Codey

I have to say that I’m very disappointed by this year’s #vibejam I'm disappointed because the judging process was… weird My game that you can see bellow ranked #94. Way lower than what I was expecting. I put a lot of effort into the game, I wanted to make sure I’d “push the limits on what AI can do”, just like the organizers were pushing to the builders. And in all honesty, I think I delivered that. I got a lot of positive comments about it (appreciate who did) But it was not enough to be even in the top 25. The judging process went like this: > 2 people judged 950 games, selected the top 25 and handed them to other judges Once I knew my game didn’t qualify in the top 25, I reached out to one of the first judges to ask for feedback, trying to understand why my game went so poorly. The response I got was “your game is not fun at all and lack any kind of story. You focused too much on graphics”. I thought it was a bit harsh, but okay. I’m fine with criticism. Then I reached out to a judge (a game dev) that was responsible to rate the top 25 games and asked for feedback as well. The response was completely different, I got “Jesus, this looks awesome! You should’ve be in the top 25” and the rate he gave me would've put me in the top 10 or maybe even top 5! Then I noticed the biggest problem of the jam: > The judges responsible for picking the top 25 has no experience on game development at all, and this completely broke the judging system So all my work focusing on real game development and not AI Slop was pretty much thrown in the trash as this was simply not important for the initial judges All because they just didn’t consider the game fun. Which brings me to another problem: > Fun is subjective I’ve played my game with my wife and we had a blast, and we also played other games that we didn’t find it as much fun. So they decided the results of the game jam that has 50k in prize pool based on their personal experience of fun. I mean, fun is important. But technical depth also should be considered in a game jam. They said that “fun > polish” was the criteria. But this is definitely flawed by the reason above. You can build GTA 6 but if the judge does not like GTA you are discarded. With no regards on the technical complexity of the game whatsoever I’m not here to trash on anyone, I think everyone that shipped a game deserves to be praised. And I think the winners deserved their spot. But the rest was very... questionable. And lots of participants didn’t get the respect they deserved (I've talked to a bunch of them) That’s my take. I'll tag some creators down bellow that should've get more credit