During a long bus ride the other week, I was pondering ideas for ways I wanna game creators could collaborate or some kind of community event. I was inspired by
Experiment 12, a project where 12 talented independent game developers each created games in 72 hours as chapters in a sequential story. The chapters all have distinct styles, and there's an overarching narrative through all of them, which is a really unique experience that I enjoyed a lot, as well as being enjoyable for the developers to make. I was trying to brainstorm ideas like this, that would be unique, worthwhile, and inspirational, for both players and creators of the project.
Here's what I came up with: "piecewise" deveopment, where multiple people handle individual aspects of the same room / screen, but only work on them sequentially. Once you finish your part, you hand it off to the next person, who does their part and hands it off, etc, until it's finished. The order I was thinking of was: One person selects a music track, the next person creates graphics / tileset, the next person does static level design (no moving parts), and the last person does scripting, anything from moving spikes to graphical effects to whatever. No communication of ideas, thematic direction, etc may be communicated between developers; you only see what's been done so far. When the game is finished, you get to see what the scripter did with your level design, how the graphics were inspired by your music choice, etc. And you also see how cohesive and quality the game is as a whole: it might be amazing, so-so, bad, hilarious, strange, etc!
If each of 4 people do all 4 components (music, graphics, level design, and scripting) once, then you can make 4 whole games / screens, as shown here.
Detail ideas: I was envisioning groups communicating over Skype or another chat service to send project files, chat, etc. And the group would set hard deadlines by which each step needs to be completed, which might be one day for each part, or maybe one hour, depending on what the group wants. I also think it would be fun if the final 4 resulting screens were compiled into one game, with some kind of in-game display of who did what for each screen. Also, I was thinking groups of friends would do this, but also groups of people who don't know each other, and can trust everyone is of similar level of competence. I'd like to try this both with people I know and people I don't! It's pretty low investment / barrier to entry for a group to do this, and it might encourage some people to try out experimental ideas in a low-risk environment, collaborate with others, or even take a stab at making a game for the first time.
I hope this makes sense to you all despite my awkward working and explanation. I'm excited by this idea, both to be in a group myself and to see what other groups create!
Do you have ideas for improvements, see any flaws, have any ideas or thoughts about this "piecewise" jam idea?
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