Hey everyone. I’m happy to be a part of such a great community of hobby game programmers. Below are some thoughts I have on the competitions. Hopefully it is organized enough.
I like 30 day chunks of time for commitments. It is short enough to commit fully to participating in and also long enough to get some serious work done. And if I’m busy for that 30 days, I’m not missing out on too much by declining. I guess the benefit of a 100 day competition is that I can miss 2 weeks for a life event or just being busy and still get a lot done.
However, 30 days seems drastically too short for anyone working hobbyist hours to take a game from scratch to finished, so it is a little misleading to consider it a competition. I think even 100 days is probably too short a time to complete a game from scratch by any of us in our spare time. I also think the way we brand the competitions right now encourages everyone to start a new project each time.
I think the realistic timeframe for completing a polished game from scratch is 1 year. 1 year considering someone with a solid hobbyist background in programming/game design while working in their spare time. For someone who really knows what they are doing or for a simpler game, perhaps several months can be shaved off. Also remember that spare time comes and goes. Sometimes over the course of a year you have to put it down for maybe 2 weeks or even a month.
There is a tough balance between knowing when to quit a project and move on and when the right idea has been found. Sometimes it is hard to continue after 100 days of work. Am I burned out or will the game even end up being fun to play?
So maybe we need to move away from the notion of 30 day competitions where you start a new project every time. Perhaps it needs to be a 30 day sprint to work on your game of choice. We would encourage picking up existing projects over starting new ones. Of course there is nothing wrong with starting a new project, but if the goal is to complete a game, a completed project is better than a half dozen incomplete ones. (This is highly subjective statement. There is nothing wrong with having fun and making a half dozen incomplete projects and learning to be a better programmer.)
Maybe there could be a separate commitment to finishing a game by a certain date for people who really want to finish one. RB has proposed the end of 2017, but it could be any date far into the future. I would say at least 6 months out.
Perhaps we setup 30 day sprint where people get together to commit to focused work on their existing projects or start new ideas as needed. The 30 days fits to provide motivation and focused work time as a community.
All that being said, I have really enjoyed the 30 day competitions with you all, so I hate introducing new ideas that might damage them.