There's October challenge each year - to produce a game in one month and earn at least $1. Being a parent of two myself, I found this as a good excuse to finally make an Android game. You can read about it here:
Too bad it's only once a year... Maybe we could start a "month" challenge for parents, say 2-3 times a year? Rules could be like this:
1. all participants must have at least one child (living with them)
2. you need to complete a working game within a month
3. theme? Well, I'm not sure about this one. Maybe a theme should be free,
because it's easy to throw away 48hrs at something you might not like very much,
but it's hard to dedicate a whole month to some theme you don't like
4. money? I liked the "get to the market and earn $1" approach from LD.
> all participants must have at least one child (living with them)
I wouldn't want to restrict it to parents actually, I believe there are many other people that can't get 48 hours in a row off because of work/family obligations, and I don't see why they shouldn't compete with less busy people. 48 (or 30?) hours in 30 days seems quite doable without much sacrifice.
The one thing that bothers me is that it shouldn't be _too_ easy to cheat and put more hours in. Maybe the whole thing could be coupled with some script you need to use for accessing your project and that times it.
Of course you could still cheat if you wanted to, you can just as easily cheat in LD48. But it should be easier to not cheat than to cheat, which wouldn't be the case if people keep track of their time themselves.
> money? I liked the "get to the market and earn $1" approach from LD.
Not sure about the $1 thing. I'd rather build a fun game than trying to bring something unpolished to market at all costs. But it sets a higher bar for sure.
> The whole idea behing LD is to improve and motivate yourself. There are no rewards. If you're cheating, you are not cheating anyone else but yourself.
Yeah, maybe some nasty setup like that is not necessary at all. Just a big timer on some web site. I think I'll contact the LD folks about this whole idea, maybe they're up for it. I doubt a game jam I start would gain traction TBH, I've never even released a game (despite having made about 13 in 10 years).
http://bigosaur.com/blog/23days
Too bad it's only once a year... Maybe we could start a "month" challenge for parents, say 2-3 times a year? Rules could be like this:
What do you think?