I want to bring some topics up for discussion before LD dies down for another couple of months. The core aim of this post being to improve the future jams - since I and many others care a lot for this jam.

The Finale and Content Creators

@pov I appreciate you apologised for the finale situation and that accidents happen. However, when combined with the events that lead up to it this LD, I think you can do better. If you don't want the community to come together and put energy into creating content around LD, that is your call to make. But at the moment it seems like you DO want to support content creators, yet it's often delivered in half measures which can lead to frustration and disappointment.

• Less than 12 hours before the scheduled live-results show, you tweet about not being sure if you're going to actually do it or not. From my perspective, this doesn't respect the time of those who planned to take part / made arrangements so they could stream / watch it. I'm also unsure why you were planning to cancel it?
• You got the timers wrong, leaving streamers, viewers and general LDers in the dark. Mistakes happen, though I did tag you in a post a few days ago on LD asking about the time of the results show. Not sure how many tags you get, but as the organiser I'd hope for you to check them. You don't have the option open to DM on twitter.
• Once the time was wrong, you then cancelled the live show element and then released the general results ~15 mins earlier than scheduled. It wasn't a black and white decision to make, so I know it's up for debate who'd be more upset: those who were already streaming / watching the live results show vs those who were planning to refreshing their game page to see where they placed.
• The side bar that shows live streams doesn't work well anymore. We've posted about this during the jam but it didn't get fixed. Essentially it'll just show random software and dev streams it seems. It's only by clicking the "..." in the stream panel that it'll take you to a useful filtered list of LD streams on twitch (though some LDers may assume that no one's streaming LD content if it's not listed on the first 3 thumbnails on the site).

No one will argue with the fact that you put a ton of work into every LD. Despite this post probably coming off as a negative post by me, I personally really value the time and effort you put in; I've hosted a few games jams that are 1% of the scale of LD and even those absolutely drain me. Also for the record - I wasn't able to stream the results show this time around, so this post isn't about me being personally impacted by what happened. However, I did see that there were at least 5 streamers (many with 40+ viewers) ready to stream the results at the scheduled time.

The future of Ludum Dare

I am just not sure where it's going wrong. A year ago you told us you were hiring someone to help, which many of us were pleased to hear as we sense this jam is too much for someone to orchestrate alone. But I am not sure if you still have someone helping or not? My gut feel (backed by no evidence) is that you still work on LD alone, and it is just one of many balls you are juggling in life (alongside work, relationships, side projects and recovery time). I imagine you have great desires and goals for the jam, but a lack of time / energy to deliver them all.

I'd just like to see one of two things really: 1. Allow other people to help, so that there is more time for you to deliver things that are needed 2. Prioritise improvements that will benefit the LD community

To elaborate on point 2, I think its fine that you've always wanted to have games embedded onto the LD site, but really as a feature I'm not sure how much it really benefited the LD community. Clicking on a link to itch to play in a new tab is low effort, and I don't think I've seen anyone ever complain or post asking for this to be improved. Yet that seemed to be the main new feature that was focused on in the weeks leading to jam. It still sadly ended up being buggy - with most games not loading or being cropped incorrectly - bugs which are 100% natural in software dev - but if anything it probably detracted from communities experience in the jam. All the while, there are many other things that the community have probably suggested being improved over the years that remain untouched.

There's plenty of good things that have come in recent years, including the re-work of the karma system, LD extra, the live results tweets, along with many hidden things - such as reworking the backend of the site. But then there are things that have not happened too - and I'm concerned that, with your decision to backtrack on reducing the number of LD's per year, your work load will only increase. There are likely many volunteers (myself included) who would happily help with aspects of the jam, even if not on the technical side but just from an organisation / communication perspective.

I appreciate it is very easy for me to sit in an arm chair and point out things that could be done better. The comments section are open for anyone to discuss what I've said above, whether you agree or disagree - but please remain civil and respectful 🧡