Hey hey community!
Springtime is fast approaching, and I’ve been thinking about a way to help us all have fun building something and get our creative juices flowing after we’ve all been curled up in our winter caves lol.
This would NOT be an “official” event, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all come together to do something like this ourselves!
What is this proposed event?
I’d like to set it up like a global game jam. Upon the start date, everyone in this forum can gather, ask questions, and form teams (or yourself!). Once the theme is revealed, it’d be jam time! Everyone would have the weekend to build (typically 48 hours), and we can set up a showcase for everyone to display what they built over the hackathon.
GGJs have an extra “challenge” list for some folks who want to give themselves more constraints on top of the theme, as a matter of challenge or fun.
For us in this developer community, we would instead provide each team a choice:
- Build a cool project (like a game with GPT-based NPCs)
- Build a useful library or tool on top of the API (any kind of addition to the standard OpenAI API)
The option you pick depends on your team’s level of expertise, and the difficulty you’re comfortable with. Remember, we are still a developer forum, so we will still be here to help answer questions teams would have. Bugs happen often, and this is a great opportunity to learn and ask questions!
Is this Competitive?
Short answer: No.
I stand by the GGJ philosophy that the focus should be about having fun and learning new tricks, not trying to be better than anyone else. As someone who’s done them for 5+ years, I can attest to the fact that it’s quite nice not to have that kind of pressure. This is still unofficial too, so it’s not like we can have provide people with prizes or anything lol. For some, this may not be attractive, but I would encourage participation anyway. It’s different than coding by yourself or in an office. Everyone will be coding at the same time, so it’s super easy to ask questions, and teams are encouraged because you can learn quite a lot from other people, many of whom may also be solo devs just like you! The important part is to have fun with it, and I think this is a great way to get people together to have fun!
Times?
I was thinking about a date like…
March 30th?
Maybe later? Would this date work or not work for you all?
The time of the theme reveal is also flexible, and I have not put a hard time there yet because I don’t know what times most who are interested would be available. So, feel free to post in this topic!
Why do an event like this?
You never know what can come from experiences like this. Seriously, there is more magic to these kinds of events than meets the eye.
To give you an idea, one year I was developing a game with my team next to this hilarious and joyful group of devs. They were building a game about “A goose that’s just an absolute asshole”. It was really funny to play. They were great. And shortly after they showed off their game at the showcase, “Goose Game” became practically famous overnight, and they went from 0 to Hero instantaneously. That game made their dreams come true, and now they’re a legit indie game company.
There is plenty of opportunity for a story like that to come out of this, and that is my genuine hope for a little informal event like this 
Please, if you think you would be excited to participate in something like this, post your thoughts! There’s a reason this is a proposal and not an (unofficial) announcement 
. I want to know if this interests the community at large, and if it does, we can easily put something like this together for everyone!