Good day everyone! I hope everyone has been doing well and staying safe in these uncertain times. Luckily we have some news we think you all will like!
Game Jam
I am happy to announce that we have picked a new name for the Gam Jam and we would like to congratulate @Altair123 for the winning suggestion of Gain Jam! Congrats @Altair123 we will be contacting you in the next few days to work out sending you your prize!
We do want to give an honorary mention to @Cakecatboy who suggested the name first on [POLL] The Next Game Jam & Considering Adding an IF Category - #2 by grotlover2.
For those of you who have not seen it yet we have also created a post with details on this years game jam. You can find all the details outside of the theme in the About the Gain Jam 8/2020 category topic.
We are very much looking forward to this year. We have upped the prize pool to $1050 increasing the prizes for 2nd and 3rd place as well as adding prizes for best art, music, and writing! We wanted to do this to spread the prize money out a bit more and recognize those devs who showed excellence in those categories since they are not weighted very heavily compared to our focus on mechanics and game play.
I do warn you all though we have some fun ideas for this years theme that we hope will prove challenging to you all so be ready for a few curve balls!
Starbound Server
In other news, we have been considering starting up a Weight Gaming sponsored Starbound Server with the Big Fatties Mod. We spent the last couple of months evaluating some hosting services and we think we found one that will work. Along with this I have been working on a mod manager in my spare time we are planning to use to help distribute the mod packs to those who want to join up.
The only issues though are cost and moderation. The hosting service we found seems to work the best for the cost but is still expensive. Along with that we do not have the resources to moderate a full server.
Our current plans is we are considering adding it to our Patreon as a $400 goal as we feel it would be a fun way to give back to the community who has so generously supported us. If we can hit that and find a group willing to moderate and admin the server a bit for us we are seriously considering starting an open server for everyone to join in on.
If you would like to see this make sure to let us know below! And if you are part of a group already running a server and would be willing to moderate it feel free to reach out to me in DMs!
Well that is everything, thank you all for your support and I look forward to this years game jam!