MAGS Discussion - How to get more participation

[Danvzare]

I support the use of public domain assets of all kinds.

Do you mean The AGS Trove?
I just wanted to point that out, because it almost seems as though everyone forgot about it as soon as it started. And I still think it's a great idea.

[VampireWombat]

There are several other places to get public domain game assets. If not for the Open Pixel Project, I wouldn't have gotten anything close to playable for last month's game.
I haven't forgotten The AGS Trove myself. I was using to use assets from The Visitor portion in the game I failed to finish for the 102 Adventure Jam thing last month. I've also meant to contribute to it several times.
So, yeah. I'm all for using premade assets in a MAGS game. But I'm also in favor of doing something different with it somehow. Of course I wouldn't complain if someone made a game using assets purely from RoN or Maniac Mansion Mania either...

[dactylopus]

I support the use of public domain assets of all kinds.

Do you mean The AGS Trove?
I just wanted to point that out, because it almost seems as though everyone forgot about it as soon as it started. And I still think it's a great idea.

Yes, among other sources.

[Radiant]

I would probaly join MAGS more often if it were allowed to use public domain graphic resources. Then again I don't have a lot of time for MAGS in general, so I'm not really representative here...

[Cassiebsg]

The last couple months it has been allowed to use any pre-made graphics...

[Retro Wolf]

The Trove isn't dead, it's just sleeping!

I'm still open for admissions, I only update when I have a reasonable amount of extra content to add.
I stopped posting about it because like Danzvare said interest seemed to die down, and I didn't want to get on people's nerves by making multiple posts begging for content.

Click the signature.

[Jim Reed]

Making computer games is a job that needs multiple fields of knowledge, from graphics, sound, story, puzzle, design, coding, etc. Rarely a single person is gifted in all of the skills needed, which in turn leads to games having very weak presentation in some form or another. Teaming up is an option, but the communication between team members gives an overhead of work that needs to be managed along with everything else, and 30 days is not a lot of time. Stressful as it might be due to the time crunch, mags is a great way to build up useful game making skills, from planing to executing your ideas to building up a finished game. Allowing pre-made, publicly available assets is one way of easing the strain on the game developers.

Aside from that, there is a limited user base here on the forums, and you cannot expect that there will be 10 entries every month. Every mags that has at least one game finished is a good mags imo, but sometimes the theme is attractive to a larger number of people, and circumstances leave them with enough time and energy to give it a go. Quantity and quality are both positive here, and if you want more quantity, growing the AGS user base would logically mean the attendance would expand. As for quality; the skills of the developers are the main factor, and helping them increase them through tutorials, twitch streams, videos, demo games, open source projects and the like is the way to go. If you are active in the community and contribute, the activity level rises, which in turn makes other people more active, which in turn makes you more active and so on and so forth. Start from yourself, contribute what you can, the effort might be small or large (which is relative anyway) but it all adds up.

Also a shout out to Slasher who has been extremely active in mags competitions, there is not much I want to say, just a hearty applause.

[Blondbraid]

I agree, I'd much rather see a MAGS with two good, complete entries than ten entries where about eight are little more than a title screen and a two minute demo.
One of the reasons I don't participate in MAGS more is that if I'm going to make an entry, I want to make a concept I like and believe in and I want to have time to
make something that's playable from start to finish and has real graphics rather than placeholders. It just doesn't feel worth it to spend time and energy on something
I know I won't be able to finish and no one would vote for just for just for the sake of it.

[VampireWombat]

And I'm kind of the opposite of Blondbraid. I'm doing MAGS to push myself and gain experience with actually finishing something, even if it's not great. With each game I learn at least one new thing.
Of course since I plan to participate in MAGS every month I can, I might not be a great target for this thread...

[Stupot]

I guess we've found the answer. Unleash a deadly virus, forcing worldwide lockdowns and giving people plenty of spare time and no excuses.

6 games for April and 7 for March. Let's keep up this momentum!

[Racoon]

I guess we've found the answer. Unleash a deadly virus, forcing worldwide lockdowns and giving people plenty of spare time and no excuses.

6 games for April and 7 for March. Let's keep up this momentum!

Aah, so you´re the one behind corona to get more people to participate in MAGS! Does Trump know?  *puts on tin foil hat*

[4KbShort]

I know that reviving a zombie thread isn't the most proper online etiquette. However, I didn't want to post a new thread since this one wasn't locked and is on topic for what I wanted to post. Also, the charter/rules didn't say anything negative about it so I'm taking a chance.    

I heard of MAGS from OneShortEye on YouTube talking about Owl's Quest which was an old MAGS entry. I think a few other people may have heard about it from there as well. Along with that I see a few people stumble in from the internet every now and again and get excited about the idea even if they don't have the time to participate.

I love Game Jams as they give me the best option of "finishing" a game even if it's just intro->credits with a lot of jank between and I tend to gravitate towards Ludum Dare like so many others, but when I don't have time to get into that I often want to find a new jam to work on in order to make a game under crunch and to do that I go to Itch.io which has a Jams section right at the top of the page.

I took a look today and didn't see MAGS on there. I also don't see MAGS or Adventure Games Studio as a "commonly used suggested" tag when I post my games which suggests a lot of AGS/MAGS games don't end up on Itch.io. There are a ton of people on Itch.io and one of the important things on getting your name out there is to put it where people can see it and though MAGS is great for the AGS community it seems if you'd like more participation or at least knowledge of its existence, getting the name on a game distribution site meant primarily for self-published games of any genre or completion with and without monetary compensation would be a good little boost.

And to respond to some VERY old concerns about pre-made assets there's a ton of those for paid and for free on Itch.io as well which can be used to make a quick adventure game without falling into the "everything looks the same" problem that might occur from a single source.

Since Stupot is the main mod for the jams I would assume it would be up to them to host the jam, but it is an option to increase the number of entries or at least to get people to look at them a bit more.

[Kastchey]

It would require all participants to have an itch.io account and submit their entries to itch instead of here, I guess? Or is there an option to advertise only, without using the platform for entry submission and/or voting?

Other than that, it's an interesting suggestion. People tend to prefer aggregated community hubs for finding stuff like competitions, and itch looks like a decent host with their user friendly reasonable rules, voting and promotion systems.

[cat]

But Itch has terrible privacy rules. When you buy a game there, the author will get all your data including e-mail address and even postal address(?).

[CaptainD]

Cat - I'm pretty certain devs have never had access to mailing address, at least I've never seen any (using Itch since 2017). They need your address for tax purposes but I have never seen an address of a buyer, perhaps someone else who uses Itch has?

Email address is slightly trickier - it doesn't appear in the game reporting dashboard anymore, but (and I only know because I've just specifically checked) you do seem to be able to access this data if you download a sales report in csv format.

In terms of gamejams neither of the above would apply as you only get data on actual sales, not on every download. What I'm not certain of is whether data is logged if people make a donation for a game offered without charge - I've had people add an extra payment onto a sale a couple of times, but never actually had a donation on a game I've not charged for on Itch, so not sure how that works.

[Stupot]

I like this idea and look into it as an option.

I'd prefer to keep the contest fourum-based overall. I don't want to force every participant to submit through Itch. Basically anyone can host their game anywhere but must post about it in the relevant thread. I don't think that will change.

But if it's possible to run an Itch jam alongside it as a way of drumming up participation (even just occasionally, rather than every month) then I'm all for it.

[Stupot]

So, as an experiment, I have created a parallel jam in itch.io and invited users there to sign up and submit their games in the thread.

https://itch.io/jam/mags-august-2023

I'm not super familiar with how Jams work there, so if anyone has any suggestions for edits or changes to the Jam page, please let me know.

Thanks @4KbShort for the suggestion.

[Falsely]

[...]In terms of gamejams neither of the above would apply as you only get data on actual sales, not on every download. What I'm not certain of is whether data is logged if people make a donation for a game offered without charge - I've had people add an extra payment onto a sale a couple of times, but never actually had a donation on a game I've not charged for on Itch, so not sure how that works.

I can confirm it works the same way for the "pay what you want" model; it logs email, IP, country of residence, payment service, and (if the buyer is using Stripe) full name in the .csv. Also the domain of whatever website referred the buyer/donator to the game's store page, if any. (e.g., if you bought a game after clicking a link on these forums, it adds a note reading "from: adventuregamestudio.co.uk".)

None of this applies if your game is deliberately un-monetized, or if the user opts out of paying by clicking "no thanks, just take me to the downloads".

[4KbShort]

So, as an experiment, I have created a parallel jam in itch.io and invited users there to sign up and submit their games in the thread.

https://itch.io/jam/mags-august-2023

I'm not super familiar with how Jams work there, so if anyone has any suggestions for edits or changes to the Jam page, please let me know.

Thanks @4KbShort for the suggestion.

Awesome! Here's hoping this brings more folks into the wonderful world of AGS!

[Kitty Trouble]

I noticed that MAGS don't mention this anymore, but was it decided that public/outside graphics are allowed now?