Ive been to the Bivouac Urbain last year. It was dreadful. Horrible. Probably the worst jamming experience I ever had. Not recommended at all!
While everyone works, there was like this band setting up and performing loud, painful sound tests. And then they performed a show later on. That would normally be cool, but its a horrible mix with game jamming. It was an awkward, forced attempt at making the whole thing seem cool and unique.
Also its outside and we sleep in tents! And its in the middle of a loud city! With teenagers and all being goofy, and possibly street gangs and stuff! WOA!
The first night there was kind of scary honestly, there were punks trying to climb the fences into the park (possibly drawn by all the expensive computer equipment left unattended?) and cops in patrol cars circling the place and letting their sirens go to scare em away...
But we didnt need punks to get robbed in there...We were all getting robbed already. It costs 100$ per person to enter, and the grand prize was 400$ split up for the whole winning team. Of usually more than 3 people, often 5-6. This is highway robbery! It rather have no prize money at all and a smaller entry fee! But obviously, this isn't the "kind" of event they are going for.
Seriously, Bivouac Urbain was the worst thing ever for developers. Its meant to be a "cool event" for citizens of Quebec City, organized by a company that does such things for profit. It kind of felt like a weird scam. I'm sure its nothing like that, and its just the result of some bad planning or something, but it still felt like we were being scammed somehow! And its probably cooler if youre sent there by a college or university or something that handles all the costs, I guess. I get the feeling colleges and universities is what the event is targeting.
Game development there is half a gimmick (it makes it a "unique world-class multimedia event"!), half a way for the organizers to get some extra profit going (with the really weird ratio between the entry cost and the grand prize amount). It did not feel in any way like something cool made by people who just love making games, but like a cynical thing organized by a big company to generate dubloons.
In the context of all those cool jams and events organized by people who are just awesome, like the TOjam and the Montreal locations of the global game jam and all that... it left a very bad taste in my mouth!
