So… hi! It’s been a while, hey? If you’ve been wondering why the Gain Jam threads have been pinging off recently, it’s because I had finally pulled my finger out to deliver on my promise of updating all of this year’s Jam entries with the judge’s comments, both in praise and in (hopefully) mild and constructive critique. It only took me… yeesh, seven additional weeks, to deliver on this.
Any and all excuses cannot justify this egregious lapse on my part in light of how well the rest of the Jam had proceeded at the time. I don’t want to be dismissive and say “well, better later than never!” as I know some of you were earnestly seeking that feedback and I ultimately failed to deliver on that in a timely fashion. For that I am sorry. The failing is mine alone.
Also further apologies if after all this time this had been more hyped up in import and that you may be disappointed in the comments received. The aim was not to deliver a full in-depth analysis, but more to summate general thoughts and feelings about our experiences we each had with the entries in a constructive manner, and to not deter those who took the plunge in entering and wound up ultimately coming short.
If any participants have further questions about their particular verdicts, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.
Would you mind sharing some details on how judges were selected and what the process was like for selecting who played what? Anonymity was a fine choice to prevent silly people from harassing them, but I think it would be good to get some transparency on what the process looked like, at the very least.
Thank you for the feedback even. We all have obligations, and managing to keep everything on time is sometimes complicated. For our part, we understand. We took the results as a heavy defeat. We are waiting to read the commentary of all the games in order to understand our rating.
I appreciate the feedback from the judges, but I feel the anonymity hurts it’s actual effectiveness for improvement. I’m not 100% sure what the judges meant by some of their critiques, which makes it a bit difficult to apply what they said, since I can’t ask them to clarify.
The anonymity issue goes both ways, though for my part I haven’t seen any cases of harassment towards judges in previous jams. The only thing I can think of is one case where a judge wasn’t filling out the Judge’s Preference score for most of the games, and even then that was just pointing that out, nothing further. If there have been more serious cases that I’ve missed then sure, I can see why anonymity was chosen, but I would hope that this community as a whole is far too level-headed for that to happen.
Although I will say that this year, even with the anonymity, the style of writing does sometimes give the author away
There’s 1000% been harassment of judges over the years. It’s really simple for anyone on the internet to target someone anonymously or not, across different platforms if they happen to know the person’s handle or identity. Many people have links to their socials and can be creators in different fields which makes it even easier to target. Once something leaves the confines of the site, this obviously limits on how we can help and maintain safety of those involved.
Fair enough, and shame on me for thinking any corner of the internet was safe from harassment. I had hoped that with this site only having the occasional flair up and being strictly 18+ that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen, but if it’s spreading to other platforms (that I deliberately stay away from) then anonymity really is the only choice. It’s a shame, but really not worth the unwarranted vitriol from bad actors.
