noo you brought up such cool jam theme examples like the pink decker jam and then you made Anything Jam! not to be a hater but... why didn't you give it at least a vague theme?
Aw sorry. I said I wanted to test out some of my proposals, plus I’ve never hosted a game jam before, so I decided to just test long game durations and the community-gathering thing initially. I’ll probably make a vaguely themed jam somewhere down the line.
But then again this is an open proposal! If anyone wants to make a vaguely themed jam and send it to me I’ll take a look at it and try to join it if I have time!! Love your games by the way.
i see!! that makese sense but i was surprised cuz i would think that the community-building potential comes from a shared theme. unless i'm wrong. we'll see. (also thanks! i love your manifesto actually)
I really like the part about Visual Novels, there is so much potential there. I believe in the genre very much, the new ones keep blowing my mind.
It's disappointing, I've seen some communities around it, some of them are all weeaboos who strictly play Japanese ones in that one basic style, and the dating/porn ones. Very shallow and regressive stuff, it's a whole ingroup with how vindictive it gets.
Thanks, I hope people try more things with VNs. I’m not against people being influenced by anime or doing dating/NSFW visual novels to be clear, but when it’s especially reductive (e.g. like desperate Lynchian stuff) it gets really sad. Thanks for reading!
the david lynch manifesto in particular makes me think a lot about people who make 'anime inspired' stuff without actually learning anything about actual japan which is not only orientalism, racism but just painful to look at (in the sense its like. w basic knowledge u can immediately tell this person did not research anything). people trying to tell deep personal serious stories set in a country and in a culture they refuse to research... tell stories about yourself!! where you grew up, how things were like for YOU!!!
Yes!! That’s my other big insincere influence I keep noticing with David Lynch. It just comes off so annoying and terrified. I hope people realize they can be less guarded in the future.
I'm a big fan of these! As someone who helps run DOMINO CLUB (which is essentially a continuing cycle of game jams with a community around them) I wholeheartedly agree that more game jam possibilities are worthwhile!! Also candle's submission to the first manifesto jam has some thoughts about game jams that may interest you!
Thanks for reading! It’s funny that you link candle’s Manifesto Megamix because it’s one of my favorite submissions of anything on itch.io and influenced a lot of my thinking about how itch infrastructure should be when I first joined it years ago (read: I plagiarized large parts of it lol)
Love it all! Very inspiring. When it comes to visual novels, Set Yourself on Fire by denhop fits as an extremely good example of something released recently that showed a new potential for visual novels. It's extremely experimental and uses cinema/experimental storytelling in ways I've never seen a visual novel do before. And it's made in RenPy which I think is even more radical because it breaks out of all the constraints you see in so many RenPy games.
hell yeah. all good manifestos. as someone who hates the way conventional visual novels look and tries their best to make interesting-looking ones, the VN manifesto spoke to me particularly.
i feel i need to address the one about game jams as the host of this jam–the week-long jam time for this is itself a concession i made, previous ones were way shorter than a week. the other thing is i simply don’t have any interest in ‘fostering an online community’ beyond hosting the jam and encouraging people to write something. of course, ideally i would like any jam to be a prompt for anyone to make something and for conversations and ‘communities’ to organically form out of that; ultimately i think it’s healthier for any of that to happen outside of the (relatively) rigid framework of The Itch Dot Io Game Jam.
also i just like the kinetic energy of a short jam time. it’s just personal preference lol. i appreciate the manifesto for forcing me to formulate these thoughts.
Thanks for reading! I’m realizing now how it might look so I want to make it clear that your jam didn’t have anything to do with me writing the jam manifesto, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. And in general, I don’t think every jam should be like what I’m suggesting, I just want more examples of what I’m suggesting.
Yes!!! You really dropped the fish in the percolator for this one.
Controversial counter-manifesto in the comments: I think it's interesting to contrast Lynch and your call against over-reliance on inauthentic homage/pastiche (which I absolutely agree with!) vs invoking what "French New Wave" did... If you think about what the Cahiers de cinema gang did, wasn't that mostly just cinematic rehash, homage and pastiche!?
(the above is my in-progress submission to comment-jam 26)
Counter-counter-manifesto: That’s bad phrasing on my part! The French New Wave as a movement formed to fight against the decadent pedestrian films the commercial French film industry was pumping out, so one of their main engines was subversion, meaning that many of their own films were subverting OTHER films in the same movement, and this basic attitude of constantly questioning is what I actually want to encourage.
And as for their constant homaging, referencing, etc, you can take that or leave it. At their best the FNW references films to relate them to the real world, statements about spectacle itself, and the state of modern French politics. At its worst it’s lame homage-for-the-sake-of-homage stuff. Very hit and miss for me.
If it helps I’m very wishy-washy on the French New Wave anyways. I’ve seen like 8 Godard films and only liked 1, lol. As you are the only current submission to the Comment Jam, I declare you the winner.
3 great manifestos! drawn particularly to the david lynch & visual novel ones, i'm super conscious of that kind of stuff right now, no limits, no conventions, not doing stuff just because it worked before. i like as well with your thoughts on some jams feeling kind of disposable rather than ongoing spaces with history
Thank you!! The thing about limits that I’ve found with myself is that I internalize them a lot without realizing (“Oh, I can’t do this with a game because nobody else has tried it before” being one of the biggest ones) so I hope pointing out how artificial they are will help people recognize them
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noo you brought up such cool jam theme examples like the pink decker jam and then you made Anything Jam! not to be a hater but... why didn't you give it at least a vague theme?
Aw sorry. I said I wanted to test out some of my proposals, plus I’ve never hosted a game jam before, so I decided to just test long game durations and the community-gathering thing initially. I’ll probably make a vaguely themed jam somewhere down the line.
But then again this is an open proposal! If anyone wants to make a vaguely themed jam and send it to me I’ll take a look at it and try to join it if I have time!! Love your games by the way.
i see!! that makese sense but i was surprised cuz i would think that the community-building potential comes from a shared theme. unless i'm wrong. we'll see. (also thanks! i love your manifesto actually)
I really like the part about Visual Novels, there is so much potential there. I believe in the genre very much, the new ones keep blowing my mind.
It's disappointing, I've seen some communities around it, some of them are all weeaboos who strictly play Japanese ones in that one basic style, and the dating/porn ones. Very shallow and regressive stuff, it's a whole ingroup with how vindictive it gets.
Thanks, I hope people try more things with VNs. I’m not against people being influenced by anime or doing dating/NSFW visual novels to be clear, but when it’s especially reductive (e.g. like desperate Lynchian stuff) it gets really sad. Thanks for reading!
the david lynch manifesto in particular makes me think a lot about people who make 'anime inspired' stuff without actually learning anything about actual japan which is not only orientalism, racism but just painful to look at (in the sense its like. w basic knowledge u can immediately tell this person did not research anything). people trying to tell deep personal serious stories set in a country and in a culture they refuse to research... tell stories about yourself!! where you grew up, how things were like for YOU!!!
Yes!! That’s my other big insincere influence I keep noticing with David Lynch. It just comes off so annoying and terrified. I hope people realize they can be less guarded in the future.
I'm a big fan of these! As someone who helps run DOMINO CLUB (which is essentially a continuing cycle of game jams with a community around them) I wholeheartedly agree that more game jam possibilities are worthwhile!! Also candle's submission to the first manifesto jam has some thoughts about game jams that may interest you!
Thanks for reading! It’s funny that you link candle’s Manifesto Megamix because it’s one of my favorite submissions of anything on itch.io and influenced a lot of my thinking about how itch infrastructure should be when I first joined it years ago (read: I plagiarized large parts of it lol)
It's one of my favorites and was extremely influential to me, too!!
three cheers for three manifestos worth reading
Thank you for reading!
Love it all! Very inspiring. When it comes to visual novels, Set Yourself on Fire by denhop fits as an extremely good example of something released recently that showed a new potential for visual novels. It's extremely experimental and uses cinema/experimental storytelling in ways I've never seen a visual novel do before. And it's made in RenPy which I think is even more radical because it breaks out of all the constraints you see in so many RenPy games.
I haven’t heard of Set Yourself on Fire, I’ll check it out. Thanks for reading and for the recommendation!
hell yeah. all good manifestos. as someone who hates the way conventional visual novels look and tries their best to make interesting-looking ones, the VN manifesto spoke to me particularly.
i feel i need to address the one about game jams as the host of this jam–the week-long jam time for this is itself a concession i made, previous ones were way shorter than a week. the other thing is i simply don’t have any interest in ‘fostering an online community’ beyond hosting the jam and encouraging people to write something. of course, ideally i would like any jam to be a prompt for anyone to make something and for conversations and ‘communities’ to organically form out of that; ultimately i think it’s healthier for any of that to happen outside of the (relatively) rigid framework of The Itch Dot Io Game Jam.
also i just like the kinetic energy of a short jam time. it’s just personal preference lol. i appreciate the manifesto for forcing me to formulate these thoughts.
Thanks for reading! I’m realizing now how it might look so I want to make it clear that your jam didn’t have anything to do with me writing the jam manifesto, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. And in general, I don’t think every jam should be like what I’m suggesting, I just want more examples of what I’m suggesting.
haha hey even if you wrote your jam manifesto in response to this jam itself i’d welcome it! they’re good thoughts!
Yes!!! You really dropped the fish in the percolator for this one.
Controversial counter-manifesto in the comments:
I think it's interesting to contrast Lynch and your call against over-reliance on inauthentic homage/pastiche (which I absolutely agree with!) vs invoking what "French New Wave" did... If you think about what the Cahiers de cinema gang did, wasn't that mostly just cinematic rehash, homage and pastiche!?
(the above is my in-progress submission to comment-jam 26)
Thank you for reading!!
Counter-counter-manifesto: That’s bad phrasing on my part! The French New Wave as a movement formed to fight against the decadent pedestrian films the commercial French film industry was pumping out, so one of their main engines was subversion, meaning that many of their own films were subverting OTHER films in the same movement, and this basic attitude of constantly questioning is what I actually want to encourage.
And as for their constant homaging, referencing, etc, you can take that or leave it. At their best the FNW references films to relate them to the real world, statements about spectacle itself, and the state of modern French politics. At its worst it’s lame homage-for-the-sake-of-homage stuff. Very hit and miss for me.
If it helps I’m very wishy-washy on the French New Wave anyways. I’ve seen like 8 Godard films and only liked 1, lol. As you are the only current submission to the Comment Jam, I declare you the winner.
counter-counter-counter-manifesto: okay nerds chill and watch 16 marvel movies in a row
Looking into this…
you’ll start buying funko pops immediately following
You got me thinkin' about some stuff. Good manifestos, thank you.
Thanks for reading!
3 great manifestos! drawn particularly to the david lynch & visual novel ones, i'm super conscious of that kind of stuff right now, no limits, no conventions, not doing stuff just because it worked before.
i like as well with your thoughts on some jams feeling kind of disposable rather than ongoing spaces with history
Thank you!! The thing about limits that I’ve found with myself is that I internalize them a lot without realizing (“Oh, I can’t do this with a game because nobody else has tried it before” being one of the biggest ones) so I hope pointing out how artificial they are will help people recognize them