🤔 Theme for gamejam?

 I think Facepunch will be start a new gamejam very soon and what do you think? should the theme be open ended or specific (like it was Trundler, btw that was a nice gamejam). An open theme gives us room to maneuver, but how can we judge the games fairly? A limited theme (or themes) narrows the scope in terms of what we convey in the games, but it makes it clearer to us how best to explore the theme or should there be other restrictions: by genre, a short description?

In my opinion, S&box needs games that make people want to launch it every day, or at least games that enable content creators to produce entertaining streams and videos. That's what will bring in a whole community of players, from all kinds of backgrounds.

I wonder if we should expect a fairly open theme, but one that still targets those specific goals. S&box really needs all kinds of games, not just a wave of titles built around a single, specific theme.

As for the verdict on an open theme, it will always be subjective and depend on individual sensibilities. I find it really hard to judge which game deserves to win. What do you think ?

 I agree with the direction we’ve chosen: small scoped, funny, and polished and streamable. This could help while still keeping the open theme.

It's always hard to judge, but if we're going to judge based on a specific theme or stricter rules, that's better than judging with just an "open theme and almost no rules" I mean, how do you judge GTA 5 and TLoU 1? But they were judged somehow back in 2013

porno

How about theme: Against the odds

Probably won't be a theme

I hope there's no theme, but some creative constraints would be fun...

The IndieGameClinic recently organized the CollabJam. 🤝
Not only was there the theme/constraint to not use words in order to keep scope small and easily understandable, but it also forced participants to work together, no solo developers allowed! 
In combination this lead to polished, small scoped, easily understandable games, because groups of devs focused on a small idea. At the same time it kept the gameplay and theme open by using these "meta-constraints".
 
I don't want exactly this for the next game jam, but think it's different and interesting. 🙂 It made for a fun game jam! Maybe s&box can learn something here. 🤔