

The Ludum Dare October Challenge: Finish a game, Take it to market, Earn $1 - Sodaware
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/09/27/announcing-october-challenge-2012/

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epaik
Despite being a pretty active participant in Ludum Dare, I've never pursued
the October Challenge yet.

Working on the last 10% of a game (the polish) is the hardest part of the
development process; not only is it a lot of work, but at that point you're
much more likely to be burned out from working on said game.

Despite this, I'm currently working on a game with great potential that I hope
will end up somewhere :)

~~~
Reltair
"The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the
development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other
90 percent of the development time." —Tom Cargill, Bell Labs

That last 10% is a killer. :)

~~~
zalew
aka 'if your work is 90% complete, you are half way done'

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mbenjaminsmith
This is general to Ludum Dare (not to this challenge) but since it's
infrequently discussed here I thought I'd post.

I'm not really sure what the point of Ludum Dare is. I participated once in
the main competition for LD23. I produced a pretty horrible game with the time
I had allotted but did enjoy having a reason to screw up my schedule and drink
too much coffee.

The winning game I thought was innovative and I actually played it for more
than 10 minutes. There was one other game that I played (I played twenty or so
to vote on them) that was fun to play. It also (deservedly) ranked well. The
rest (based on an admittedly small sample) simply _weren't_ games, at least
not yet.

My observation is that if Ludum Dare is about creating games -- if nothing
else than for the sake and love of games -- then the format is completely
wrong. If you look at the industry as a whole there is an abundance of poorly
made games (largely made in Flash, though iOS, Android and most other
platforms have their share) that do nothing for the developers or the limited
number of people that play them.

This October challenge reemphasizes the misplaced focus of Ludum Dare: make
something overnight that makes just $1. The world doesn't need any more games
worth $1. Here's a better challenge for the game development community: Make a
game in a month that makes (over its life) $1,000 - $10,000. I want to play
those games. A month is still insanely short, especially assuming most could
only put in their free time, but it's infinitely better than 48 hours. A
simple game has some chance of being polished in that amount of time.

Instead of Ludum Dare squandering the significant amount of attention is
generates on 1000s (it broke 1000 entries in LD23) of shovel-ware games, why
not encourage and then help promote a smaller number of reasonably well
produced games. Raising the bar for entires would cut the numbers dramatically
so it would be win-win.

You could say that I already answered my question when I said I enjoyed
participating. I did enjoy it yes, but I don't think I would do it again. I
also don't think that it has any value for the game development community or
people who love games for the reasons I've already outlined. The emphasis is
all wrong. You don't want to _just finish_ a game. Games aren't made that way.
Instead shift the emphasis to creating, _polishing_ and even marketing simple
games.

~~~
chipsy
I had a similar experience to yours -- when I was in college. LD was run on an
infrequent basis then. I participated in two, as well as some student-run
ones, and figured, "ah, I think I've done enough jams, I should do bigger
games. These little ones aren't serious, they aren't what I want to be doing."

Years later, LD started getting run more frequently and got more popular.
Remembering having a good time with it previously, I participated again and
put in a lot of effort, thinking I could crush it with more experience, and
soon realized I was wrong about both my experience and my prior perspective.
Here's what I realized:

\- Most of the time I spend on a big project is spent on learning something
specific to that project. Minimizing the schedule means that I only learn
things necessary towards finishing. This is not an easily dismissed skillset.
It isn't the _only_ skill, but it's your most easily monetized one.

\- Tangibility is really really important towards motivating future work. This
is why prototyping software is worthwhile in the first place. When it's
finished, you have a reference, one which you own and probably understand
better than anyone else. The reference isn't the code(which is probably
butchered) or the assets(which are necessarily cheap) but in the possibilities
suggested for future improvement.

\- Prototyping - and creation itself - is a fractal endeavor. Each time you
build a new feature, you have to do the same kind of work that goes into a
game jam in order to prove and flesh out its capabilities. This is repeated
the whole way up the ladder, until the project is complete. At each step you
can prototype until you hit tangibility, polish it a bit, then move on to the
next feature, etc.

While I agree that of 1000 entries, most are going to be half-baked, that's
kind of the point. You're being encouraged to go in and pick up the experience
of _every_ stage of the project, so that when you want to expand scope, it's
not hard or surprising, it just involves more learning and specialization.

As well, it helps you in identifying bad, unmarketable ideas faster, which is
the real problem that plagues game developers - a lot of time and money sunk
into something that could never sell.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
I absolutely see the value in "getting down to it" and producing and MVP or
demo or whatever. I think iterative, agressive development is the way to go
when making any software product (which is what I do for a living).

My point is to criticize the emphasis on turning out "just enough" and then
moving on. This isn't only within LD but I've seen plenty of it in the indie
game development community in general as well. As a strong undercurrent in the
community I think it's harmful.

If LD is to be about game development as a craft in its entirety (and maybe
that's not LD's role) then I think it has to be about more than just producing
a quick demo of an idea.

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innguest
I googled to learn what "ludum dare" means (I know some Latin and could guess
that was an expression) however people kept translating as simply "to give a
game" which obviously makes no sense.

So I looked it up and according to Lewis & Short it means "to humor or indulge
someone". So there you go.

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petercooper
Glad to see Ludum Dare getting some exposure on HN. It's come from such a
small thing to something that's having a serious impact both for beginners and
experienced game developers. (The first Steam Greenlight approved game,
McPixel, was originally a Ludum Dare entry.) They pretty much have the online
hackathon idea nailed down.

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ga0bi
First time hearing about Ludum Dare and so far the community + concept look
fantastic!

Since anyone can write a post, is it hard to get your post seen? (Not sure how
many new posts get written per day)

~~~
joeld42
It varies a lot. During one of the big thrice-yearly compos, your posts will
fall off the main page within minutes (but there are tons of people reading),
between compos a post might stay on the front page for a few days (but no one
is checking the site). During the other events like a Mini-LD and the Oct.
challenge it's somewhere in between.

