Less than 19 hours as of this post before this gamejam begins!
174 people have joined! https://itch.io/jam/the-web-monetization-challenge-2020
If you are looking to collaborate and see someone offering reach out to them! If you don’t want to make a game alone this time and don’t know who to ask to join post an offer here or on itch so others can contact you.
You can’t get a free Coil code once the gamejam begins so be sure to request that now before.
If you’re reading this after the gamejam begins and are not yet convinced to put down $5 for a subscription then you can use this extension to simulate Web Monetization on localhost.
Use this extension to track payment history, as the default Coil one does not do so.
Here are some tips for new gamejammers:
- If you don’t like the picked theme don’t let that stop you from making a game. Theme is one criteria for judging. Participating and getting experience is more important than winning. Make something!
- After you get an idea, reduce the scope of it until it is extremely minimal. Only focus on turning the very core mechanics into a game. Once you have that done, then add more features around those core mechanics. You’ll naturally get more ideas to add later so add them to your idea list but don’t commit to implementing until you have the core done.
- Don’t rush trying to get a good idea that you like. A good idea can give you a ton of motivation to finish your project, while an idea you don’t love can give you the excuse to quit the gamejam (if this happens to you, pick a new idea instead). If you want your project to be more original then you’ll want to skip the most obvious ideas that the theme gives you.
- This gamejam is a full month long. You do not need to rush or crunch to finish something. But you should still try to be consistent, posting your progress publicly can help you with being accountable. You can post your progress here in this thread, in a devlog thread of your own in this forum, or on the itch forum for the gamejam, all will get you visibility. Posting in multiple places is a good idea.
- Focus on using what you know and are already productive with. Getting bogged down in new learning can distract you from your project.
- Focus on your strengths and what you are already good at doing. Partner with someone who can help compliment your skills.
- Do not disregard the opportunity to work with others. Some of the most successful gamedevs I know met the people they went on to make millions+ with during gamejams.
- Unless your role in your team is the artist, don’t spend tons of time on asset production before you have a functional core game design working. Pretty assets can help with motivation and helping a game have appeal, but don’t burn yourself out working on things that are not the core gameplay before it is function and feels fun to you.
- This gamejam has HTML5 as the primary target, which means you should be frequently testing your HTML5 builds.
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Finish what you start. Take what you begin toward a final polished game that you actually release. Even if it means cutting its features down more and more.
- If you can’t record / generate / find audio that doesn’t make ears bleed don’t include it at all, bad audio is worse than no audio at all. Collaborating with someone good at audio is a good idea if you always struggle with audio.
- This gamejam is about Web Monetization you should be thinking of ways to incorporate this into your game in ways which make sense / are creative / innovative. Besides being fun and following the theme, this is the most important thing about this jam to consider and try to incorporate. Having ads and disabling them if WM is detected should not even be the bare minimum in what you think is enough. What would Kojima do?
- If you come to the gamejam after it has already began you can still join and participate.
- Make sure you submit before the deadline. There is plenty of time, and no excuse not to submit on time.
- Join the unofficial Defold discord server to chat with others.
For those who have participated in gamejames before, what do you feel is most important?
Some generally useful tools:
- Dropbox Paper https://paper.dropbox.com/ You can use this alone or with collaborators, useful to making notes and design docs in organized fashion.
- ScreenToGif (Windows only) https://www.screentogif.com/ Make gifs/videos of your game easily. Be sure to install FFmpeg and Gifski when you install or via the Extras menu.
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Dash / Zeal for offline docs. Even if I’m online I use these for looking up features.
What general tools do you recommend that others may find useful during the gamejam? Share them!
Is this something that could be somehow inconvenient for itch owners? How did you check the “allow” attribute of itch, 
I will make some cool post with this jam 
I was thinking about it for a while now and came to the conclusion that working together might have a lot of advantages! If you are interested in collaboration, please tell me, I will gladly form or join a team 
