Cape Town has a meetup at the end of January to announce the competition, and Joburg near the beginning of February (as well as on the forums). I feel the sooner we start the better, and if February is a little lower in numbers because people have trouble dealing with January, then we can aim for a better turnout in April.
(Plus lower numbers mean less strain on the judging, let's not aim to crush the judges in this first comp.)
You guys realise that March is when GDC happens, right? A significant slice of the forums aren't going to be able to participate... Heck, even a feb comp will have to end early for some because of their flights - although plane jamming your comp game is a pretty win idea.
If you wait for things to be perfect, nothing happens.
Ok, so to summarise things and inject a little life into this thread: it seems like we agree that running a competition in February is good, @dislekcia can help with re-cycling/modifying a suitable theme, and we can mostly re-use the announcement blurb from previous competitions. So, unless I've forgotten something, we're pretty much good to start, right?
After the "starting stuff" is finalised, I guess the only thing left to discuss and figure out is judging. Does that sound about right? I think it's probably best if we get everything else sorted out first (because we can still figure out judging during the competition).
So it seems like the competition is going to happen soon. I would like to suggest running a sound competition in tandem with the design comp (but with the same/similar constraints). It will be a separate competition in terms of feedback, but hopefully it will encourage some cross pollination between the design and sound areas. @dislekcia also suggested at the CT meetup that an art comp could run along side in a similar fashion.
TL;DR Suggesting three competitions (design, art and sound) that run in tandem (with separate feedback but similar theme), to encourage people with different skills to work together.
The South African thing is purely there to stop the comp getting swamped by international devs and new locals feeling afraid of entering.
So like, is that a thing that happens, or happened previously? Again there are no prizes, so unless they are already hanging out here and actively enriching the community I find it unlikely anyone would feel the motivation to enter above any of the millions of other game dev jams and compos out there. I dunno, happy to be proven wrong? Just seems a bit... discriminatory.
(Edit: Also this is meta discussion not helping the competition. Happy to move it over to the previous discussion thread)
(Replying to this here to save the actual comp thread from derailment)
We have had international devs enter Game.Dev comps before. It's not a huge thing, but it has happened. At one stage there were a bunch of British devs entering regularly (different to SA expats living in England entering, which has also happened). Like you said, that's not the end of the world, but it was an issue for one of the comps with prizes, so I added that clause.
Taking it out isn't a big deal, but I think it also serves another purpose: In this thread people were talking about wanting to have a thing that they knew they could enter, they didn't want to be exposed to international stuff. That clause basically confirms to those that are unsure or worried about being crowded out that they're playing in a space dedicated specifically to them.
Okay, well you guys are running the comp,and seeing as I'm mostly uninvolved I'm happy that I've expressed my opinion and thus call out "as you were" ;)
So don't know if it's already been mentioned, but Itch.io has some pretty nifty features to host your own game jam. https://itch.io/developers/game-jams
Seems anything to help administer future jams would be a win. Also I know part of the focus of comps is to provide high calibre feedback, to my mind it seems like allowing participants a way to vote on entries would be an easy way to add some more immediate feedback. Then again competition is against some of the above stated aims...
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I also think you should start at the beginning of March to resolve judging and get over the beginning of the year, etc.
(Plus lower numbers mean less strain on the judging, let's not aim to crush the judges in this first comp.)
If you wait for things to be perfect, nothing happens.
After the "starting stuff" is finalised, I guess the only thing left to discuss and figure out is judging. Does that sound about right? I think it's probably best if we get everything else sorted out first (because we can still figure out judging during the competition).
TL;DR Suggesting three competitions (design, art and sound) that run in tandem (with separate feedback but similar theme), to encourage people with different skills to work together.
We have had international devs enter Game.Dev comps before. It's not a huge thing, but it has happened. At one stage there were a bunch of British devs entering regularly (different to SA expats living in England entering, which has also happened). Like you said, that's not the end of the world, but it was an issue for one of the comps with prizes, so I added that clause.
Taking it out isn't a big deal, but I think it also serves another purpose: In this thread people were talking about wanting to have a thing that they knew they could enter, they didn't want to be exposed to international stuff. That clause basically confirms to those that are unsure or worried about being crowded out that they're playing in a space dedicated specifically to them.
https://itch.io/developers/game-jams
Seems anything to help administer future jams would be a win. Also I know part of the focus of comps is to provide high calibre feedback, to my mind it seems like allowing participants a way to vote on entries would be an easy way to add some more immediate feedback. Then again competition is against some of the above stated aims...