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

[Paul Sutton]

On 05/01/2022 05:06, Michael McMahon wrote:
> 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.

I agree here,  I am running code club as a leader I can only go so far 
with my limited coding expertise.  Perhaps a game jam could take 
resources from a book here.

http://inventwithpython.com/

As that way we are all reading from the same book,  we could then help 
support people taking part,

If working with adults, this can probably be undertaken remotely,  if 
working with children you need to take in to account safeguarding etc, 
(At least from a UK viewpoint).

I am sure most people can take one of those books and work through the 
exercises,  it is nice to find a way to support people or each other 
over a set period of time (e.g 1 week).


If working remotely this is also an opportunity to teach people how to 
use git,  how to share and ask for help on forums,   what to include how 
to ask etc and learn about the 4 freedoms

Include a non free graphic and see how that affects sharing and 
development when you need to make a replacement.  Doing this step 
demonstrates why code and all assets need to be under a free license.

So other than creating games,  it presents an opportunity to learn extra 
skills which can lead in to contributing.

Paul

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