GAME JAM

GAME_JAM, also known as Green Label Game Jam, was a planned independent game development reality show, sponsored by Pepsi and produced by Polaris, a Maker Studios subsidiary, which was canceled after just one day of shooting. It was organized by Jason Serrato and Aaron Umetani, with a reported budget of $400,000, making it the most expensive game jam ever organized. The show was to be a typical game jam with competitive elements, involving eleven developers and four YouTube LPers split into four teams. The developers were The Arcane Kids, Robin Arnott, Cale Bradbury, Mark Essen, Tom Jackson, Zoe Quinn, Adriel Wallick, Davey Wreden, and three student developers from USC; the YouTube producers were Jon Jafari (JonTron), Mark Fischbach (Markiplier), Samuel Thorne (Strippin), and Jordan Maron (CaptainSparklez); and finally, the judges were Joe Vargas and Kellee Santiago.

Before Shooting
GAME_JAM faced trouble before shooting even started, due to number of issues, chief among them being how the project had evolved. Initially it was a more conventional documentary, but after acquiring the sponsorship from Pepsi, the project changed considerably into a competitive reality show, even losing much of the attention to game development, which wasn't properly communicated to participants. Already uneasy with the paradigm shift, the contestants were asked to sign contracts with extremely restrictive clauses which indicated a lack of understanding about independent game development.

Problems with the contract included language restricting developers from appearing in any other media including their own games, allowing the producers to misrepresent the developers for the sake of drama, a requirement for the developers to travel whenever the production needed them to at the developers' own cost, and a lifetime restriction on speaking ill of the production. The contestants renegotiated their contracts, and many of the controversial points were altered, but it stalled filming for several days.

Another serious problem was the excessive Mountain Dew product placement, managed by Matti Leshem, CEO of a branding management company who arranged for the Pepsi Sponsorship. It was so excessive that developers were not even allowed to drink coffee or water on set. Even the prizes were exclusively Mountain Dew themed, much to the disappointment of everyone involved. The overbearing product placement, the lost of focus on game design, and the burnout from contract negotiation left the developers uneasy and wary of things to come.

First Day of Shooting
Despite the setbacks from before shooting even started, the first bit of shooting on Thursday, 27 March done went surprisingly well. Before long, however, Jafari and Quinn, who were on the same team, got into a disagreement and went into the hall to discuss it. Unexpectedly and at Leshem's behest, they were surrounded by cameras expecting to film the argument, however neither party wanted their differences to be misrepresented for drama. Even after nothing became of Quinn and Jafari's discussion, Leshem pressured Jafari to speak ill of Quinn on camera, but Jafari refused. Meanwhile, the computers provided to do coding on began to fail due to malware, and they were even loaded with unregistered software.

Even once these issues were resolved, the production continued to fall apart, again due to Leshem. Adriel Wallick and Zoe Quinn were the only female developers there, leaving two teams with women and two teams without. Seeking to induce sexist drama, Leshem asked one of the all-men teams, "Two of the other teams have women on them. Do you think they’re at a disadvantage?" The first team responded that they weren't, and so, not getting the answer he wanted, he moved on to the other, which also disappointed him. Eventually he reached Wallick's team and asked them, "Do you think you’re at an advantage because you have a pretty girl on your team?" which was met with hostility from the developers.

Leshem attempted to smooth things over after the fact by explaining that it wasn't personal, and that he marched for women's rights in the 70's. However shortly after that, in what wound up being the final insult, he attempted to get an emotional response from Quinn again. Quinn, Wallick, Robin Arnott, and Davey Wreden (who was only there to support Quinn) were all ready to quit the show at this point. An emergency meeting was held with all the developers, where the four reaffirmed their intent to leave, but the others still tried to salvage the situation. Unfortunately Leshem and the baggage he brought had sapped everyone of their enthusiasm for the event, and the most they could agree on was potentially trying something like this again at a later date.

Rebel Jam
After GAME_JAM ended, Quinn was left with a desire to start a game jam of her own, run to her own standards. The jam she decided to organize was Rebel Jam, which professes to be a documentary like GAME_JAM was originally meant to be. The website for Rebel Jam was registered on 1 April 2014, 5 days after GAME_JAM was canceled, but has extremely few details, including no start date or formal plans. Despite the lack of details, Quinn solicits donations for Rebel Jam on the website.

The eagerness to start collecting donations and her role in the collapse of GAME_JAM have led some to speculate that Quinn intentionally sabotaged GAME_JAM in order to promote her own jam. They point to the fact that if GAME_JAM were to fail, the interest in a televised game jam would remain, and could be transferred to her own Rebel Jam. However, there were a large amount of factors completely outside Quinn's control that went into the failure of GAME_JAM. Moreover, many of the developers seemed interested in another future project with Maker Studios and Polaris, and Rebel Jam seems unlikely to be able to compete with another production with Maker Studio's resources.