So this is it, Decade Jam has officially started. I was made aware of it by someone from Spelkollektivet and found the idea pretty fascinating.

One decade to make a game or series of games. This is quite a change from my usual 48 hour jams or the even more rushed 3 hour long trijams. The two weeks of Adventure Jam felt like a long time, but this one? Ten years. Oh boy, I better come up with something good.

DON'T PANIC

I don't know what I'll be making yet. It's not that I have no idea at all, just not a concrete enough idea for a game. I suppose I could always remake a classic that I liked, those projects tend to take about a decade.

Some candidates would be:

• Darklands
• Realms of Arkania: Shadows over Riva (Das Schwarze Auge: Schatten über Riva)
• Majesty

Or maybe one of my original ideas, but which one?

The good thing is that there is no need to hurry. Until I have decided on something I will work on some library/component type stuff that should come in handy for most games I make, for this jam or others. On top of that you can expect regular progress updates, once a year, at the least!

There is of course the question of technologies. Who knows what will still be around in ten years time? I sure don't know and I think we as game developers usually don't care. This demonstrates how terribly short lived our trade is. For this jam however it is important to think somewhat longer term. This is why I am setting up infrastructure first, create concepts and stories. All the things that make a game and are independent of the short lived technology. Ultimately I will have to pick some technology and develop a computer game, but I can put that decision is a bit off and make it safer.

For now I will likely work with what I have used these past couple of years, Löve. It is a small engine with a relatively small community, but it has steadily chugged along for 11 years now, it may well last another 10.

A better idea might be to develop using some really old systems that still exist today due to their popularity in the past. Maybe C64 or Amiga. Those are around today, about 35 years after release, and will certainly still be around in one form or another in a decade from now. It all depends on what game concept I come up with and how well it can be executed with the respective technology.

DON'T PANIC

There is a less technical side to it as well that is very interesting. While I like to do everything myself and might do so for this project there are over a thousand people who have joined the jam so far. We are in this together. I am not actively looking for collaborators at the moment, but over time, who knows, we might help another out, we might even become friends. This jam has barely started and already feels more friendly, more intimate and more like a collaboration rather than a competition than any jam I have joined in the past.

Let's make the best of this decade together.