As I’m writing this, it has been about a week since Godot Wild Jam #68 wrapped. I hadn’t realized it when I submitted my project, but it has been three years since I last successfully finished a game jam. While I do want to talk a bit about the game and the jam, I also want to talk about the things that have led to me getting out of this cycle of self-hatred for the things that I make.
The Jam
The community voted for “Forge” for the jam’s theme, which was actually my suggestion! Naturally, I felt a sort of obligation to participate. Even having come up with the theme, I didn’t start the jam with any ideas in mind. There were just so many ways to interpret it, and it was fantastic to see how many of those interpretations ended up being made by others. I’d highly encourage checking out the submissions.
My entry was ManaForge, which was inspired by the “bullet heaven” Vampire Survivors. Perhaps somewhat naively, I thought the genre would be simple enough to build and iterate upon. Prior to the start of the jam, I’d decided that this was what I wanted, to take an existing idea and put all of my focus on the twist I put on it. When it comes to Vampire Survivors, that ended up being how the character is upgraded.
In the game, you carry a magic anvil on your back, which doubles as a weapon and the source of your advancement. Rather than have the character automatically level up when they have enough experience, they must throw down their anvil and use it, in the midst of battle, to hammer out a new upgrade.
As the end of the week approached, I had my twist more or less done, but the base itself, those “simple” mechanics, were missing. My naivety had come back to bite me in the ass, a sort of slap on the wrist for thinking games like that are so easy to make.
However, even with that realization, I didn’t immediately jump to my usual conclusion, I didn’t think to myself that this game was terrible and should never see the light of day. The week was done, I’d done my work, and I was, in a way, proud of it.
My Experience Jamming
As I said earlier, it has been three years since I last submitted a jam game. However, in that time, I’ve joined eleven jams. Each of them, no matter the theme, no matter the restrictions, faced the same obstacle: me.
I’ve talked before about my issues with self-image and anxiety. It tends to creep into everything I do, even game development, one of my greatest passions. In each of my “failed” jams – as I may have once looked at them – those feelings would eat away at me until I ultimately gave up. The idea wasn’t good enough, I could never make the art for it, the game was a boring mess. I would come up with any excuse I could to just get out of working on the jam. Eventually, it reached a point where I just stopped doing jams entirely because it always felt bad.
I’m happy to say that this time was different. I still had some negative thoughts along the way. I’m not completely free of them, but I was quick to dismiss them. How could I possibly talk badly of what I was working on? It’s a jam game, it’s crafted by my hand, in a week! It’s not meant to be some masterpiece. It doesn’t need to be!
I found the new perspective refreshing. Looking back on it, I think a lot of it came down to managing expectations. In the past, despite knowing that I’m not a great artist and knowing especially that game development is a multidisciplinary art, I would conflate being a great programmer with being a great game developer, a pitfall I’m sure many people fall into. Missing that expectation would leave me feeling like I hadn’t tried my best, and that the game wasn’t worth being out there. For this jam, I just accepted that I had shortcomings. I used open source art (thank you, Kenny) and open source music, and focused solely on the programming. Doing so allowed me to judge the game on what I had actually created, which was good! So it made me feel good about it.
Writing these things out, or saying them aloud, is always funny to me. It’s something I’ve only started doing recently, ever since I started therapy. In these forms, the thoughts feel so obvious. Why would I be good at things I don’t practice? How could I make a perfect game in a week? In another time, I might have just called that giving up, but I think it’s just being very reasonably realistic. If you find yourself in the same boat as I once was, I’d highly encourage saying these negative thoughts out loud instead of letting them stew in your head. More often than not, once they become concrete, you’ll see them for the foolish misconstructions they are.
Moving Forward
One of my challenges I set out for myself this year was to participate in at least three game jams. For some, this would be a small number, though for me that would be quite a leap. After my experience with this one, I’m feeling inspired to keep the momentum going. At some point, I need to break free from the vicious cycle causing me to hate what I love, and I believe this moment to be critical in that path.
I’m sure you’ve all heard this one time or another, but I’ll add to the cacophony of people all speaking the most important piece of advice for what we do:
Just make games.
Post-Script
This has nothing to do with this post in particular, so if you want, you can click away. It’s just a feeling I have each time I’m writing a new one. For some reason, I have this idea in my head that I shouldn’t be putting my words out into the aether if I don’t have anything to say. By that, I mean something worthwhile to say, of course.
I read this post back to myself and think “Is there anything to be learned from this?”
However, writing that very thought down, and really sitting and looking at it, it can be met with “Does there need to be?” It can be put through the same test of expectations as the jam games. I’m not a productivity blogger, or a tutorial writer, and I don’t really have any intentions of being one. So why should I judge my own words with the expectations befitting those?
If I step back for a moment, I think it comes from not wanting to waste someone’s time. You took the time out of your day to read my thoughts. If that’s all you were looking for, then perhaps the time isn’t wasted. If you were looking for something more though, a lesson or deeper insight, it might be lacking, and that’s where the worry comes from.
I guess I should then pivot to a question for you. Why do you read these? If you want, reach out to me on Twitter or via email (in my About page) and let me know, I’d love to hear what you have to say.
Perhaps people want more insightful commentary on things. These posts can be rather scatterbrained, much like myself, but I’m sure if I hammered at them just a bit longer, I could knock something out.
Anyways, if you’re still here, thank you for reading both the post and my ramblings. I appreciate you.