Let's just put this out there: creative people are bad at finishing things. This applies doubly to creative people with dayjobs, as their creative pursuits are chased in off-hours stolen from friends, family, and sleep. For every half-finished screenplay and novel taking up space in a desk drawer, there is also an unfinished game languishing on the back corner of developers' hard drives. Enter: the Omega Jam , a game jam devoted to finishing some games already.
Six indie teams have taken up residence in Doublefine's workspace, and they're documenting the whole thing with blogs and video streams. Among the participants are Misfits Attic (known for A Virus Named Tom), which will be finishing its sci-fi roguelike Duskers, and Wolfire, whose long-awaited brawler Overgrowth finally hit Early Access last month.
The very public crunch-time will be familiar to anyone who has followed along or completely failed at National Novel Writing Month, but hopefully the Omega Jam will enjoy a lot more success and a lot less of me failing to write my way out of the first act of my novel. By the end of the jam, February 21, we should have six new games to talk a lot about. In the meantime, check out the various streams and blogs listed on the jam's website and follow along, shouting encouragement and/or threats.
