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2021/POSTMORTEM.md

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+# 2021 Minetest Game Jam Post Mortem
+_Written by GreenXenith_
+
+What an event! I took some time to rest after that, but now I can give you a proper recap and post mortem of this awesome occasion!
+
+The jam went mostly as expected, with some ups and downs. The ContentDB tag was nearly perfect for collecting entries, there was plenty of time to develop and rate (from what we could tell), and we had a lot of submissions!
+
+However, like with any plan, some things didn't want to cooperate :)
+
+## What didn't go according to plan
+### Package Criteria
+The ContentDB has specific policies for name rights, dependencies, etc. During the jam these restrictions were loosened slightly or waived in some cases. This was mostly just a hassle. Fortunately afterwards packages can be unapproved until fixed, and the WIP tag exists for a reason :)
+
+### Community Reviews
+We spent _a lot_ of time designing the system for submission rating. The final result turned out just fine, but some parts went better than others. ContentDB reviews are not great as a rating system for two reasons:
+* Not granular enough. "Yay" or "Nay" is simply not enough information compared to something like a 5-star system.
+* Easy to abuse. Whether intentional or not, a few packages got some unfair reviews, both negative and positive.
+
+The review discarding system should have weighted helpfulness higher, and it would have been good to ignore helpfulness ratings from participants. Unfortunately it required real-world testing to figure that out, and we don't have access to all the data we need. Fortunately the weighted judge system smoothed most of the issues. Remember to check out the [detailed statistics](RESULTS.md) if you'd like to see some breakdowns on how the rating went.
+
+### Deadlines
+Time is confusing. One of the original UTC times was incorrect, and we had to push out one or two times by a little bit. Fortunately no one had any huge issues with it. It is better to use 23:59, not 00:00. The submission deadline was always intended to be slightly loose, since Ludum Dare even has an extra hour to submit things. But we didn't want to announce anything like that, otherwise people would try to use the hour as regular development time and still be late :)
+
+### Announcements
+I'll be honest: I stopped keeping up with the announcements in the data repository after a while. It takes a lot of time and effort to make the announcements on **eight** different platforms. Decentralization is cool and all, but next time I'll be automating it at the very least.
+
+### Outreach
+We originally intended to have a few people make some YouTube videos announcing the jam, but that ended up getting pushed aside. Being the first time we've done something of this scale, we didn't want to put too much exposure on it in case it crashed and burned. We did get a good amount of exposure on Twitter/Fosstodon and the chat channels, but that still left many people unaware of the event.
+
+But not everything went awry.
+
+## What went better than expected
+### Submissions
+26 submissions?! Whaat?! Well, I expected almost that much :) But there were many that expected far less, and needless to say, thats a big number for a community like this. With that many submissions we got a wide spread of game ideas and styles. We even have a few really good ones in there too :P
+
+### Prizes
+$720 prize pool?! Whaaaat?! That is an unprecedented amount of money for _many_ game jams, let alone an _open source_ one. Thank you SO MUCH to those that contributed to the pool: **cupOjoseph, Blockhead, MinetestVideos, MisterE, nogajun, and Norojop**.  
+
+Prize payouts were successful and went as expected. There were some conversion and international fees involved, but affiliated parties expected it and still got nearly the full amount listed. Fees are an unfortunate side-effect of third-parties, but it is generally safer and easier than other options. We _may_ explore alternatives in the future, but it went well enough this time.
+
+### Response
+Everyone got on board! (Ignoring one or two edge cases..) Which is weird for this community. The response from the community was overwhelmingly positive, which is wonderful to see! This is not my first time organizing an event like this, but this is the first of it's size, and seeing the support from you guys is really encouraging. I'd like to thank those that also had a hand in organizing the event: **Benrob0329, ExeVirus, MisterE, rubenwardy, and Warr1024**. I am only one man, they really helped flesh out the system.
+
+### Continuation
+People are still working on their games! The best thing we could have hoped for in a jam is games that are born during the event but continue to grow afterward and develop a thriving community! I hope to see many of the games grow and improve a long time from now. And bonus, all the activity seems to have breathed new life into engine development. Stay tuned to see how Minetest grows as well!  
+
+So now what?
+
+## What the future looks like
+Many people have already expressed interest in doing another jam this year, which is awesome! I had a lot of fun seeing the results of this one, and I hope you had a lot of fun participating! There are still a lot of questions to be answered about the next jam that we'll have to discuss thoroughly later:
+* Should it be always be games? Perhaps an engine jam? Or something else entirely?
+* Should it have a theme? Or some kind of new challenge?
+* If we are going to do this regularly, when will we do it? Personally, I want to do it every 11 or 13 months, **that** way more people can participate if scheduling conflicts.
+
+### Rating System
+While the ContentDB reviews have their issues, there may be ways to fix it. Or, we may create a separate interface for jam ratings. Or maybe the ContentDB review system itself will change! This is a complex problem that will take quite a bit of triage.
+
+### Prizes and Judges
+$720 is a lot. In fact, some people were concerned the size of the prize was disproportionate to the amount and quality of submissions. But remember, this is the first time we've done this, so getting people motivated was pretty important :) Now that people know what's up, the participant count might increase. We also may have a stricter prize system.  
+
+The judge system worked out well for this jam (even if a few judges cut it pretty close), so that will likely stay. But you may see some new faces next time to shake things up.
+
+### Outreach
+Next time we'll likely start announcing earlier, and on more platforms. Hopefully we can reach even more potential participants. We'll also hopefully get some sort of official central site set up for jam information.
+
+## Final Thoughts
+I am overjoyed at how well this went. The amount of activity this spurred and the response from the community was unlike anything I've seen around here for a while. I don't have much else to say. Again, a heartfelt thank you to everyone that helped and participated. I look forward to the next one.
+
+_- GreenXenith_