (and if I do) handle the presentation, concept and story award