I didn’t participate in Ludum Dare, but those interested might want to check out the Indiegamer thread and the Ludum Dare website for the entries – there’s total of 144 of them this year.
Those of you who haven’t heard about the event: basically it’s a yearly (I suppose) challenge where people make a game in 48 hours.
As a sidenote, I participated a similar Finnish challenge a got a cooperative/zombie survival/traitor-among us horror card game prototype done. I’ll post the notes later.
One of the Game Producer Insider members, Archive Games, has developed a tool for downloading & installing indie games – and wants more developers to participate.
Here’s some points from their website (with my thoughts alongside)
If you got interested, check it out.
Yesterday morning, I realized I was bitching about being “busy” with many things. Without getting any further in those complains, I really stopped thinking for a moment.
I asked myself: “What I just wrote in my blog about stopping whining?”
I noticed that “being busy” was really mostly in my mind, and even if I would really be busy – it didn’t help anything to whine about it. I know I felt bad and unmotivated to start and felt that it would be whole day filled with small things that won’t get the project anywhere. I simply decided that now I’d just do it anyway. I spent like an hour or so to do some “cleaning the busyness” and decided to continue working with Dead Wake after that.
I started working and got tons of done. I felt like I was “in the zone”.
At 13:29 I watched the clock and noticed 3 things:
It’s good thing to ignore bad feelings, and… just do it. Soon you’ll notice how your whole feeling has changed after getting into action.
And if it hasn’t, at least you’ve got some stuff done.
Seriously.
I was having this nice conversation with a friend of mine…
Robbo! (15:38):
ok, going to send you a whole bunch of variations soon
Juuso (15:38):
please name them clearly
.
.
.
(later)
Robbo! (16:00):
saw one of the responses on the forum, not very helpful
Juuso (16:00):
there’s usually helpful comments… just wait …
Robbo! (16:00):
hehe yeah I know, just hate when people post useless things
Robbo! (16:01):
well, hate’s a strong word
Juuso (16:01):
stop bitching
Robbo! (16:01):
hah
.
.
.
(after downloading Robbo’s zip file)
Juuso – DeadWakeGame.com sanoo (16:03):
“please name them clearly”
“newExports.zip”Robbo! sanoo (16:03):
stop bitching
Heh. I’ll do that.
(I knew that he would reply me like that)
If this blog post appears here, then the next blog post will most likely be much more useful (for you) than this one.
Wondering (not whining) how to get this DAMN THING TO WORK.
Sorry.
I meant to say I’m configuring Twitter thing… (to create new tweet from every single blog post)
Yesterday I started the “whine free week” contest. Today I watched a really motivating video (including part where Anthony Robbins says “stop bitching”).
Frank Kern and John Reese – the 2 other guys on that video – are internet marketers, but practically everything they say on that video can be applied to game development.
Here’s some pointers for success from that video:
How to get to that peak state where things are good:
Totally recommend checking this out:
(Thanks Leroy for the link that lets me embed this)
Monday is gone, but it’s not too late for the Whine Free Week Challenge.
Contest prize:
I’m giving a pretty darn good prize here: a lifetime Insiders membership (worth tons of money & time). The contest is available for current Insiders as well.
(Those of you who are unfamiliar with the Insiders service, I’ll tell that basically it’s a “club” whose members get beneficial goodies such as access to indie PR service for games, ebooks and material about game development & production, access to top secret whine-free special private forums, network with other cool guys and things like that. Tons of goodies that members enjoy. There’s now close to 100 members.)
Contest rules:
Basically – the idea is that in this week the participants will reduce/stop whining. Participants includes me. This means that whining needs to be stopped at work, home, hobbies, forums, anywhere for this week (challenge ends on September 1st).
Whenever you see yourself whining or thinking negatively, you need to stop doing that and remind you about the Whine Free Week challenge.
If you see somebody whining on forums, link to this post and tell them to stop whining. Gently.
If you hear people whining around you, tell them about this challenge.
If you are a guru who never whines, you are labeled as a liar.
(Just kidding here.)
The Winner
The winner isn’t the one who is not whining this week (surprise, surprise), but rather the person who gives us the best report about his whine free week. You can report your whine free week via Twitter (see also #whinefreeweek) or simply via your Blog in case you own one.
I want you to write about situations where you (1) stopped whining or (2) were about to start whining but remember this contest. If you (3) see somebody whining, show us what you did (including all the flamewars that were started). Tell also (4) if others reacted differently (like your kids, friends, family).
If you don’t have Twitter nor Blog, then simply track your progress by writing comments to this blog post. Whatever gets the message public is just cool.
Fun, good report & sharing information about this challenge should rank pretty high in the contest…
Help make the world bit less whining…
Please share this info with others. If you have a blog, please consider mentioning this post in your site. If you have a Twitter, remember to retweet and participate.
And the contest begins
In summary:
1) Stop whining
2) Write what happened
3) (Win Insiders membership – somebody gets it)
Let’s get going. Ask me if something is unclear.
