Are you a fan of Ludum Dare? I’ve loved watching it for a long time. The huge community of excited developers is fantastic to watch, and some great games come out every time. More than that, LD is a great opportunity. In fact, such a good opportunity that we’re giving LD participants a huge deal on Loom (but more on that later).
The incredible opportunity in an event like LD is that it gets you to finish something. It’s so common for projects to run on and on and on and on… Professionally, you could work in AAA games for a decade and only ship a few games. Imagine being a professional painter and only making 10 paintings in your whole career.
There are big lessons you only learn when you finish. Like – was the feature you spent 80% of your time working on what made the game fun, or was it the feature you added at the last minute on a lark that made the whole game work? Is your gameplay immediately understandable? How much is your fun driven by content vs. gameplay? What dumb things kept people from enjoying your game (like missing DLLs, unclear instructions, installer issues, and so on)? What REALLY goes into the last 20% it takes to ship?
You also get the big endorphin rush of release! It feels GOOD to ship. Even if you decide the project was a failure, completing it is good. You can put it on the shelf and refer to it later. And it’s motivating to know you’ve gotten something DONE and don’t have to think about it any longer.
It’s easy to get stuck in the doldrums of project creation. You end up going around and around creating new things on new tech. It’s shiny and in some ways fun, but you never experience the growth and maturation that comes from shipping and sharing your creation with the world. Shipping – even something small – gets you out of that rut.
Take some time and participate in Ludum Dare 26. Creating and finishing a small game project is one of the best investments you can make in yourself – not just as a game developer but as a professional. It’s easy to overlook how valuable this can be.
And of course – Loom is a great fit for making small games fast. Through LD26, use the code GO_LD26 to get 50% off all Loom subscriptions. Get Loom and go make something cool!
Ben Garney 
Ben, are you going to enter? I’d love to see what you come up with. And I totally agree with everything you said about the benefits of LD48. The live-update stuff in loom would be fantastic during a LD48 compo.
I want to make a small game this weekend but I have a major feature on my plate for Loom… so we’ll see how things work out. I do want to do a LD very soon.