So, after a long while I am finally making a demo of this Ubermensch 3D available publicly. I spent a good deal of time creating new placeholder art for the characters, allowing me to add more enemy variety along with replace the limited 2 direction animations I had before. And yes these are still placeholder as they are based upon art assets created by the community for the original Wolfenstein 3D. So, I will be replacing these in the future, but I will be using these placeholders in the interim if I move forward in developing this project further.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about that here, instead I want to talk about game jams and what I have learned from entering my projects into them. This is what I have learned about the itch.io jams: the rating process is broken.

When I enter a game jam I usually only have one purpose in doing so: obtaining feedback. I don't care about winning, I may even see a game that I have worked on that wins as being worthless to continue with based on what I have come to expect from jams on itch. Here is why: I find the games that win, win because they are basic in design -- they only have a simple if accessible core gameplay loop. 

Yes, they are typically well polished but, they don't have much going for them beyond this core loop. They are the kind of games that just about anyone can pick up and play. However, I always ask 1 question when playing these winning games: would I pay money to play this game? Usually that answer is NO -- it's not always the case, but the usual answer for jams with a smaller number of participants. Then I would usually ask another question: would I even be playing this game if it were not for this jam? And I mean, if you saw this game outside of the jam where you are playing and rating other developers games so that they will play and rate yours, would you bother playing this game? Would you feel like this is a game you would want to waste any time in playing, even for FREE. My usual answer is NO. I find that often the winning games are ok to play for 5 to 15 minutes, but beyond this you will get bored. And usually you can tell it will be that way just by looking at the media for the game -- screenshots, videos, description, etc. But, if it is available to play without needing to download it first, and you just need to play it for 5 minutes, and it is a nice accessible experience... Well these games are gonna get a lot of favourable ratings.

When I work on a game for a jam, I am really working on a project I would want to put on Steam for money. I am testing out the concept, seeing what people think, whether I want to continue working on it or not. Usually with the aim of creating a polished demo I could potentially put up on Steam for marketing purposes. A solid snapshot of the final gameplay experience, with clear progression of gameplay. I am not trying to win a game jam. Now you might say, ok, that's fine. Go ahead and use a jam for that purpose. However, having your project in a jam could provide you with zero actionable feedback to aid in development. For example in the jam I submitted this project in, all I got were  1 sentence comments by way of feedback. There was nothing there that I could use to improve the project with. Worse when it comes to interpreting the ratings you recieve, well these are misleading for multiple reasons. 

It's no secret, you have people who enter jams in order to win them. I don't really see the point of that anymore, as I briefly outline above. But these same people can be rather petty. For example, at least 1 person rated my game 1 star for one area -- 2 stars for everything else. I fail to see what about my game would warrant 1 star (or even 2), considering all the work I have put into it -- it's not a basic game, it has a lot of mechanics and systems, progression and polish. I can see lots of games as part of jams that are 1 or 2 stars, not that I would likely award them that as these are usually first-time efforts. But in my case I really doubt it was awarded a 1 star based on its merits, and rather, it was awarded that due to someone who wants their own game to do better than mine. And tho I cite this particular project and this jam, I have found that this happens in most of the jams I enter. So you might think "you got 1 star for using (heavily modified) placeholder assets in your submission". Well, I didn't in other projects and jams and still got 1 star. If this is not being done to undermine how well your project rates, then people have very funny ideas of what should get a 1 star.

When you get ratings like that, when you struggle to get ratings even tho you can clearly see that it has been downloaded and played more as part of this jam and should be getting more -- which implies to me that jam participants are deciding just not to rate your game after going to the effort of playing it. Well, it is hard to get a clear idea of whether this project you have worked on periodically over 3 years warrants you working on it more. And if you do decide to move forward, you have to then question the viability of submitting projects into future jams as a means of getting actionable feedback. And I know what you are thinking, that jams are not meant for that. Well I fail to see what they are really for if not for feedback on whether a game has potential. Meaning your "game" -- a playable prototype or demo for a potential completed polished game -- should be developed further in that it could commercially succeed. And if you don't have commercial aspirations, then at least let you know that you should work on it more and finish what you started.

Now, I will likely submit this particular jam into at least 1 other jam -- where I am permitted to do so. I have a list of things I wish to do to the project. I usually use feedback to confirm my gut instincts of what to work on next for a project and usually have a key area I want to address for a project as part of a jam. For this jam it was replacing all the character sprites along with adding additional enemy variants -- plus a bunch of AI fixes too. I don't rely on a jam feedback to tell me what to do next. But I will be changing how I rate games going forward when I participate in a jam.

Typically I rate games around the 3 star mark. That's the baseline with some factors getting 4 or 2 stars. Rarely do I do 5 or 1 star. I think based on how well certain games I rated did in the jam this project was in have done, that I am really being far too nice in my ratings. Going forward I will only rate a game jam a 4 or higher if I feel like I would actually pay money for the complete version of the game --5 if I think they have a polished demo already. It will get a 3 if I would actually play this but only if it were for free. 2 if it is a good game but I wouldn't be playing it outside of the jam -- I find it boring, especially if I am playing yet another 2D platformer. 1 if technically you could call the submission a "game" in that it has a playable game loop but it is not an enjoyable experience at all. And if it is utter rubbish, I will not be rating at all -- regardless if the developer has played my game or not.

I feel this strongly based on seeing the results for the last jam I entered and some of the games that apparently were considered better than my own. Maybe you will see this as being petty, but I think there are many out there who agree with me who are feed up with jams. I at least am still making use of them instead of seeing them as a complete waste of time, but I am sick of seeing games rated higher than what their merits deserve due to the distorting nature of jams.