Regarding the current User Poll:
I’ve wanted to host a Quest for a long time, but as it happens, I tend to the extremes. On one hand I’m cooking a Very Large Quest that I hoped to have ready to kick off 2021, but it’s not ready yet.
The other logical extreme is to host Very Short Quests, which have also been cooking for a while. The main difference, length aside, is that these short Quests will have a faster iteration cycle, and as such I expect them to become good before long.
So what’s the idea?
I wish to bring the excitement of Game Jams to E2. For those who might not know, Game Jams are short (~48 hours) events where people must complete a videogame prototype from scratch to fit a particular theme. Usually, the theme is relatively abstract and open-ended to encourage some creative liberty.
What would such a Quest look like when localized to E2’s idiosyncrasies? Here’s my rough proposal (not yet vetted by the gods):
- The Quest goal is to produce a single writeup per person/team (thanks nicolasstag!)
- Quests will be on a regular schedule, to encourage participation;1
- Keep the 48 hour limit (depending, of course, on what people actually want, can be extended, h/t tiger cub), centered around weekends (with certain provisions, given the global nature of e2 which local game jams don’t have);
- Joint/team efforts are allowed and encouraged. Given the short time given, it would be interesting to coordinate efforts with others to produce high(er) quality writeups in a short timespan;
- All entries will be contained in a single node;2
- Participants will be encouraged to evaluate, critique or otherwise give feedback on their fellow jammers
So, what do you think? Would you participate? I really wish to do this, but it’s kind of moot if no one participates. Please vote on the poll and/or leave comments here.
Ideally, noders who miss a Jam don’t have to wait a year for a similar Quest
The spirit of Jams like these is to push participants out of their comfort zone, to avoid perfectionism and generally to create a prototype that may or may not end up being the cornerstone of an actual project. My idea is that the participants will produce a “good enough first draft” and if they later decide to expand/correct/otherwise improve it, they may do so in a proper node and writeup. In this way, the Quest node is left as a “working area” where writeups are not expected to be perfectly polished. Also, if the participants wish to improve their entries later, they can still receive full marks/xp for a proper e2 entry. In my head, the ideal case is that a quest writeup will be a draft and later become a link to the “full” writeup.