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GMTK Game Jam 2021 Post Mortem
🕑 Added 2021-06-23 08:19:07 +0000 UTCHello everyone!
So, this month I hosted the fifth annual GMTK Game Jam (an event where people try to make a game in just 48 hours). And I wanted to share some thoughts, some lessons, and some interesting stats with you all.
Last year's jam was, quite frankly, enormous. 2020 received way more entrants and submissions than 2019 - more than double, in fact. It was a special year, though, with almost every country in some form of lockdown - meaning lots of bored people with nothing better to do.
And so I was unsure if 2021 would surpass it. But… it did! When the event began, over 21,000 people had joined up - another sizeable increase from 2020 (when 18,000 people entered).
Every year, only about 30% of those entrants will submit a game (accounting for people in teams, and those who don't finish). 2021 was a little down - with a 27% follow through rate. But that did mean another record breaking number of submissions: 5,883 when the jam finished (now 5,813 - games get removed for various reasons).
So that's really awesome numbers. We're still bigger than Ludum Dare (but still far behind Global Game Jam). GMTK Game Jam is still the biggest jam on itch.io and the biggest online-only jam. Which is incredible.
If you order Itch's jam list by "Most Submissions", GMTK gets all three top spots.
We'll have to see what happens in 2022 - the UK, at least, was still in lockdown during this jam but (fingers crossed) the world will be back to some semblance of normality next year.
Anyway. In true post mortem style… what went right and what went wrong this year?
What went right: better rules
In last year's post mortem, I talked about the lack of "clear, thought-through, and easily enforceable rules". So that was a key goal for 2021.
To that end, I created a website with all the jam's rules on it. It covered pretty much everything that might come up, and so the mods on Discord could just point people at that page if they asked questions about eligibility, timing, and so on.
If we were surprised by an unexpected question, the mods could get together and decide on the right decision - and then I'd add the answer to the website. That way, the mods weren't giving bespoke and conflicting advice to different people - everyone would have the exact same rules.
Trying to come up with rules is hard, as it turns out. Every single part of the jam is a decision I must make, and it's a decision that will benefit some, and disadvantage others. Make some people happy, and others frustrated.
To help with this, I came up with some internal values that the game jam follows, so I could ensure that all rules were working towards the same goal. Those values include things like fairness, a desire for solo devs to be able to compete, and not wanting to put too much of a burden on the jammers or the moderators.
That was helpful, and I'll keep thinking about them when making future decisions.
What went right: quick results
We've now run enough jams to fill an entire horizontal segment on the GMTK homepage!
In 2019, the community's results and rankings went out as soon as the voting period ended. This was exciting for jammers, but it kinda took the wind out of the sails of my results video and led to confusion about who the "real winners" of the jam were.
In 2020, I held the results back until I made my video. This was better - a cleaner, more exciting and surprising end to the jam. But it also meant that jammers had to wait a long time to see how they did.
So for 2021, I kept the same system as last year but endeavoured to get the video out much faster. In the end, it came out 49 hours after the voting period ended - I was basically doing my own little game jam!
An alternative, unused thumbnail for the results video, this time showing the game Rift Shift.
To help with this, I prepared for the video in advance by writing the intro and outro, and making templates for things like the game titles. And then I worked with itch to get early access to the ratings over the weekend - this gave me a heads up look at what might be in the top 100 and I could get started on playing the games.
And so when voting ended on Sunday night, I only needed to grab a few games that weren't in the top 100 in my early look. And then spent Monday and Tuesday frantically playing games, writing the script, and making the video. It was a lot of work, but worth it to get the results out in a timely manner.
What went right: team finder
A few weeks before the jam started, a bunch of Patrons in the GMTK Discord got together to make a tool. It would be a service to help people find likeminded game devs to collaborate with on the game jam.
In the end, it became the (now offline) Team Finder website: a sort of community pin board where you could post a notice about your team - and then others can find your notice and message you on Discord.
You could filter by specific skills (like 3D art or programming), see time zones and languages, and more.
Team Finder in action
It was a truly excellent website that served its purpose beautifully. I got to see some of the development process and it was a sight to behold: very smart people building a site at rapid speed, conducting UX tests, responding to the inevitable bugs, and so on.
And it was effective at its job! We had over 2000 unique logins, and over 500 people made teams and then deleted them - suggesting that they had found the people to make their game with. (A further 800 weren't closed before the website was shut).
We also saw teams in other languages like Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Chinese - making it a very multicultural app!
I really liked this, and hope we can bring it back in some form for 2022
What went wrong: late submissions
Every year, the goodwill and fun of the jam is spoiled, somewhat, in the 24 hours after the jam ends.
Like... we give jammers 48 hours to submit, we added an extra 20 minutes to account for itch.io's annual server wobbles, and then there was a generous half hour grace period after that for emergencies.
And yet, despite this - and despite trying to give as much information as possible about how and when to submit your game - people still missed the jam and started arguing with me in my email inbox! I'd have to deal with very angry people who felt entitled to be let in.
To be honest, the stress of it this year was almost too much to bear. I had a small panic attack on Monday and had to just escape my computer for a while. It was only three or four people involved, but it felt like more than that. It was horrible, to be honest.
So I'm not 100% sure what to do next year. One idea is to have the jam be 50 hours, and dedicate the last two to submissions and bug fixes - with absolutely no grace period after that. If you miss it, you miss it.
There would be a honour system that you stop working on the game itself at hour 48 - I'm sure some people will keep going but they run the risk of not properly submitting or testing their game. So, that's on them.
I've got a year to think about it…
What went wrong: limiting theme
This year's theme was "Joined Together". I wanted to see games where multiple things were connected in some way.
I made the theme logo in Unity, so I could have proper physics on the chains!
Now we saw some really amazing games this year - with entries about relationships, telephone switchboards, ropes, chains, and so on. As always, people really surprised me with the way they interpreted the theme.
But I have to admit that some of the feedback on this year's theme was a little negative: some found it hard to think up something original, and felt it limited their options. There was a small, unofficial survey in the Discord where people were asked to pick their favourite theme from all the GMTK Game Jams… and 2021's came in dead last!
Not sure how to fix that - I'll just try again next year!
Some more stats
150,077 ratings were given out during the voting period - and every game received at least one vote. The average number of ratings per game was 25.8 and the median was 19.
The most popular game of the jam was Brain Reunion, with over 500 ratings - but that didn't help its chances on the rankings as it came in at position 782 on the overall ranks.
The most commented on game was Maze of the Mini-Taur, with almost 300 comments. This one fared a lot better, at position 6 - but that's not too surprising as at least three of the team members on the game were previous GMTK Game Jam winners!
120 game names contained the word "Joined", and 261 contained "Together". 34 contained "Joined Together" in the title, and 10 were simply called "Joined Together". Other common words in the game titles were: Connect (133), Chain (122), and Slime (74).
I asked the developers if they made their own art for the game, or used pre-existing assets. 85% of developers made their own artwork. I also asked jammers if they made their own music. 56% of them did, which is pretty surprising!
One of the most interesting bits of data comes from asking the developers which game engine they used. Here's the breakdown:
It's very similar to last year, but in 2021 Unity lost a little ground to both Game Maker and Godot.
I did five YouTube livestreams where I played random games from the jam. I streamed for over 10 hours total in one week, and the peak concurrent viewers was 4,124!
Anyhoo, I think that's everything. A quick note that if you're a Patron and you made a game for the jam you can hop into the #game-dev room on the Discord and I'll make a video of myself playing it. Offer ends Friday.
And now... back to normal GMTK!
Comments
Ian Price
I've said it before and I want to say it again: your team finder tool wasn't just good, it was revolutionary. It shouldn't just come back next year - it should become a year-round indie team finding tool. There's nothing else like it, it's amazing. I also want to advocate for a longer jam. 48 hours isn't enough to test anything. It encourages people to crunch in unhealthy ways. I understand the tradition it's in, but just because it was done before doesn't mean it's good. The virtues of getting things made fast are not worth the stress of the crunch mentality. A week or two would allow a healthier schedule, and there are other jams which give this much time.
Le Don
About the late submissions, I think the 20 minutes grace period is too low. Testing the game in the last few hours and finishing it is a lot of stress. itch.io servers also crashing due to the massive uploads is even adding more stress. So 20 minutes feel like a little band aid on a cut wound. Something like an hour (Ludum Dare) seems more appropiate - recently I joined a jam that had even a 4 hour grace period, which was amazing! After that it might be absolutly fair to allow no further submissions (Also Ludum Dare have that clock, that is ticking down until the official dead line, after that it ticks down another hour, adding to the feeling of "Time is up, now I should wrap up") Also I guess it might be helpful if people were still allowed to upload a new version of the game. Speaking of experience, after deciding on the final idea and working on it, there's hardly any room to change the game in any essential way. There might be patches to iron out some minor problems, which shouldn't change the quality of the game that much, but if it does (for example because of a game breaking bug), wouldn't it be better to rate the game based on the idealized version? Both changes (bigger grace period and uploads after the deadline) might soften up the rules a little, but they also do so much to take away the stress and to give the contributors some healthy leeway.
Robert Vionny
Hi Mark, I have a quick question for you out of pure curiosity. Do you know if there was ever a game from previous GMTK that was worked upon and developed into a full game ? Would be sweet to go back and check the evolution of such game if there is one !
Tukaro
tbh I'd be happy to volunteer for the role of "hate bearer". I have no social skills and am very direct, plus I fight with aunts and uncles on Facebook all the time so it would just be another day ending in y for me. You'd probably find other such volunteers, too, or perhaps the GJ mods would time-share the address.
Tukaro
As for your own sanity (plz stay sane), I think you can minimize or avoid two sources of anxiety: 1) Have all correspondence go to an instanced e-mail address (e.g. gj2021@gamemakerstoolkit.com) and have someone else do first-pass. This creates a cut-out: any GJ-related e-mail sent directly to you gets summarily deleted, you deal with less anger/harassment, and the person who is dealing with the brunt does so for an extremely limited time and then it's all over. (Like getting teeth pulled; you know it will suck but it needs to be done, and once it's done it doesn't happen again... usually.) Once the jam is said and done, the e-mail disappears or forwards to /dev/null 2) Plan a schedule for judging and announce it ahead of time. For example: Initial 24 hours post-submissions are a "cool-down" to fix last-minute wrinkles and let people play games and vote; next 2-3 days are you going over the "first 50", early top 50 which are unlikely to fall out of the top 100 (as you did here, but in less time) and voting is closed at the end of this. Next 3-5 days are for the remainders of the top 100 and picking your personal top 10, and the results video will be released within 14 days (or 10 business days, if you like) following the end of the original Jam window That's a longer schedule than you had this time, but my experience is that if you set expectations up front the demands of participants/audience and your own anxiety will be much lower. Even if it's not as fast as they'd like, everyone knows what to expect and as long as the schedule is stuck to the whiners will be few.
Tukaro
Regarding time allotted, take a peak at how Iron Chef America operated: On the show it looks like they have their 25(?) minutes to make everything, and what's not on a plate by the end can't be served to judges, and that's it. However, after that frantic bit but before the judging they are able to make all of the dishes again while cameras are off, and these are used for the judges (anyone who pays close attention will notice most plates made within the time limit couldn't really be split three ways.) So, perhaps something similar can apply here: Participants must submit a prototype with the core gameplay intact by the end of the 48 hour window, but they then have another 2-6 hours (however you'd like to break it down) to fix bugs, add polish, etc. and submit an updated entry. This "gold" submission must not deviate in gameplay from the "prototype" (this would probably have to be on the honor system, with perhaps a bit of crowd-sourced reports of significant differences) and still has to meet a hard deadline. If no gold version is submitted, the prototype is used instead; prototypes could also be marked "gold" to indicate no further submissions planned. So long as a prototype is submitted by the first deadline, as many gold submissions as the creator(s) like can be uploaded so long as they're within that secondary window. I don't know how itch.io works, but I assume creators can publish updates; the question is if the updates published would lose the information of when the prototype was submitted. If there was no submission within the 48 hours then the gold version is disqualified, but if uploading a gold version blows away the prototype upload timestamp it would be a huge problem. I think this not only adds more flexibility and perhaps may feel "fairer" to some, but also better emulates how normal game development works.
Game Maker's Toolkit
When you lay it out like that… yeah I guess it was a lot! I’ll finish up this week’s tasks then take some time off next week :)
Dalen W. Brauner
I know you're probably under some pressure to put out a video for everyone uninterested in the Jam, but please take a breather, and please pace yourself! 50 hours of straight video editing, a panic attack and a marathon of live-streaming games is no small potatoes. You did a fantastic job with the jam this year- you deserve some rest. (And avoiding burnout is important, too!)
Dalen W. Brauner
Part of me wonders if the chain used in the visuals stuck in people's minds stronger than intended. I wonder what would have happened if the visual was, say, two hands holding each other instead. (After all, it's not the Phrase "Joined Together" that invokes the idea of a Tether, at least to me. But maybe the overall description played some part in that, too.)
Matt Glanville
Sorry to hear you had such a terrible experience in the submission period. There's really no excuse for aggressive behaviour like that. Not cool. For what it's worth, I think a slightly longer grace period would be really appreciated and I think the general spirit of the GMTK community is friendly and respectful enough that most people would probably honour it. My personal experience was that I flip-flopped around a few bad ideas on the first night and made zero progress, then spent some time with my wife & son in the mornings, and then ran out of time to do a bunch of things I wanted to do. Doing a game jam with a 2-year-old running around is really hard, it turns out. Creating an entirely new game in a weekend is a lot of fun! But fighting server issues and panicking in the submission period is incredibly intense and stressful and, to be honest, not much fun at all. So I would personally be in favour of an extended submission period. Either way, I'm very proud to have made it into the Top 10 people who outright refused to come up with an original name. 😌
Willhart
Like we don't want people to panic. The three hours should account for the time to figure things out, even when you are busy with something else.
Willhart
I'd say three hours might be the minimum, considering how much can go wrong in the last minute.
For the livestreams I liked that you didn't reset the submission form, and so we only had to add in our game once. Last year this was much more chaotic, but this year that too felt much more streamlined.
Thank you so much for the team finder, as it allowed me to find a great artist to build a game with. And sorry about the issues you had with late entries.
Hamcha
Thanks for all the breakdowns, I find it very interesting personally! I submitted my game 30 minutes before the 48h deadline (expecting server issues, I'm used to the Global Game Jam website also being unresponsive during the last hour) and felt a bit cheated when I saw the extra time since I already gave up on adding things like a tutorial and extra bug fixes. I think having NO grace period (like the 50 hours) might have its own issues too though. Maybe encourage devs to have a build by 48hrs in, but allow patches until the final grace period?
Another great jam, congratulations Mark ! I'm surprised the theme was so poorly received - I'm thinking maybe something like "Connected" may have sounded broader from a design perspective, whereas with "Joined Together" it might be harder for some beginners to picture something else than two elements bound by a string ? I dunno.
Menderbug
Interesting that the theme was so unpopular. I preferred it over the last couple of years (I think my favourites so far are still the first two, but I didn't participate back then).
Callum Forsyth
I work in University admin, and I am literally right now having the same emails from students submitting online exams well after the grace period. We've tried a number of methods, none of them very effective. I would argue for consistency, so try keeping things the way they are and do the whole "them's the rules, you know them, and they've been the same for years!" Sorry for the grief you got, it's not a great feeling!
