Last week Mike (@pov) announced that Ludum Dare will come to an end. As someone who participated in every Ludum Dare since #21, I was sad to read this news. Ludum Dare has shaped me as a game developer, and got me to make many games I am very proud of. Luckily, Mike has stated that they want the legacy of Ludum Dare to continue, which is a big relief. However, I see many problems in Mike's vision for their continuation of its legacy, and fear that it will not succeed.

In this post I'll be talking about - The lack of community leaders - Why a new Ludum Dare is useless - How Mike is vague about the future - The importance of Ludum Dare's legacy - Why we are what makes Ludum Dare - The failing of Mike's leadership

Note that I will not be talking about any plans for a future Ludum Dare. That's not what I'm here for. Perhaps another time. For now we must address the problems with the mission that is given to us.

Community leaders

On Bluesky, Mike posted the following:

My hope is that leaders within the community can build something better, more welcoming, that honors our legacy.

I think what's great about Ludum Dare is that there aren't really leaders in the community. There might be people more well known than others, there might be popular streamers, but leaders they are not. From time to time I'll find a profile of someone participating for a long time, who I never heard of before. You might have never heard of me even though I participated for so long. I wouldn't be surprised.

Ludum Dare is a big community, and someone who is seen as a leader by some, might be a nobody to others. Besides, the most popular person is not necessarily the best person to create a new Ludum Dare. There's also a good chance that multiple people will create a new website. Then what? Should the community split up?

A new Ludum Dare

I “DARE YOU” to make YOUR better LUDUM DARE in 3 years!

Because Mike gave us an assignment to make a better Ludum Dare. If it's the website they're talking about, this has already been done, and it's called Down2Jam. I've never participated, but from what I understand it's basically a copy of Ludum Dare's system, and a quick glance at their website shows that it's a lot better than Ludum Dare's current site. It's what ldjam.com should have been. I should point out that Down2Jam has made it clear it does not aim to be a successor of Ludum Dare. They have their own goals and ideas. But with their website they show the potential of what ldjam could be.

So when it comes to building a better Ludum Dare, the website is not the problem. If not Down2Jam, there exist a ton of other game jams for people to migrate to. But all those game jams, any "better Ludum Dare" that anyone might build, miss one important thing: they are not Ludum Dare.

To me, and many others, Ludum Dare is still the game jam, being one of the first big game jams, starting all the way in 2002. I don't believe any new game jam could take over that title, no matter how well they replicate the original. The continuation of legacy will be broken, and Ludum Dare will be no more.

The only way I can see the legacy properly continue is if Mike instructed us where to go to. That they, as the current leader of Ludum Dare, tells us what will be the official new game jam for us to participate in. Whether the community would follow is the big question.

What is the plan?

Okay, let's say that a "community leader" built a better Ludum Dare. Then what? Do they start hosting events? Well, no, not right away. First we still have 6 more Ludum Dare events to go, after which we get one more encore event in April (and maybe two?).

So after April (or the second encore event), is that when we're ready to launch our new and better Ludum Dare (with a different name)? Maybe, but Ludum Dare could return "as needed". Imagine the new jam plans an event, and then Mike decides to run a Ludum Dare event around the same time. Now you have a community split as to where they should participate in.

Do you see how messy this is? You might think "We'll figure that out as we go", but if your goal is for the community to create something new, and for the legacy to live on, you should be clear as to what they can expect from you. You tell the community: * This date is the last Ludum Dare event. * That date is when the new jam should start their first event.

And you promise to be gone after that. You can't break up with your partner and tell them to find someone else, but then call up to make love after they found someone.

If Mike's plan is to not host any more events after the better Ludum Dare has spawned, they should communicate this. A lot about their post is vague. For example, what if they manage to find a job? Will Ludum Dare continue as normal? We don't know. This is a problem. We're talking about the legacy of a 24 year old internet community. It should be handled with care.

Legacy

A lot of these problems would be solved if the new jam would use the name Ludum Dare, but Mike does not allow it.

I want our legacy go on, but this name (this era) should end.

And I want to eat ice cream without getting fat. You can't have it both ways. It could be possible for a legacy to continue with a different name, but you're making it extremely difficult if you don't intend to kill the website that holds the original name.

And what a legacy Ludum Dare has! It all started in 2002 on the Ludum Dare forum, created by Geoff Howland. He and Isaac Vanier got the idea for a 24-hour game programming competition. Note that in the forum thread nobody used the word 'jam'. While maybe not the first game jam, it must have been a rare concept at the time.

As Mike mentioned in their post, Ludum Dare "died" multiple times. The original site has a timeline, which I'll lay out here:

| # | Date | Host | Website | | ---- | ------------- | ------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 0 | April 2002 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 1 | July 2002 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 2 | November 2002 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 3 | April 2003 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 4 | April 2004 | Mike Hommel | hamumu.com | | 5 | October 2004 | Richard Jones | mechanicalcat.net | | 6 | April 2005 | Richard Jones | mechanicalcat.net | | 7 | December 2005 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 8 | April 2006 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 9 | April 2007 | jinxd and Seth Robinson | thewavelength.net | | 10 | December 2007 | Phil Hassey and Mike Kasprzak | imitationpickles.com | | 11 | April 2008 | Phil Hassey and Mike Kasprzak | imitationpickles.com | | 12 | August 2008 | Mike Kasprzak and Phil Hassey | ludumdare.com | | ... | | At some point Phil Hassey quit | ludumdare.com | | 36 | August 2016 | Sorceress | ludumdare.com | | 37 | December 2016 | Mike Kasprzak | ldjam.com | | etc. | | | |

Here are a few things I learned as I was assembling this timeline and went through the archives: * Ludum Dare died in the sense that it was no longer hosted on the same site, but never did a year go by without a Ludum Dare event (the biggest gap being #3 to #4). This is not a Ship of Theseus question. It was the same thing all the way. * In all the old Ludum Dare sites I kept finding the same message: If things break, we use the IRC chat #ludumdare as a backup. In a sense, that channel seems to be the root of Ludum Dare, and it still exists. * If someone stops hosting Ludum Dare, there are other people willing to take over. In 2016, after Ludum Dare #36 was cancelled so that Mike could work on a new website (this website), after realizing the old one had problems with its rating system, Sorceress took over, and we got our event anyway, albeit without voting.

How cool is it that after those messy early years of swapping hosts, Ludum Dare still exists to this date? And I haven't even mentioned the many successful games that were spawned out of Ludum Dare entries, like Hollow Knight and Inscryption. This is the legacy that the name Ludum Dare holds. This is the game jam that I want to continue to participate in. This is what will die in a few years, because that is Mike's decision.

Ludum Dare is us

What makes Ludum Dare awesome is you! Not my PHP and JavaScript glue that keeps things going. It’s you.

I agree, it's us. We as a community are what makes Ludum Dare. So it feels weird that Mike decides for us that Ludum Dare will be no more. Imagine if Linus Torvalds, who Mike compared himself to, said that Linux would come to an end. Would anyone take him seriously? Perhaps he would respond with the question on whether we met Dennis Ritchie.

Have you even met Geoff?

They say they don't mean it arrogantly, but it's hard not to take this as arrogant. No, I have not met Geoff, the person who started Ludum Dare and hosted it last 20 years ago, but for the past 10 years or more, me and others have participated in pretty much every single event. Does that not count for something?

We as a community come together twice a year to make a game in a weekend, and that event is called Ludum Dare. Why must that come to an end?

And besides, who could I actually pass the event on to anyway?

Someone in the community who has shown that they deeply care about Ludum Dare, who has experience hosting big jams, who can be trusted that they will respect Mike's wishes, and has the time to host the events. Those people exist (and yes, that includes me). Is MckFunkyPants seriously the only person they could think of? Have they asked McFunkyPants if he was interested, or did they only assume he was not? Could they at the very least not have asked around to see what is possible?

I’ve done my best to keep up with the folks involved in the community, but past a certain point you just can’t. I want to and I do try, but there’s still just one me.

In what way though? They're not active on the (unofficial) Discord, and it's been ages since I saw them comment on anyone's post or game. I can understand if they're too busy, but if they believe there are community leaders, they should ask us to point them out to them, so that they have a starting point.

Leadership

I am grateful to Mike that they have hosted Ludum Dare for so long, despite all the hardships they have faced. They have made sure that the spirit of Ludum Dare has stayed the same after all these years. But at some point one must wonder if they would not be more grateful had they passed on the role of host to someone who would have done a better job.

No I’m not blind to the comments bellyaching how “meh” events have been and everyone who thinks they could do better job than me.

How could they not? It's no news to anyone that this website, ldjam.com, is a big mess. Even if you're a new user you will quickly encounter the bug where images take time to load (where you first see an earlier loaded, irrelevant image as a placeholder), and that many pages don't work. I'm used to it at this point, but I shouldn't be. This is not the website that such a big game jam deserves to have.

Earlier I said that d2jam.com is what Ludum Dare should have been, but I also think it's what it could have been. People have tried to contribute to this website. There are multiple pull requests open on the GitHub that after years have never received even a response from Mike, including an entire frontend rewrite.

The event page for LD59 still says "EDIT ME". Key moments like theme slaughter, theme voting and especially the results are often late. This made streamers and people in general no longer having result parties, as the time they go live is unreliable. Ludum Dare as a whole is at a decline the past five events. In the right hands, I can imagine it could have grown even bigger than what it was during covid, but right now it's rather a surprise how many people are willing to keep participating with all these flaws present. It doesn't help that you need a secret password to register.

You might think: "Yes, but Mike is busy." I know, and I don't blame them for not fixing all of these problems. What I do blame them for, is not figuring out a way forward so that Ludum Dare can improve. To delegate tasks to other people. Share the database schemas in a repository, and have the community build a new website. A lot of Mike's time is spent handling GDPR emails, because the website misses basic functionality, like changing your username or removing your account. Had Mike requested the community for help with this, to add these features to the website, I bet a pull request would be ready faster than a compo.

At some point Ludum Dare turned big, and it was unsustainable for Mike to keep it going as a hobby project. After the community granted him permission to make money off of Ludum Dare, they opened a Patreon. This never reached the desired goal ($3000), and because of this Ludum Dare could not become their full time job.

That's unfortunate, but alternative solutions, like asking community members for help, were never explored, as seen by the ignored pull requests. I think that's been a mistake. A good leader recognizes when they need help, and are not afraid to ask for that help. Mike has failed to do so, and now here we are, with a broken unfinished website after so many years, and with no reliable person to take over.

Conclusion

The current envisioned future for Ludum Dare is blurry. Personally, I'm not convinced I'll participate in an event that is not called Ludum Dare, but perhaps over the years I'll be able to get used to the idea. Regardless, Mike should communicate more clearly what we as a community, and what potential creators of a future Ludum Dare, can expect.

But far more preferable would be if Mike was convinced that they should in fact pass on the torch. That is no easy task. I myself host an annual game jam, and I can't imagine passing that onto someone else if I ever decide to quit. Will that person do as good as a job as you did? Maybe not at first. But they will learn, and grow, and maybe, eventually, turn it into something even better.

Instead of using these next three years to teach us how to make a better Ludum Dare, teach us how to run this Ludum Dare. Become more well known with the community, and find your new leader. Have them watch over your shoulder as you manage the event, and when it's time, they can take over, and Ludum Dare's legacy can live on.

I'll leave you with a quote from Mike from 2016:

Bottom line, I want to turn what we have here in to something that is sustainable. In the near term something that can support me, in time others, but eventually in to something I can step away from. Something that can actually out-live me. It shouldn’t be catastrophe if I go away.

I could just assume the community will pick things up, but that would be irresponsible of me. It should run itself. Both technically speaking, and as a sustainable self sufficient entity.

Ludum Dare should not have to rely on any one individual to run.