Theory: Did the theme bait many of the (new) participants?
Posted by tcstyle (twitter: @RustyBotGames)
August 26th, 2011 4:07 am
The ongoing discussion on irc/twitter/this blog about how the theme ‘escape’ enabled almost every game idea to fit somehow made me pondering, if there is some link to this big amount of new participants in LD21. So my theory goes like that:
- the theme was very open, so newcomers could submit almost every kind of game
- this encouraged a lot more people to try and made something very simple and stuck some sort of escape to it
- would the elected topic have been something like self-replication or recursion, the amount of submitted games would have been less
Especially the themes stated above probably would have needed a deeper insight to programming techniques and game design principles which could have put a lot of people off. Any opinion to this theory?
To fire the discussion, I can even give a counter-argument:
- There were so many new people attracted before the final voting ended (by notch, etc), that they had a significant influence on theme voting.
Tags: Discussion, theme
Interesting point. I suppose it’s a bit of both. The LD has been growing in numbers and publicity all the time, so it’s no wonder LD21 had more participants. But the sheer amount of extra participants could indeed have been allowed by a rather open theme.
The sudden rise in popularity is both about the recent publicity of Ludum Dare (Notch played a big part in that) as well as an accessible theme. If either had been missing, we would have had linear growth from the earlier LDs.
I have a feeling this was just a peak, though, and the next Ludum Dare will have less entries again. I’d personally like to see a gimmick theme like self-replication next time.
I hope for a more gimmicky theme next time, too. But also do like the rich amount of entries.
It’s an interesting question whether the accessible theme encouraged participation, or the high participation resulting in an accessible theme. There’s other variables though – as well as the @notch effect, we’re seeing more tools and libs for creating games, better ones and cheaper/free ones, and a general rise in popularity of indie games as the market gets increasingly bored of WWII/space marine shooters. It’s a great time to be involved!
You might be (and probable are) right. Definitely in your theory, quite possibly in your counterargument. Escape is very generic theme and in my case I almost didn’t participate (although I really wanted because finally I had time to do so after learning about Ludum Dare during the Global Game Jam) because I just couldn’t think out anything not generic what hasn’t been done hundreds of time before… In the end I had an idea and of course I hadn’t time to implement it properly
Tried your game; wasn’t really that generic.
The theme was very open, indeed, which may have attracted 30-50 people to enter, but I personally think we got flooded because of Notch. And this makes me kinda happy and sad at the same time. On one hand we got loads of new talent! On the other hand, the (indie-)gaming press went all “NOTCH! NOTCH! NOTCH! LUDUM DARE IS ONLY NOTCH! THOSE OTHERS ARE NOT WORTH A DAMN!”, which is reaaaally annoying.
They can’t just put 598 indie-devs in the trash. That’s just not fair.
But that’s just my point of view.
“On the other hand, the (indie-)gaming press went all “NOTCH! NOTCH! NOTCH! LUDUM DARE IS ONLY NOTCH! THOSE OTHERS ARE NOT WORTH A DAMN!”, which is reaaaally annoying.
They can’t just put 598 indie-devs in the trash. That’s just not fair.”
Could not have said it better myself. It’s really frustrating that the mainstream (and even not-so-mainstream) acts like Notch is the only/most impressive indie developer around. Sure, he’s awesome, but there are plenty of equally awesome developers here. (I’m not talking about myself, but a lot of you guys deserve just as much recognition)
Hehe. But even worse was, when I read the chat on Notch’s stream.. They don’t respect us at all. They constantly asked if Notch was doing Minecraft related stuff. It hurt my brain.
Also for using Game Maker I got mentioned in one article on Game Maker Blog, they didn’t mention LegacyCrono, though.. (He is totally awesome, btw)
The article: http://gamemakerblog.com/2011/08/20/community-links-ludum-dare-21-pricing-and-focus-of-gm-gamejolt-indiefunction-contest/ – Just look out for ‘FolisDev’.
And another thing: Some guys here should actually start working on polished versions of their games, there are some real gems. Who knows where they could get.
I like this theory. It certainly explains a lot. Many people, including myself, were hoping for “escape” because they had already planned to do a certain type of game, and escape fitted the bill nicely. You can basically have any environment, and add something to escape from.
I was a new participant. I found out about Ludum Dare because a fellow Ren’Py developer did a mini LD and posted their results.
I was disappointed with the vanilla theme of Escape. I actually had ideas for Self Replication and Recursion.
I was put out by the fact that the IRC channel was full of “Notch Notch Notch” I peeked in a couple of times, but eventually left the IRC because I had no interest in talking about Notch. I also stopped following the Twitter tag for the same reason.
Susan
It might have; I was pretty surprised when “Escape” won because it’s a concept that common in games. I was definitely hoping for something that would really make people create something that had never been seen before. I would say that this theme was more accessible than others since there were easy and obvious game ideas and that it was almost hard to think beyond that (took me ~8 hours to think of a cool idea, anyways).
The Notch-effect is pretty powerful though.
Ludum Dare has a history of selecting themes that are open and non-limiting. The voting system clearly encourages that and most people don’t want to vote for a theme and then regret it when they can’t find a good idea that fits it.
There is a always a group that wants challenging themes and to focus on weird and original gameplay ideas. But many people just want to create a game and don’t care about that at all. It’s great that the LD allows people to create so many different types of games.
I thought that escape was a more interesting theme than I first thought. It was generic but also could be interpreted in many different ways. So yes I think the theme helped this LD to be the most successful so far.
One thing is constant: no matter what people will always complain about the theme
I’m quite new and just have been noticing LD since “exploration” or “enemy as weapons” (not sure). But since then, all the themes have sounded not that open (even exploration in some sort).
And I agree. With every theme someone will complain.
I think we should have chosen recursion, if only for the sake for those trying to keep the web site running.
If the number of contestants had been cut in half those guys might have actually had a nice weekend.
But seriously, the last few ludumdares have all had very generic themes. I’m not sure I mind really. It pretty hard to make a game, much less one with a weird trick theme. Escape was probably the most generic theme I’ve ever seen though. I mean, I really think it happens to fit with almost any game ever game, haha.
“I think we should have chosen recursion, if only for the sake for those trying to keep the web site running.”
That is a very honorable approach.
We were choking before the event started. What happened would have happened no matter the theme.