Re: LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!

[Michael McMahon]

In my response I wrote, "The purpose of a jam is education, 
socialization, and friendly competition while gaining functional 
experience through creating something in an area that they are 
interested in."

From what I gathered, most game jams participants are children, 
students, hobbyists, and mentors who are not professional programmers.  
I have tried hundreds of game jam games and I would only recommend a few 
of them to be worth playing or distributing through a repository.  The 
majority of them are incomplete concepts of games.  Many are not 
playable without reading the source.  Many cannot be played.  Some are 
great!  If most game jam games ended up in standard repositories, there 
would be a negative effect on the entire ecosystem.  As gamers search 
for free games to play, they would install these game jam games and find 
a large number of low quality games.  After trying several duds, the 
negative experience could turn them away from free software altogether 
without context.  Every program does not need to be packaged.

Jams do have value.  Sometimes the journey is the destination.

Best,
Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF  FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0
https://fsf.org

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On 1/4/22 10:54 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> If the aim of a Game Jam isn't to produce a game that people use,
> what is its purpose?