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Are the Top Games 100% Honest? A Necessary Debate on Scratch Development

A topic by EndrHeroDev created 25 days ago Views: 75 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 3
Submitted(+1)

Hello everyone, and congratulations to all the participants. I loved being part of this Jam, learning new things, and seeing the community's creativity. 

However, while reviewing the top games, I've been thinking about a technical issue I'd like to discuss with you all in a healthy way.

 I've noticed that some of the top-ranked games have a level of polish, complex 3D mechanics, and systems that are practically impossible to program and test successfully in just 48 hours if starting from scratch. 

It strongly suggests that these are projects that were developed weeks or months in advance, and the Jam's template or theme was simply applied at the last minute to give the appearance of following the rules. 

As a developer, I completely understand that it's normal to use custom codebases to save time, but I believe there's a very fine line between using helpful tools and submitting a finished project. 

This puts a huge disadvantage on those who balance their time between school or work and honestly strive to build something original over the weekend. 

I'd like to know your thoughts: 

Should short game jams have stricter rules to prove that the game was completed within the allotted time (for example, by showing a changelog or commits)? 

Do you think that using previously completed advanced projects defeats the purpose of a 48-hour jam? Let me know in the comments!

Submitted

True. This thing should be investigated properly.!!!

Jam Host (2 edits)

I understand being suspicious, I've played the top 10 games, and most people would be blown away if they found out that they were made in 48 hours.

But GDevelop jams allow users to pilfer work from their previous projects, example games, and even use purchased or publicly available assets on their games, all to try and create the coolest thing they can within the allotted time period.

With that much freedom, and the instruction to "start from a starter", which come with the controls and basic mechanics for the genre of game you want to make, I'm not surprised by the quality of the games that people made.

______________

We do disqualify games if they pilfer too much work from one of their previously existing projects/a game example, or if we find out that they were creating assets/working on a project for this jam before the start time, but the games needing to align with the jam's theme usually prevents people from doing that. (Since they could spend a bunch of time working on something that completely doesn't align with the theme, and would have to toss it all out.)