I've Literally hosted 4 for university as pres of the game dev society so I can defo help but give me like 3 hours to get to my computer and write something up more substantial.
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Alright, I realised I can just edit the message even if I can't bump the thread so here's hoping you manage to see this (also really sorry about the late response, hope this still helps)
So imma answer the questions u asked then with some misc tips interwoven as I remember them.
Also I'm not sure if you're running this in person, in person and online or fully online. So I'll be mentioning that whenever it's important and provide answers that are kinda seperate from it. Although sometimes I might forget and speak assuming one or the other randomly, so sorry about that.
I've just finished writing this and realised it's really lengthy but I hope you can still get something from it lol
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"Do you guys have any tips for dealing with ~40 participants, ranging from noobs to pros?"
So immediately the advice for this kinda comes down to what I said just before about how you're hosting it, but irregardless of how, you can sidestep the problem by doing a couple things before and during the game jam.
1. Run a prep session!
A 1-2 hour session (or even less if you're strapped for time) can do wonders for helping people find their footing beforehand. You can cover the structure of the game jam, what goes into making a game for game jam, what aspects of the game should you prioritise as you go, managing scope creep, how to work in a team (including sharing code, project files) etc etc.
You can also do a quick excercise on making a very small game. The best way to go about doing that is to usually cook up a small incomplete game and have some chunks of code not finished and then you can explain what you need to do where and why too. You can do it in whatever engine you think would be easiest for people but we've usually done these kind of things in Godot / Pico8 either because they're easy to download/setup when it comes to real thing or they're simple to use (but mostly cause they have web versions that get rid of the headache of making sure people can download the software, especially if they have no computers and are using university ones)
2. Share info!
This is kinda just the first point but repackaged, but make sure to make a point of reference if they need help with resources. Whether it be links to tools and engines, places to get help with specific code queries and the like; having them there can ease a lot peoples frustrations. Just make sure to not have too much there or it becomes overwhelming in a different way.
There's also the fact that if you're running this on Itch.io, make sure that people setup an account beforehand and maybe even have resources to figure out how to export games, upload them and edit their pages. otherwise it becomes a massive headache to handle during the game jam, especially when everyone is learning this 5 mins before the deadline lol.
3. Be proactive!
So this is probably obvious, but make sure to make it's abundantly clear that you are there to help. Have a few people there that can help out with specific things, maybe someone who knows about some popular engines or some one who understands how to fix up a drawing etc. Even if you don't have anyone for some problems, maybe some can try to practice for a bit before the event so they can provide help; Any experience is immensly helpful to those with none.
3.5. Have some kind of incentive for having a newbie pair up with a pro.
So for our events we usually have prizes for winners and we had one of the prizes depend on having half or more of your team be newbies. This led to more people being willing to intermingle because they didn't wanna miss out on the prize and meant that pros would end up helping noobs. Ofc this does depend on if you're even doing prizes at all so I'm not even sure if I should put this as a 4rd point (hence 3.5)
"How can i keep the theme lively and fun for all?"
I'd say it'd mostly come down to making sure the theme is open enough for varied interpretation while still seeming pretty restrictive, ultimately you want the theme to be more wrapped up in how the game plays rather than it's surface level aesthetic (especially because the games will be short, so bad game design is a lot more obvious). For example, something like "pirates" is essentially just a that can be slapped on to any game, while "only one" is a constraint with a lot of room for many different creative ideas.
What really helps is expanding on the theme with a small blurb explaining on a what it is/means , and some game ideas related to theme to go along with it. It goes a really long way in giving people a reference to what they should be going for, while providing others a jumping off point for their ideas.
If you want some good examples of themes, I'd say to check out the
Ludum Dare or
GMTK Game Jam Themes of the past.
"What is the best way to deliver the results?"
Again kinda depends on if this is going on that point I made a while ago about whether it's in person, in person and online or fully online.
Regardless of that though, I'd highly recommend trying to grab a room and maybe prepping some certificates or some other bits and bobs to give them something physical for them to feel proud of (it's more impactful than you think).
If you're going to be doing it on itch.io you have the choice of having judges vote for games or have people vote for the games which can to incentivise people to play others games and helps bring the mood up (although we ended up doing a combination of both for like 2 game jams). What we've found to be really fun is to have everyone setup a laptop/pc to show off their games while people go about and play them, but that depends on how you're running this. If you do end up doing results in person I'd recommend to do it after this because it's a nice segue into it.
There is the fact that you need to make sure that people are aware how much time they have to upload because exporting games and uploading them to itch can sometimes be a drawn out process if you aren't aware of time.
Other than that there's the problem of categories. You can kinda do whatever you'd like but what we've been going with is Gameplay, Creativity, Intepretation of the Theme and Enjoyment/Fun (We have both as one category because we found fun was not fitting for some story games so we changed it to be enjoyment but have fun on the side as a reference point). Honestly, again you can look at old game jams and see what they've done for their's if you're looking for more examples.
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Hope this helps on any level, I feel like written a lot of fluff but maybe there's something within all of this that can help you. Again if you have any questions feel free to ask :D
