Time for a new GMC Jam host!

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GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Hi Everyone. Thank you for making the GMC Jam 40, the 10 year anniversary jam, such a special event. I really wanted to do something big and exciting and you all helped really pull it off 🎉 - and now it's time for me to pass the hosting baton to somebody else! I've been hosting the jam for the last 2 years now, and already had a year-long stint doing it on the old forums, and I think somebody else deserves a chance to deliver the jam with their own personal touch. Big thanks to those who have helped me to host in various ways over the last couple of years, especially @Alice and @Nocturne. 💖

The GMC Jam is obviously a community event, run by the community for the community, so you should all get a say in who the next host will be - which is why I am posting this topic here in plenty of time for the next jam. (I would've left a longer buffer after the end of 40... but the next jam could creep up very quickly!)

Assuming that the format of the jam stays broadly the same, I have written up a list of the general actions/responsibilities that host(s) need to be aware of. That said, a new host (and the community at large) could take this opportunity to change the rules if they wanted to:

Information

Jams are hosted once every 3 months for 96 hours, although the workload basically amounts to doing some kind of low-level background work for 7 out of every 12 weeks (5 before the jam, 2 after).

At the current rate, GMC Jam 41 Should Be Held: Thurs 27th May - Mon 31st May 2021
(and therefore discussion topic starts around April 29th).
  • 5 Weeks+ Before Jam Start
    • Get the winner of the previous jam to pick the theme and send it to you via PM.
  • 4 Weeks Before Jam Start
    • Create logos & forum signatures for the jam (and any other materials you may need)
    • Open the discussion topic (usually by copying an old one and changing just the relevant dates / information) - https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/the-cosy-gmc-jam-39-discussion-topic.80459/
    • For the next 4 weeks, keep checking back on the GMC occasionally for questions in your PM inbox / in the discussion topic that people may need answered, or offers of community prizes, and update the discussion topic accordingly.
    • Build hype by posting about the jam on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Discord and the GMC.
    • Reveal theme clues.
  • Jam Start Day
  • Jam End Day
    • Close the Games Topic when the deadline is reached (although you may want to give an hour or two leeway for people who don’t understand time zones. It always happens).
    • Open the Voting Topic (usually by copying an old one and updating the information) - https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/gmc-jam-39-voting-topic-closes-dec-18th.81381/
    • Download all of the games and put them into a zip with the jam randomiser. Make sure that they all at least launch. GML errors are not your problem though.
    • Be available during the voting period for questions / help.
  • Voting Period End Day
    • Close the voting topic
    • Tally all of the votes
    • Make badges / signatures for the top 3 finishers and the “best of” categories
    • Post the results topic, which should include the top 3, best ofs and a complete text-based ranking of all entries. Use a previous voting topic as a guideline (although copy-pasting doesn’t really make sense here, because all of the information will have changed). - https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/gmc-jam-39-results.81943/
    • If you’re running the next jam, or there are official prizes, you’ll need to contact the winners of the jam to let them know how to get their prizes. Community prizes should be dealt with by the members of the community who offered/won them.

It's not quite as much work as it may seem when I write out the rather daunting checklist in full. Jam 40 aside, which was a special case, most of the jams I have run over the last 2 years have been quite easy and taken up very little of my spare time. Things like checking back on the GMC to post clues / respond to questions only takes a few minutes every couple of days.

I hope a few members will step forward and take this fantastic opportunity to get more involved in the jam!

All the best
Dan
🥳
 
I would love the opportunity to do something like this honestly... but I wouldn't vote for myself over @Alice or @EvanSki. They both put in more hours here, and would be excellent choices. I would be more than happy to put my name in as a back-up or assistant if there is such a thing, though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Running the whole Jam might be a bit much. I've been very actively involved in the last one, yes, but it was a very special occasion involving a very special gang mechanics, and overall - while I don't regret it - it did put quite a strain on me together with other commitments.

That said, I wouldn't mind a co-hosting setup I've already tried before - one of co-hosts focuses on the pre-Jam and post-Jam hype, while I would take care of technical stuff like ZIP and results spreadsheets. And as far as Jam hype is concerned, I think the memelord of the Green Gang would be a great fit.

--------------------

As for the success of the Red Gang: as I see it, this phenomenon was something truly unique, and I'm not sure it can be reliably reproduced. After all, many circumstances came together there:
- the overall hype of Jam 40
- the gangs competition which gave one large group of people a common goal (to defeat the other gangs)
- the ONE BIG PARTY theme, which led to the idea of the metagame I had (I do plan to work on it post-Jam, but I probably won't do something like this again, at least not in a while)

Still, I wonder if some ideas from there can be carried over elsewhere? For example, it would be nice if people could post their entries in progress and actually get some feedback - something that happened over at Crimson Guild Discord. Right now, there's the show-off channel, but people mostly use it for screenshots/GIFs rather than actual playable entries. Maybe if people could reliably expect to get some feedback when posting a WIP in now-nonexistent playtesting channel, they'd be more eager to do so? And more playtesting generally means more issues fixed in the Jam versions.

Of course, there's a risk that the playtesting channel wouldn't be as active, since without the unifying factor like gangs people would be likely more inclined to focus on their own entry. But who knows, maybe some of that community spirit can be carried over still? Would be nice if people who don't have enough time to commit to the Jam game would still chime in and give some feedback instead.

Also, I wonder if over several Jams we can accumulate a library of common code resources that people could freely use, in their Jam entries as well as games in general. I think having some degree of code reuse would help here like mouse-controlled and keyboard-controlled menus, so that people would use the same menu controls as their ingame control scheme.
 

Gizmo199

Member
I would vote to have Evanski as hypelord. I actually saw this video before knowing Dan was giving the job away. Haha. Case and point. I'm always eager to see what the green raccoon has up his sleeve. Haha. And yeah having alice handle the data and zip stuff seems to be working as an already well oiled machine. If it ain't broke dont fix it! :p

Tl;dr yes, I'm all in for evanski and alice! :)
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
"How to submit a jam game the PROPER way!"
If the people of the fourm elect me as their jam host I vow on the word of Nocturne that memes will increase 300% and the Thread on submitting a jam game the proper way shall be made
also I nominate @Alice as my vice pres- Co-Host because Shes A god of organization and has experience with crunching the numbers, so my thinking is, She would handle the scoring, I could make a zip of all the jam games and pass it on to her for the jam player and I'd be the shining Steve Harvey of the GMC Jam, but I mean thats putting the cart before the horse, nothing been set in stone yet
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
We could make it a game of Telephone. You give Evan clues, which he feeds into his guesser, then he guesses the theme and gives us clues based on his guessed theme.
Reverse Jam??

What's next? After tallying the votes, you give him partial user names for the final ranking, he throws them into his program and then tries to guess who won?
Would need a txt of all the usernames from the users in the jam, so if that happens no one wins because im not making the text file lmao
 
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