You might think I’m contractually obligated to start something ridiculous every few years, though I don’t remember signing the papers.
My new project is awesome, I love it, but it’s going to take me all of next year (and maybe more) to make it. I’m so fascinated and taken by it, it’s something I NEED to make. But that’s next years agenda.
This year, 2010, there’s still a good 3 months left. I’m doing Smiles stuff still, and will likely be doing more up until the end of the year. I’ll have more to talk about there very soon (actually I could talk now since we’re almost done, but busy busy).
Aside from the IGF, contest season is nearly over now. Intel has some new cars up for grabs, but I think I’ve reached my car-winning-quota with Smiles.
Phil and I have been bantering back and forth all summer (maybe all year) how we’re going to sit down and make some new games. We released our iPhone games some 2 years ago; He did the Steam thing and I did the Intel and other ports thing. Boy-oh-boy wouldn’t we like to start something new!
We run a little something called Ludum Dare, a reasonably well known internet game-jam that does hundreds of entries per event. So today, I decided to issue a challenge to the community.
Compared to the usual game jam and compo fare, this is a drastic change from the norm. Sales and marketing usually don’t factor in to the creative process of a Ludum Dare; Neither does filling out tax forms and setting up bank accounts. There’s a fantastic community of developers involved in indie, freeware and compo/jams. The compo/jam is the catalyst for many to take the plunge and start creating games regularly. After that, we leave it up to you figure out how to do more with it. I’m especially excited about this, not only for me (new game!), but for all those developers that haven’t taken the business dive yet. We regularly get many thank you’s after an LD, from developers that needed that little bit of external encouragement to finally sit down and do it. This wild diversion could be the seed needed by a handful of jammers to finally make the leap in to selling games. It’s crazy optimistic, but the one thing we’ve learned from LD is that deadlines are an amazing thing.
This week I’ve been thinking about a small “couple week” game; In reality it will take longer, but it is nice to focus on a super small scope sometimes. So on a whim, I throw out the challenge to our #ludumdare IRC channel. To my surprise, I get a great instant response, which gets the gears turning.
I draft up the following up, tweet it, and inform the mailing list.
http://www.ludumdare.com/…/povs-challenge-make-a-game-sell-1-copy/
This all started as a vague race; First one to sell a copy wins. But it really should be more than that, so I shaped it in to something like an LD+ (minus all the restrictions). This should be October, the whole freaking month! That gives us a few days to prep, spread the word, or even start early. I know I’m going be hit with obligations these next 6 weeks, so no time to waste.
That’s what’s going on. I haven’t decided how I’m going to document my attempt, but stay tuned. I’m thinking blog here with some re-posting elsewhere. And if you too want to get in on the action, to figuratively “join in the App revolution”, or get started on something new (like Phil and I), please do! Spread the word. We’ll be in a holding pattern at the Ludum Dare website and IRC channel (as usual), so catch us there.
Lets do this!
I think this is a wonderful idea, and I’m grateful for all you do to give us indie game developers a kick in the pants and get something out the door. I have no doubt whatsoever that this will lead to at least one person making a career out of their hobby, and you are sure to have many great success stories sent to you in the coming months.
My minor concern is that one month is still quite a short timespan, not for the dev but for the *biz* side of things. Considering for example the weeks of lag time required between publishing a game and finally getting a signed contract and check in the mail from flashgamelicence (avg turnaround time being about a month) or, even slower, something like any of the mobile app stores of xbla which have turnaround times measured in months not weeks… given the approval process, then negotiations and deal-making, and finally getting it put live on a store, then waiting to reach whatever sales threshold allows you to get your first payment, even if the stars all aligned perfectly it would be realistic to expect that it would take several months of mostly just waiting.
But hey – like you said: deadlines are an amazing thing! You never know! I for one am definitely going to give this a try, but my goal is for my game to be “on sale” within a month and “sold” before 2011. =)
Thanks again for everything you do for the indie games community! Keep pushing us.
> I for one am definitely going to give this a try, but my goal is for my game to be “on sale” within a month and “sold” before 2011. =)
For sure. Even though the press quip says “do it all in October”, I’m expecting many people to finish the biz side and get something submitted by the deadline, then sell/license their copy before the end of the year. That’s still huge. The further you can go in October the better. If we set a later deadline, it would have been too easy to slack away the month of October. The month is *just enough* time to go from nothing to product in a market, and for some maybe get that 1 sale.
[...] Mike Kasprzak, indie game developer and host of the now-famous Ludum Dare 48 hour game compo, has issued a challenge: make a game – AND SELL IT – within one month. [...]
Great idea! I’m in! I’ve got a bit of a headstart because I’ve been working on my current game project for a little while already, but this will be a great motivator to help ship it before the end of October.
Jovoc
So I don’t lose it, “The Challenge” was on Y Combinator.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719653
[...] And more from PoV’s Blog [...]
Cool idea! Since you’ve gotten quite a bit of exposure for this idea already, do you intend to publish a follow-up with a list of all the participants who succeeded to get a game out? That might help with the marketing bit.
October 1st I’ll be setting up a submission form like we usually use for Ludum Dare competitions, and people can add their games to that.
[...] all this in mind, I wanted to note again Mike Kasprzak’s October Challenge. I’ve found that this is inspiring a lot of people – from absolute newbies to some [...]
[...] on this site are taking part in his “Make a game — take it to market — sell 1 copy” October Challenge? I’ll be interested to see what games come out of that, especially given his later post on [...]