Competition Productivity
Erik on Jul 20th 2006
As usual, stupid fast game development has been on my mind, so I’m going to write some of my thoughts on the topic.
Most people are quite impressed when they see what can be done in a 48 hour game programming competition. I’ve heard programmers look at competition results as say “Wow, that would take me a month.” They are correct, it would take them a month. But that isn’t because they are bad programmers, it’s because they aren’t working in the competition environment.
To better understand where I’m coming from, read this blog post about 24 hour game development sprints.
this is 100% being in the zone, where each hour spent in one of these jams is worth perhaps 10 or more hours at work in your usual environment.
I think this is very true. The right environment can give you a massive productivity boost. Here is a off-the-top-of-my-head list of reasons why the ld48 makes for such a high level of productivity:
- Super tight deadline
- Procrastination is not an option.
- You can live off of pizza, avoid chores, and sacrifice sleep because you will return to normal life after 48 hours.
- You don’t have time to second guess your decisions.
- You don’t have time for perfectionism.
- You will see results quickly.
- It’s a competition
- Competitive pressure can spur you on.
- Working along side a group dedicated to similar goals is inspiring. (Together via IRC if not shoulder to shoulder)
- It’s yours and yours alone
- You don’t have to convince anyone that it’s a good idea
- You don’t have to communicate or coordinate with anyone.
- You only have yourself to blame if it sucks.
- You’ve committed a weekend to the project, so even if it gets tough, you might as well see it through.
- No one is paying you to do it. You do it because you want to, not because you have to.
Now if only I had a way to get this level of productivity in my day to day life.
Filed in General, Programing | One response so far
saluk Jul 23rd 2006 at 03:52 pm 1
I hear you! I have been participating in these kinds of contests on and off for a year now, starting with a 48-hour one sometime in May if I remember correctly. I’ve done pyweek, and now the 72hour gdc run by pixel-artists. Each time I find I learn something different. Of all of them, I think 72 hours is just about the right amount of time for this sort of thing. While I didn’t get everything implemented I wanted to, I didn’t feel like I had left something important out. The 48 hour contests are too short in my opinion, because when you are working on this stuff on the side a lot of people can’t dedicate the entire weekend to it. The game I completed for the 72hour contest could have been done in 48 hours, in fact I think in total I spent less than 24 hours on it. But if I had only had 48 hours to begin with, due to other events going on, I would have only finished half as much as I was able to.
The week long contests are definatelty verging on too long. You plan a lot more for your game because you have more time, but you come out with something that has more holes in it than you would have with a simpler design. In the upcoming pyweek, I’m going to attempt to keep the design as simple as if I were competing in a 48, so that I have many hours of polishing time at the end. Because when you think about it, a lot of what makes good games good is the balancing that happens AFTER the game works.
As for c++ entries being better, I think that’s debatable. One thing that might give c++ programmers an edge is that during the rush to build a foundation (which you might get in python) you spend a lot of time doing things the right way; while with python everything is so easy and you dont have much time, so you go on to the next thing. Things like fancy effects for menus and the like; as a c++ developer you are going to put time in that, because you have to do so much more work to get the menu to even display. In python, you’ll more likely just make a nice background and lay some text over it – boom, menu done; next?
Python is more geared to getting everything done quickly, while c++ is more about control; being able to fine tune exactly how everything is going to work. When given a choice between doing something the way that python makes easiest, or take the time to do things differently, it’s really tempting to just go with that first choice.
I don’t believe the c++ programs in these contests are really of any higher caliber than the python entries, at least from what I’ve seen. But I would certainly like to see the python games coming out on top more often :)
Another strange thing I’ve noticed in competitions. I always feel like my submission is of substantially better quality than most of the other submissions. I play other people’s games and feel like they don’t really have a chance against my masterpiece. Most of the time, I don’t think this way; I’ll be the first to point out my programs shortcomings. But when I make a complete game from scratch in 2-3 days, I want to be like Tom Hanks in Castaway: “I, Have made a game!!!” And yet as amazingly wonderful as my games always are, they end up somewhere in the middle of the other entries. The winners always turn out to be someone who put a lot of effort into the actual production values rather than the gameplay; or their game is the most technically impressive. My goal is always to make a really fun game, one that people will want to play long after the competition is over. So I dunno, I guess I need to put more effort into graphics in order to win?
Then again, it’s more likely just my perception being altered because I want my entry to do well. But for some reason I can’t alter my perception to change the fact that I think my game’s the best, lol.
Now I am trying to do games for longer range contests – the retro remakes contest and the gamedev four elements. I don’t really stand a chance, the longer competitions make it way too easy to procrastinate. But it’s worth a shot.
I enjoy your blog :)