Proposal: WAGDIE Game Jam

Final Proposal Discussions
1

ABSTRACT
Organize a week-long game jam competition that challenges the artists, musicians, designers, and developers within the community to come together and produce small proof-of-concept video games featuring WAGDIE content with prizes for the community’s favourite creations.

MOTIVATION
As the community continues to seek new avenues to present the WAGDIE experience, and opportunities to generate saleable WAGDIE products, video games are a fantastic but currently underleveraged opportunity. Operation of a game jam would provide some lightweight prototyping chance for a variety of different titles that could be further developed.

RATIONALE
The community has showcased its ability to coordinate and create interesting and unique works, and a game jam competition would foster that spirit, and channel it into the production of several new potential game products that could be further grown into full releases. Through this process, community members interested in taking up such a project would have the opportunity to collaborate with other members, test their design theories, and work with the IP before comitting wholly to a major development.

SPECIFICATIONS
The following will be required to execute this proposal:

  • Scheduled calendar window for the actual game jam
  • Public “Looking for Group” channel in the Community Discord
  • Team registration page via itch.io or Google Form
  • Submission portal via itch.io or Google Form
  • Token gated judging / voting channel in Community Discord
  • Jam theme defined and tweeted by Keepers of WAGDIE Twitter
  • Participation rewards (POAPs and WAGDIE) [thanks @poof]
  • Prizes for winners (USDC or other)

IMPLEMENTATION
These are the steps to accomplish this proposal:

PRE-VOTE

  1. Within Conclave, determine best week for game jam
  2. Within Conclave, determine prizing and participation rewards
  3. Within Conclave, determine operators responsible for Discord requirements
  4. Within Conclave, determine Keepers of WAGDIE assistance to announce theme
  5. Proposal voting / approval via decide.fateofwagdie.com

POST-APPROVAL

  1. Open “Looking for Group” channel in Community Discord
  2. Open team registration portal via itch.io or Google Form
  3. Announce game jam competition via Keepers of WAGDIE / Discord
  4. Await game jam commencement date
  5. Open submission portal via itch.io or Google Form
  6. Announce game jam commencement via Keepers of WAGDIE / Discord
  7. Await game jam conclusion date
  8. Collate all game jam submissions in judging / voting channel within Discord
  9. Announce game jam conclusion and game availability within Discord
  10. Await judging period closure
  11. Announce winner(s)
  12. Distribute prizes

TIMELINE
After discussion of details and proposal adjustments within conclave, once brought to proposal approval vote, the process for the game jam should take approximately 4 weeks. Two weeks from announcement to allow teams to coordinate / schedule appropriately, one week for the actual game jam, and another week for adjudication.

OVERALL COST
Pending conclave discussion regarding additional participation rewards, the only associated cost to this proposal are the prizes for the winning entries.

This proposal suggests $5,000 for the winning entry, $2,000 for the second place, and $1,000 for the third place as a means to encourage the best products within the community, and as a potential attractor of exterior talent. A total of $8,000 USDC would be expended at these rates.

SUMMARY
This is a powerful way to generate incredible, playable, prototype WAGDIE products that could later be leveraged into more complete releases with or without The Conclave’s support. Using the format of game jam to spark development and new project concepts within the WAGDIE community, as well as attract developers who are not currently participants to explore the project for the sake of the game jam.

OPTIONALITY
While I believe this proposal can stand on its own merits without any addition, it is possible to coordinate an extension to it that would see the completed game jams released on Steam as Early Access titles under a WAGDIE Games publishing account with revenues returning to The Conclave and contributing developers. Interest and details should be discussed and confirmed within The Conclave before this proposal moves to voting.

4 Likes
2

Would this require the use of wagdie themes or assets? Or what criteria would the game jam have?

3

It’s a WAGDIE game jam.
Yes, use WAGDIE assets, lore, and theme would be dictated by Keepers at the start of the jam.

Community votes on winners, given those criteria.

1 Like
4

Token gated voted is nice.

1 Like
5

Is the target audience wagdie members or external folks? If it is external folks, I think we need to go bigger in pool prize.

1 Like
6

Most game jams have some level of judging based on theme and adherence to guidelines, but the best we can hope for is community respecting the rubric.

It’ll always come down to “most fun” game though, which ain’t a bad thing if we are looking for good WAGDIE games.

7

What about doing a WAGDIE Lore Jam and trying to get an author, inside or outside of the community.

1 Like
8

It can be both.

Most game jams don’t have anywhere near this kind of funding. Though, if y’all wanna throw more money at it, I’m not gonna say anything against it.

But, for reference - most game jams don’t even have prizes. I believe a $5k grand prize is a lot. Putting such a listing on itch.io would get a ton of attention.

9

That’s something else entirely.

Here, we create playable games that could lead to a shipped product, generating revenue.

If you wish for a storywriting competition, hit a separate proposal.

10

Id be down to experiment and see what happens. Let’s do it!

11

Awesome, we will talk more about it tomorrow then because was under impression 5K would limit to our community, which I don’t want to distract 0xG from what he’s doing and feel we already got our community engaged… but if you have a plan for reaching outside

12

We should add funds for compensating organizers. It wont be easy to put this together. So let’s bump this to 10k and add 2k for compensation (minimum)

1 Like
13

And here, I was gonna do it for free! :rofl:

$2k is a bit much for the administration imho, unless we are going forward with establishing the WAGDIE Games publishing arm on Steam etc.

I’d love to talk more about that opportunity but don’t want this proposal to become all things all at once.

2 Likes
14

I just feel we haven’t been compensating operators fairly for taking time to manage. Up to you. I feel like some compensation is needed. But I think the game jam is cool.

1 Like
15

Glad you dig it.
I think cool shit can come from it.

16

A bit more on the concept of getting these (or future) games on Steam, and what I’d have to do (alongside The Keepers) to make it possible:

  • Create WAGDIE Games account for Steam
  • Establish royalties payflow from Steam to Conclave / Developers
  • Publish monthly royalty reports published by Steam
  • Select which titles to bring to Early Access
  • Launch individual Early Access store pages per game
  • Manage Steam distros and branches
  • Manage individual developer controls / access
  • Coordinate launch for individual titles
2 Likes
17

Love the idea, trying to envisage the output.

Do you have examples of other ‘game jams’?

18

Yep.

Current list of “all” game jams:
https://itch.io/jams

Here’s 7dfps (very popular annual jam for shooters):
https://twitter.com/7dfps

This is Global Game Jam (biggest in the world):

Indiepocalypse is an (almost) monthly jam, winners go in a “magazine” of sorts:

Here’s Nordic Game Jam, I’ve attended in Denmark:

Here’s a 2IQ version run by YouTubers:

And here’s a 200IQ tutorial from one of the most helpful gang in indie dev:

There’s alllll kinds, big and small - it’s a very common thing in the indie games space.
Basic formula is only:

  • Limited time window
  • Surprise theme
  • Make game(s)
2 Likes
19

Wow. Love discovering these huge communities I had no idea existed. Looks like a great way to broadcast WAGDIE to a solid target audience.

1 Like
20

I also agree going bigger on the prize pool regardless but. But more specifically to reach and outside source. This is an amazing proposal and will reach into as many places to help this achieved.

I’m sure there’s more details to flesh out before just money though.

Token gated I agree should happen. I would prefer to have as many dedicated but respected voices in the community