Greetings, Ludum Darers!
It’s not often I post here, but I’m hoping we can get some discussion going about this.
PoV tweeted about one month ago: Linky
While there hasn’t been any official word on August LD being cancelled, there is this and a few other scattered tweets.
I’m seeing these tweets cause a lot of confusion, especially visitors to IRC. On one hand, many are unaware of these tweets, and are expecting and preparing for an LD in August. While an equally large number of people are convinced that there will be no LD in August.
There are a few issues I’d like to raise in this post…
(1) I think the status of August LD needs to be clarified ASAP. Some people make preparations weeks in advance — August being only eight weeks away now — to arrange real-world gatherings, booking venues, arranging their schedules so they have a free weekend, booking monday off work, or whatever. Not telling the community what is happening is impolite and it’s likely to cause some people unnecessary expense or inconvenience.
(2) PoV’s tweet suggests to me that he wants to take a break. This is fine, but I hope that we could as a community run an August LD here anyway, if not with PoV at the helm, then others could step in to fill the roles. It really can’t be true that an event where thousands of people participate, is being cancelled because just one person can’t make it. We have a lot of computer savvy people here, and I’m sure we can manage to pull together in PoV’s absence. I know I could handle the front-of-shop parts, as I’m very familiar with the LD schedule and the wordpress software we use here. I used to organise the theme voting myself in the past, so this is no problem for me either.
(3) If August LD can’t happen here for whatever reason, then I suspect that community members will organise something in August, regardless. Whether this is one “unofficial August LD ” that sprouts up elsewhere, or several such gamejams, because each jam organiser is unaware there are others organising the same thing. Either way, the likelihood of something being organised elsewhere is high enough, that we should be discussing it here.
(4) August LD happening here would be ideal, imho. But if that is not possible, there must be a good reason behind that. As we know, PoV is working on our new website. But why can’t we use this old website just once more? What is different now from the last N times we used this website? If it has to be cancelled now, why wasn’t it cancelled in the past? If the new website isn’t quite ready in December, then does that mean December LD will be cancelled also? Maybe cancelled indefinitely until the new website is finished? I see these kinds of questions asked often in IRC. They really need to be answered, as many are feeling frustrated by the lack of official answers and explanations.
You’re all invited to share your thoughts 