cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Couple of questions about the VR Jam

TheGiantRobot
Honored Guest
I've never participated in any sort of developer event, so bear with me.

What exactly is a "developer jam"? By that I mean is it a live event? If I wanted to participate should I plan to make travel preparations? The pictures of the tables full of developers made it look like we would be expected to participate in some sort of convention, or convention-like event, or was this just photos from the IndieCade festival itself and not representative of the contest or jam? The fact that part of the grand-prize is to pay for travel to the festival makes me think its all done through the forums/official site but I wanted to make 100% sure before I start to make any plans.

I live in the south, Memphis specifically, putting me way out of reasonable range to demo a rift in California or New York. In addition, I haven't ordered a developer kit yet. Would ordering one now, in hopes of having it in time to help develop for this be a remotely sane thing to do?

edit: yea...I should've posted this in the general forums, whoops.
6 REPLIES 6

BHawthorne
Honored Guest
It looks as though there are tables where devs can showcase their work? How does one go about getting a table for VR Jam? At issue I'm assisting with development of Nthusim HMD which isn't exactly a game although it's definitely for the Rift.
Technical Marketing Manager - Nthusim Pty. Ltd.

cybereality
Grand Champion
You can work on your project remotely, and only the winners have the option of travelling.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

doomedbunnies
Honored Guest
It's not an event at all, or a "game jam" in the traditional sense (a short-term creative event where you physically get together with and meet new people, for the purpose of creating awesome stuff together). It's just a standard game creation competition where you create a game in the usual way -- at home or at work or wherever -- and submit it to a jury for judging. The event is using "Jam" as part of its name either because the organisers didn't know what a game jam is, or are intentionally misusing it for some nefarious purpose. (I assume the former. I can't even imagine what such a nefarious purpose could be.)

Winners of the contest receive (amongst other things) table space for demos at IndieCade. Which is a real event where one could conceivably get tables.

Jose
Heroic Explorer
"doomedbunnies" wrote:
The event is using "Jam" as part of its name either because the organisers didn't know what a game jam is, or are intentionally misusing it for some nefarious purpose.


This whole thing feels so corporate and detached from the indie game scene, the scene that popularized the term "game jam"

Oculus needs to look at Ludum Dare, who makes a clear distinction between the jamming and competition aspect of their event.

Ludum Dare is two similar events taking place over one weekend
The Competition is the familiar “make a game in 48 hours solo competition” that Ludum Dare is known for. Specific details can be found below. After the competition ends, participants are given 3 weeks to play and rate games created by their peers. After those 3 weeks, winners are announced.

The Jam is the new “relaxed” Ludum Dare. It was created to make Ludum Dare even more inclusive. You can work in a team, borrow assets from your other projects, or do things that would normally be against the rules. You also get one extra day, giving you up to 72 hours to submit an entry. This is helpful for those times real life gets in the way, or for games that need just a bit more time to become something great.

Ultimately, our goal with Ludum Dare is to encourage people to sit down and make something. Our hope is that the new structure continues to encourage more and more developers to join us and create a game in a weekend.

VoodooSpecter
Explorer
Game Jams are just events where developers get together for a short time to build a game quickly for some type of competition. That's really all an event needs to do to be a game jam, so I think the comment that the creators of this one didn't know what a "Game Jam" is was more than a bit unfair. Game Jams come in a lot of flavors, Ludum Dare's isn't the only kind of jam out there (though I admit I do love their format).

Some, like the Global Game Jam and Ludum Dare are Short-Format and last 2-3 days max. Others like the Ouya jam and the VR Jam last several weeks. Some feature cash prizes, some exhibit your game to the community, others have no reward save the satisfaction of knowing people liked your game. Some don't even rank "winners", they just post up a list of community favorites. One or two don't even allow teams (The Ludum Dare competition is like this, but the Ludum Dare Jam is not... though both are really game jams, so they really ought to be called the competitive jam and the freestyle jam). There's no right way to run a jam, but there are a couple of wrong ways. So far, I don't see anything here that indicates they're doing anything wrong with the way they are administrating the VR Jam. A system for organizing our own physical jam locations would be nice (as that provides great networking opportunities) and a split track like the one Ludum Dare implements might be nice (one more strict competition and one more accessible community jam without prizes perhaps) would be nice, but I like the rules for this jam just fine.

Jose
Heroic Explorer
@VoodooSpecter

You're correct. There's no "right" way to run a jam.

The main thing Oculus is doing wrong (imho) is being very unclear and confusing in their presentation of the "VR Jam" event.

Oculus still needs to be clearer about what this whole thing is. For example, there are still references to "Slow Jam". And indiecade themselves (on their website) use the words: "IndieCade and Oculus VR are proud to present a World Wide Slow Jam."