April 2013
April 24, 2013
Month 31 Report
SPRING BREAK OVER
Took 35 days off after failing to deliver #1GAM no.03. Played a lot of videogames, commented on a lot of forums/blogs, & remembered what it was like to be a gamer. It’s been the most productive time I’ve spent since going full independent videogame developer back in ‘10.
I’m back in shape, more or less, after a month of running & cycling & yoga. It’s impossible to stress how important it is to maintain good physical health while doing any kind of long-term sedentary pursuit. If you’re a lazy bum then that’s what you are; the kind of motivation & discipline it takes to maintain a regimen can only come from within. While I avoid telling people what they should or shouldn’t do, if you’re spending most of your days sitting on it you should get off your ass & sweat a few—preferably all—days a week.
Ludum Dare 48 no.26 is this coming weekend. This’ll be my 8th compo in a row, & I’ll deliver an 8th completed entry. It’ll also serve as this month’s #1GAM, conveniently killing two birds with one stone.
Attempting to develop a videogame in 48 hours is important. Not for the sake of making a videogame—I don’t buy into that—but as a mid-term exam to see where I’m at skills-wise. Nothing highlights the gaping holes in my production abilities than scrambling to achieve a result. I make sure to take notes & work to shore up those deficiencies once the competition’s done. Otherwise I might as well have just slept in all weekend.
One month left until I can legally re-post my novels for sale. It’s really starting to bug me. Amazon is a great service & platform for publishing, but extracting myself from it has highlighted just how much control they exert. “Indie” for many is just an illusion, & in as many cases we’re just trading one taskmaster for another.
At least I’m still writing.
DARK ACRE RELOCATING
After wasting 31 months in Vancouver I’ve decided to move to a cheaper location. There’s been zero benefit to me staying since I don’t participate in the indie scene here (it’s too depressing to face the ever-growing number of other sweating & desperate amateur developers who, despite glad-handing & rickety grins to the contrary, are my competition) & the cost of living is stupid high.
I think Colin Northway’s got the right idea with the “traveling indie” lifestyle. Then again he’s got a couple of successful money-earning products on the market & a partner with the same, so like many indies who’ve found success he can make bold pronouncements about “how to be indie”. I don’t have that luxury, & after re-assessing the finances it seems that moving to a more rural area could add 3 to 4 more years of survival as a developer. Staying in Vancouver would have killed the dream in 2015. (Ironic that it died its first death in 2015 anyway. –Ed.) So it’s a good decision all around & one I’m looking forward to.
RAH RAH RAH
No matter what anyone tells you, the only rule is “make an amazing videogame & make people play it”. Good luck if you’re trying to do that.
Working on a free-to-play videogame to fund your indie game is the new “stripping to pay for college”.
April 29, 2013
Two Birds, One Stone
LUDUM DAREST
That’s 8 in the can. 8 times I’ve answered the call, 8 times I’ve delivered a working videogame in under 48 hours.
This is the first time I’ve finaled with time to spare. The game proper was done roughly 3 hours before the deadline, then another 2 hours spent on spit-polishing before submitting.
Play PRISMA, if you wish [Lost content: playable browser build]. Rate it, if you’re in the compo, & if you want a priority rating back leave a comment. Even just a “nice effort” would suffice.
The official project page is sparse this time, for reasons explained therein. I’ll paste this out from it as it neatly summarizes:
To me the Ludum Dare 48 compo has always been a sort of mid-term exam in a never-ending course on game development. It was one of the first public jam events I participated in when I first went independent back in September of ‘10, & now with 8 in a row under my belt there’s a lot of positive retrospection to be had.
LD48 no.19 was nothing but sweat & stress. LD48 no.26 was a calm & considered process that left room for polish & testing. The improvement is palpable, & with each passing one—in addition to the terrifying amount of entries indicating the depressing growing number of developers out there—I find myself wondering why I haven’t buckled down & started to make real money with this craft.
So that’s that, then. I’ve further submitted this as this month’s entry for the #1GAM, ensuring that I have something for the first third of the year.
Thanks for reading & if you participated in the Ludum Dare 48 I hope you succeeded & didn’t bitch about the theme.
Because no one likes a bitch.
Why would I want to enable my competition?
April 30, 2013
HOW DO YOU RATE?
The only thing more important than finishing & shipping—yes, those are one thing—a Ludum Dare 48 compo entry is then rating the hard work of all the other clinically insane brave competitors. Well aside from eating, drinking, & sleeping but that should go without saying. Shouldn’t it?
In the earlier days of LD48 this was a relatively easy task to accomplish, even for the competitor with a day job. A couple hundred entries could be leisurely played over the course of the allotted two weeks.
Then somewhere along the line LD48 became more mainstream—this said without a hint of hip irony, I mean come on, it’s the truth—attracting larger numbers of participants each time.
The most recent event saw some 2,347 (supposedly) playable video & analog games submitted for peer evaluation.
Competitors are given 3 full weeks to play then rate each entry, & leave a comment if they’re feeling egotistical/snarky/fancy. I tend to leave a lot of fancy, ego-driven snark. It shows I care.
So 3 weeks. That’s 30,240 minutes. Assuming you do nothing but play & rate entries that allows just under 12 minutes for each one.
The key question then becomes how much time should you allot for playing vs. offering stars & design advice? It takes me about 8 minutes to complete my own entry, & I know exactly how to complete it. I imagine it could take some folks upwards of 30 minutes to finish. If their goal is to be completely, magnanimously fair with the ratings process they wouldn’t even have time to finish & would be forced to offer a rating based on an experience not wholly experienced! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, game journalists & forum commenters do it all the time but that’s beside the point.
A person is then forced to make certain compromises if they want to go sifting through the entries for the gems. There are gems in there, trust me, but unless you just want to sit back & wait for others to find them, not bother rating—which ends up reflecting poorly on your own entry—, & shun the process entirely you need some form of filter.
This was my 8th Ludum Dare 48 in a row. I’ve gone from rating all of them to not giving a damn & then realizing I have to give a damn if I’m to get rated myself, so I’ve run the gamut.
I’ve crafted a handy spreadsheet of my evaluation process, suitable for framing. [Lost content]
It’s a “do unto others” sort of framework, & I’m horribly selfishly biased because I’m capable of producing web builds. But I’ve stomped my way down that route only because I kinda wanna get as many people as possible to play my game. If I was just in it to show off I’d just pull a SOS.
Rate early, rate often. Rate with purpose.
It’s only time that you’re wasting. Too bad it’s the only thing that you’ve really got.
2013.04.01 – 2013.04.30