Games Jams are Important

Another game jam to shake out the cobwebs and let creativity reign free. When the world has got you down and comforts don't settle the soul as they once did, setting  aside time you don't have to devote every waking minute to making a game from scratch seems to be perhaps not the brightest idea for ones wellness. Yet, it is exactly the dose of panic and inspirational pressure I need to dust off my tired brain and remind myself why I do this.

Since the success of my last jam I've launched a company, helped ship a couple of indie games and started work on a large-scale passion project (more details to come). However, none of these things really feel like tangible successes to me. I may be completely disconnected from reality, but let me try to explain.

Recently, I heard a streamer playing one of my jam games express woe at the existence of game jams in general. He cited their existence as a blight of unfinished projects clogging digital marketplaces and lowering overall quality of the medium at large. He talked about developers who engage with jams and described them as some sort of self-serving malignancy, producing unfinished garbage for the sake of accruing incentives and street cred. Perhaps there are some who toil in the game jam mines, ejecting garbage into the public realm in the hopes of getting cash prizes? I prefer not to dissect an assumption of bad faith.

For a professional who makes creative works as a living, it can be difficult to describe how much we regularly delay our gratification as a matter of course. Despite leaps and strides in the games industry it's still a relatively new medium. These bits of software are inherently complex engines of uncertainty.  The more a game strays from previously explored paths the more danger there is of that design's unknown unknowns killing and eating such a vulnerable project. These are inalienable to the production process, no amount of experience or funding can prevent such an outcome, just try and steer around it.

Take into consideration the sheer scale of time needed to complete even a small game project and the whole endeavour becomes an unquestionably foolish quest with a completely uncertain outcome. Will I like this project when it's done? Will this project be enjoyed by others? Will the game even be worth playing? Why am I spending years on this? Why don't I go get a real job? Is it good now or will it be improved with more time? Will my contribution to the team even be noticeable? Will my contribution bring the project crashing down?!

Game jams conversely have a prescribed ending. You can struggle and put your all into a jam project like you would with any other, but this one is finished outside of your control. Thus the time sink is removed from the equation of insanity. Continuing on, the scary unknown what-ifs that threaten to rip your ideas apart are far less threatening when you know at the end of the day the entire thing is a throw away.

Game jams are not just a creative indulgence, or emotional salve for the creatively parched, they are a necessity. A proving ground to test new ideas, a safe place to train up the green. A community of artists who can look at those beside them and acknowledge that this is hard. An opportunity to point at a finished misshapen thing with your name on it, acknowledge it's failures and successes and move on.

When damn near everything you create is as intangible as a song long since finished, it's a joy to make and share a thing with a start and an end. An immoveable goalpost to aim for and shoot past or fall over trying.