Since we have some buzz going thanks to this weekend's Ludum Dare event, I want to open a discussion about our next event (i.e. Ludum Dare 42 in August).

I often get asked by organizers of Real World Gatherings in the EU for access to the theme early. To them, Ludum Dare events start at very inconvenient times: 3 AM or 4 AM in the morning.

Giving out themes early is a precedent set by the Global Game Jam, and it works for GGJ because each event is isolated to a locale. Ludum Dare is an internet event, and only a small number of participants do it at gatherings (most of us do it at home). We gather and communicate with each other, share our games and progress, all via the internet. It's impractical for us to split Ludum Dare along timezone lines.

I'm based in Canada, so a big part of the scheduling is convenience for me, but we could certainly be a bit more fair to the rest of the world.

I've been toying with the idea of shifting-up one of our yearly event start times. Here's what I'm thinking:

Proposal: Try running the August event (Ludum Dare 42) 3 hours earlier

That looks something like this:

• 3:00 PM Friday on the West coast of USA/Canada ***
• 6:00 PM Friday on the East coast of USA/Canada (me)
• 10:00 PM Friday UTC
• 11:00 PM Friday in the UK
• 12:00 AM Saturday in France, Germany, Sweden, South Africa
• 1:00 AM Saturday in Finland, Belarus, Moscow
• 3:30 AM Saturday in India
• 6:00 AM Saturday in West Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong
• 7:00 AM Saturday in Japan
• 8:00 AM Saturday in Sydney Australia

(My apologies if I omitted you... there are a lot of you :wink:)

The current Ludum Dare scheduling does inconvenience folks in the EU, where as the above would inconvenience folks in Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, etc. You might still have a few hours of work, or a commute ahead of you... which could work out, given that the first few hours of an LD are often spent coming up with an idea.

Anyways, I thought I'd open this up to feedback. I'm sure there's reasons for/against that I've not thought of. But this is something I've been talking about for a while, and I think it's worth trying.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

EDIT: To be clear, we run 3 events per year (every April, August, and December). If this sticks, it would only affect 1 of the 3 events. The other two (April and December) would run as they do today.