Looks like Demakes is currently winning. Could be interesting, though I am concerned about legalities. It’ll be fun to see what theme we end up with, and subsequently what games get made.
I like the idea mentioned on discord about taking the top 5 themes from this poll and doing a final poll with only those themes and only 1 vote per user.
I don’t think that would be the best bet as the issue is picking 1 from the top 5, but there’s a 5-way top for 5th place. Could just do a pick 1 from the top 4 if no other votes break the tie for the top 5.
Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to allow people 19 choices in the poll? (I voted for 9 things.)
Are we supposed to be narrowing down to just one theme or to a small number of multiple themes (e.g. three, five)?
I think we should just roll with all 9 and give people a second vote to even out the statistics.
2/9 is roughly 1/5, and with ~15 people voting it should take us at least marginally closer to an overall winner.
It would eliminate 10 of the 19 options.
Halving the number of options seems like a fair bit of narrowing down to me.
Looks like “Demakes” is currently winning (1 vote difference!). I will close the poll on Friday 18:00 GMT so there is still time to vote or change your current vote!
Can I suggest that perhaps there be multiple themes? As in, people get to pick their own grouping from a set of two or three of the popular themes?
I’ve participated in lots of jams over the years, and also helped to organize a local jam a few times. My conclusion about themes is this: they can never be good. Everyone has their own opinions about why they like a theme, so whatever you pick, someone will be unhappy. Crowd sourcing is an appealing but ultimately ineffectual solution.
I personally really dislike themes that feel mechanically prescriptive, and when those themes show up it can totally kill my motivation for a jam. It’s the reason I don’t even bother to tell myself I’m going to participate in Ludum Dare anymore. When I see them, it just feels like I’m making someone else’s game idea. But I’m not claiming that those themes are inherently bad - just that I dislike them. They’re clearly popular, after all: enemies as weapons, 10 seconds, and your life is currency are all themes that have popped up in Ludum Dare, and I personally think they’re absolutely abysmal. It should go without saying that others disagree.
By contrast, one of my favorite Ludum Dare themes was “Growing/two button controls.” As in, you could pick either of both of those. I’m not saying that others didn’t like it (I’m sure many hated it), but I really felt that it left the door open for inspiration. One is ambiguous, while the other is more mechanically prescriptive, so it seems to capture a better range of philosophies behind themes. On top of that, it implies the added challenge to those who want to figure out a clever way of combining them.
That would mean the “Cuteness overload/Demakes” theme options for the jam. What do others think? Having 2 themes to choose from could bring more entries to the jam.
I very much agree, which is why I was asking whether the intent was to have only one theme or just to narrow the suggestions down to a handful of themes.
This is also one of the reasons I was aiming to allow seven different themes for the aborted Pokitto art jam. At the time someone expressed confusion at this (I can’t remember who), but I think having several themes to choose from gives a jam a challenge without it being too restrictive.
The point of having themes, as far as I’m concerned, is to give people focus or inspiration, not to lock them into an artificial restriction. Making a game is challenging enough, the themes should help, not hinder.
I think it should be (or should have been?) between three and five themes rather than just two.
