Why I don’t do Game Jams (but maybe YOU should!)

Hello and welcome i’m your code monkey now if you’ve been following me for a while you might have noticed that i don’t usually participate in game jams every year there’s tons and tons of game jams there’s at least two modem diaries per year there’s the brackets game jam

And the gmtk game jam along with countless others there’s a lot of them and a lot of people participate and enjoy them and for me i have done a few but only very rarely quite a while ago i did participate in the easy allies game jam just because it

Was a very interesting set of rules which let me make a very unique rpg and then i also participated in the mixing game jam where i also made an interesting game mixing racing and rts but beyond that i haven’t really done any other so here let me tell you why

Personally for me game gems don’t make too much sense now just to be clear this video is not against game jams at all they all have their pros and cons i think they serve a very useful purpose but at the same time i personally have 5

Reasons on why they no longer make sense to me and maybe they might not make sense to you too and in the end i will also mention some reasons on why you should do game jams okay so game jams a lot of people love them some people are

Addicted to them and some people get massively stressed out because of them so as to what i think is the main purpose of a game jam i believe it is in gaming the ability to be able to finish games learning how to actually finish a game

Is definitely a skill and one that as a beginner it is pretty tough to get a lot of people who start making games never actually finish a game so pretty much everyone who starts game development has folders with dozens or even hundreds of unfinished projects that might even have some interesting

Ideas but were never finished either it’s because the developer was interested in the idea or they simply jump to another idea as soon as the less fun parts of game development start coming up so for me i see that as the main purpose of a game jam it’s to help

You improve your skill of actually finishing games learning how to manage the scope and create a complete experience from start to finish on a fixed schedule and also being able to push through the unless fun parts of game development learning how to do all of that is

Massively important and if you want to become a game developer you absolutely must learn that skill now as for me if you’ve been following the channel for a while and you know about my game dev journey then you can probably already see how this benefit of game jams doesn’t really apply to me

Anymore i made a really nice video quite a while ago where i covered my entire game dev journey it’s a really nice video so go watch it if you haven’t seen it in there i talk about my entire journey which includes making over 40 games in over 10 years

I started out in flash where each game was kind of like a mini game jam each game was very small and quickly made from start to finish most of those flash games took less than one month to make so the goal was constant learning during those five years that i was working on

Flash i made a total of about 35 complete games and i had maybe 20 more unfinished games going through that process making all of those games did give me pretty much the skill that you get from game gems i learned how to manage scope and actually finish games

Then when i felt i had at skill that’s when i finally transitioned into unity and started making steam games and because of acquiring that skill i never really had issues with finishing my steam games of course some of them did take longer than expected but in the end i always

Managed to reach the final goal so that’s pretty much my number one reason why i don’t do game jams it’s because the main benefit that they provide which is learning the skill of finishing games that one is really a skill that i’m already pretty good at

My next big reason has to do with one of the main limitations that almost every game jam has which is you cannot reuse code you can usually reuse some art audio assets that you have but usually code must be written internally during the game jam on the one hand i can

Understand why that rule exists it’s essentially to stop people from grabbing something they did a long time ago and just repurpose it for a new game jam but on the other hand again if you’ve been watching this channel for a while you’ve certainly heard me repeatedly mention the importance of writing good clean

Reusable code i’m always encouraging you to be as efficient as possible and reuse as much code and previous systems you have as possible for example i have my super useful grid system which i have been building in tons of videos on this channel let’s say

That i want to make a city builder game for a game jam does it make any sense to discard all of that and remake it from scratch personally i don’t think so but again if you are a beginner then rewriting code is actually a great way to improve your skills as a programmer

However for me writing yet another health system from scratch for the 50th time really won’t improve my skills at all it’s really just a waste of time now one good thing is that not all game jams have this restoration for example the breakfast game jam which is one of

The most popular ones does not mention code at all and on the gmtk game jam in 2020 the rule was that the vast majority of code must be written during the game jam whereas in the 2021 version it now says that you may reuse some pre-existing code

So maybe that means that more and more people are finding the benefits of writing clean reasonable code and the rules are changing to reflect that then for my third reason it is simply stress now i know there are lots of game jam formats but the majority of them do seem

To follow the 48 hour rule again this is great especially for beginners for forcing you to make something complete from start to finish in a very tight schedule but on the other hand it also encourages people to do things like skip sleep and work 14 or 16 hour days which is

Definitely not healthy you might have heard about the term crunch and how it’s one of the big problems in the industry game jams pretty much encourage crunch which can definitely create some bad habits and if overdone it can cause some serious physical or mental issues now

For me personally i already have quite a lot of difficulty at achieving a nice work-life balance i definitely already work way too much too many hours and too many days so adding a super stressful weekend on top of that isn’t really something that i want to do

So if you are still a beginner and you are still on the stage where you won’t benefit a ton from all the skills you gain in those quick 48 hours then for you all of that added stress might be worth it but if you already have quite a lot of

Those skills then all you’re doing is really just adding a ton more stress onto yourself for little to no benefit so as always consider the pros and cons what you gain and what it costs my fourth reason is kind of what makes a game jam a game gem which is in order to

Participate you need to start at a specific time and follow a specific theme again this can be a useful limitation for forcing you to come up with a game idea just on the spot so if you have trouble coming up with ideas then this can be massively useful

And also the common start time encourages a community all working at the same time which lets you bounce ideas off of others and see how others interpret the same theme differently now for me i already have lots more ideas than i have time to do them i’ve got

Tons of ideas i’d love to explore and build a quick prototype so for those it really just makes more sense to do them whenever i have the time rather than waiting for a specific game jam to start and of course it makes more sense to do the ideas that i already have rather

Than trying to come up with something new based on a game jam theme and my final reason is really pretty standard i’m simply already way too busy with tons of things that i don’t really want to do so adding yet another thing on my schedule that won’t really provide

Me much benefit while also having significant costs that really doesn’t make much sense there’s tons of videos i’d love to make tons of topics i’d love to research so at any moment i have something like 20 to 30 specific video ideas that i really want to make for example i’d love

To get back into dots and see what changed in the past year i’d love to do a lot more machine learning experiments i’d like to research the ml api and do some multiplayer tutorials voxels are really interesting so i’d love to research that as well as doing some more basic tutorials and possibly

More things on unity visual scripting then i also would like to make one more update to my ultimate unity overview course before the end of this year and of course eventually i’d like to get to work on my next steam game so the limitation for me to do all of

That is really just time and i find all those things much more valuable and much more desirable than doing yet another random game jam now since i spent most of this video talking about the reasons to not do a game jam let me quickly mention the

Reasons why you should do a game gem now the first reason is exactly the same as my other first reason which is to learn how to finish games if this is a skill you don’t yet possess then game jams are an excellent way to learn the second reason is that it’s great to

Force you for coming up with game ideas and having a strict deadline to get them built so he teaches you about managing scope and improving your skills as a game designer then one of the best things about game jam is how everyone plays each other’s games and gives

Feedback again this is hugely helpful for improving your skills as a game designer you get some very useful feedback which you can then apply to your other projects also if you’re planning on working with others then a game jam is a great time to test out a new team and learn how to

Best collaborate with others and finally game jams can also be interesting if you just need a break from bigger projects so after spending months or years working on a single project it can be useful to just spend one weekend working on something completely different by doing that then

When you get back to your main project you might see it with a fresh new set of eyes which might help you make a better game so those are just some of the reasons on why you should participate in game jams again like i mentioned in the beginning

Of this video this one is not against game chambers at all as with anything there are pros and cons if you find them useful to you then by all means go ahead and participate and if you’ve never done a single one then i would definitely encourage you to give

It a try all i’m trying to say with this video is that game jams are not universally good and if you become addicted to them and constantly jump from project to project and never begin working on something more complex on a more long-term project then at that

Point it might be doing more harm than good but as usual it’s a personal thing so hopefully with this video you can see my reasons and you can come up with your own list of pros and cons and either to do more game jams or fewer alright hope

That’s useful check out these videos to learn some more thanks to these awesome patreon supporters for making these videos possible thank you for watching and i’ll see you next time