Before you make finalize the event, you have to decide whether you want a competition at the jam and what restraints you want the games to adhere to. All games made during GGJ must adhere to the *theme* we prescribe to you at 5pm on Friday.

The purpose of a theme is to foster community at the jam and to challenge the participants. All games should relate to the theme in some way. Professional game-development is restrained in a lot of different ways by commercial requirement and the theme forces the participants to deal with topics that they're not use to dealing with; this was the rationale for the Taboo-theme at NGJ'08. If you were doing this on your own, you would pick a theme that isn't common in games; examples could be elderly people, global warming, globalization, romatic lov, sex etc. This is used to spur creativity.

(The Global Game Jam will provide all the participating jams with a theme on 5pm (local time) on January 27, 2011)

This year at the GGJ we are going to have Achievements to make the jam more challenging. This year we will not be having any timezone constraints.

Right Column:
Experience from NGJ:
There has been a theme at every NGJ. In '06, it was ”“create a prototype of a cooperative multiplayer game in one weekend”, in '07 we had 5 different constraints (which was way too many), in '08 the theme was ”Taboo”. We had too many requirements in '07 and '08 people had a hard time dealing with the Taboo-theme. Our experience is that it's good idea to do a combination; one thematic, one gameplay & one technical.

Checklist:
Have you:
Decided whether you want a theme and what it should be?
Decided whether you want a competition, which type it should be (Audience Award, Jury's award, other) and what the prices should be?
Have you made a shortlist of potential jury-members to contact about the jury?