For game jams

The jam is 48 hours. The argument is six months later.

Most jam teams never discuss ownership, because during the jam it doesn't matter. It matters when the game does well and nobody wrote down who did what.

Start a free jam boardModel a split first

Why jam teams get stuck

A jam team forms in a Discord server, builds something in a weekend, and dissolves. That's fine — until the game gets attention. Suddenly there's a Steam page to think about, and five people with five different memories of how much they contributed.

Nobody is acting in bad faith. The problem is that the only record of the weekend is a scattered Discord history and a shared Drive folder. There's no artefact that says the artist did the entire tileset and the audio person joined on Sunday afternoon.

The fix isn't a contract before the jam — nobody's signing paperwork to enter a 48-hour competition. It's keeping a record while you work, so the conversation later starts from facts instead of memory.

How to use it during a jam

The whole setup takes about five minutes, and none of it slows the jam down.

01Make a board before the theme drops

One project, everyone invited. Free, unlimited members, no card. Columns are already set up, so there's nothing to configure while the clock is running.

02Work the board like any jam Trello

Cards for tasks, drag them across as they're done. The only difference is that completed work is attributed, so the record builds itself while you're heads-down.

03Don't discuss splits during the jam

Seriously — it kills momentum and you don't have the information yet. The point is that the data exists afterwards if you need it.

04Decide afterwards, if the game earns anything

If it stays a jam game, nothing happens and you've lost nothing. If it turns into a release, you have a contribution history to base a split on and an agreement you can actually sign.

What happens if the jam game grows

This is the case worth preparing for. A jam game that gets picked up needs a revenue agreement, and writing one from scratch six months later means reconstructing the weekend from memory.

Because contributions were tracked as they happened, the split conversation starts from a record rather than an argument. You can adjust it — contribution points are a starting position, not a verdict — but you're negotiating from something instead of nothing.

The same project carries forward. You don't migrate anything: the jam board becomes the production board, and the people who were there from hour one are visibly there from hour one.

Questions

Is it really free for a jam team?
Yes. Project management is free forever with unlimited projects and unlimited members. There's no seat cost and no trial clock, so a jam team costs nothing whether or not the game ever earns.
We already use Trello/Notion for jams. Why switch?
For the jam itself, the board experience is similar. The difference is what exists afterwards — a Trello board tells you a card was moved, not who earned what. If you never need a split, Trello is fine.
Do we have to agree on a revenue split up front?
No, and we'd suggest you don't. Track the work during the jam and have the split conversation only if the game earns something. The tracking is what makes the later conversation possible.
What if someone joins halfway through the jam?
That's exactly the case tracking handles well. Their contributions start when they start, so a late joiner isn't treated as a founding member and doesn't have to argue that they were.

Set the board up before the next jam

Five minutes now, and the post-jam conversation has facts in it.

Create a free accountSee how splits work