The way everything is worded for this CREATE contest is very confusing. On the one hand, they say this, which sounds pretty straight-forward:
To celebrate the release of the OUYA Developer Console, we are hosting a 10-day online game jam we're calling CREATE. What is a game jam, you ask? It's a focused get-together where teams make playable games insanely quickly. Your mind will be blown at what a game team can do in 10 days.
This fits with what the normal idea of what a game jam is. Lots of free-flowing creation, openness of ideas, etc.
But then they say other things that seem to run completely counter to that:
From January 14 to January 23, we will be accepting playable prototype submissions right here.
They could have easily said "from the 14th-23rd you can start working on your game", but instead, they just said that's when they'll start accepting submissions. It... seems odd. But it makes sense if they're expecting people to submit games they've already been working on for a long time.
They do actually directly address whether your game has to be new or not, however:
To enter, you'll need to confirm [...] that it's a new game (not already released somewhere else, or raising money on Kickstarter)
So, again, completely mixed signals. They say that it has to be a new game, but when they explain what that means, they still completely leave the door open for any pre-existing game, just so long as it has yet to be released or on Kickstarter.
Afterwards, they directly say that they don't plan to take the whole "10-day game jam" thing seriously at all and you can just start working whenever. This was 7 days before the contest officially started.
We'll publish the formal contest rules just before January 14 when CREATE officially begins (though you are welcome to start working immediately).
So, at the very least, it's fine to take 17 days to work on your entry if you're a dev that carefully read through the "GOTCHAS" section instead of just assuming "10 day game jam" means "10 day game jam". (that's not a smart remark from me, the url is http://killscreendaily.com/create/#gotchas) I feel like that's tremendously unfair to any developer that tries to actually follow the spirit of the competition and create a game in 10 days.
I know that you guys have said that you're going to more clearly explain the rules once the competition starts. But I don't really think that's the best path to take. Not when it's something so basic as "do we have to make a new game, or can we use something we've been working on for months or years?" Not when it's a contest with a massive cash prize on the line.
You need to tell people what the contest is before it starts, not after. People have been asking on twitter with no response so far. Can we get some clarity, here?