I’m mostly writing this as a (super) quick analysis as to why I am doing this 48 Game Jam / Competition.  This will be my first Ludum Dare.  I had heard about it before but had never investigated it closely.  The reason for this investigation now is that for the past 9 months I have been working on a programming book.  This was a long, drawn-out, and boring process; this difficulty was not something I was anticipating.  It made me irritable and actually started making me lose faith in my abilities but more importantly my passion as a game developer.  In conjunction with my current job, it was the perfect formula for stress, resentment, depression, and a bunch of other negative feelings.  The book is done, so why Ludum Dare?  One reason is it’s advertised as a primarily SOLO game jam.  This is an area I think I thrive in actually — no long meetings, no compromising vision (which is different than cutting back on scope), no hurt feelings or politics.  I mostly want to have fun, but I also want to see if I can rejuvenate the passion for making games — not technical text, not concepts, not ideas, but an actually game!  I’ve done the Global Game Jam before, and themes in game jams have always sort of “burned” me; this has been mostly due to the fact that I had gone into game jams with an idea in mind and couldn’t think how to make the theme work with the idea that wasn’t utter bullsh*t.  For this Ludum Dare, I’m trying to go in with no ideas other than the fact that the game will be in Unity3D (or GameMaker is I think that is a better fit).  This isn’t the most exciting post, but I hope to write a few more during the course of Ludum Dare — but not too many as I have to actually focus on a game — and good luck to everyone participating!

Tags: gamemaker, inspiration, ld48, Ludum Dare, motivation, passion, unity3d