Participants of Ludum Dare 22 were asked to fill out a survey on their experience. A whopping 747 people filled out the survey.
Thanks for taking the time to fill it out!
I love this enthusiastic and supportive community.
Here are the results (click to zoom).
Survey Results: click to zoom in.
An in-depth analysis of the data will appear in the upcoming book, the Game Jam Survival Guide. Briefly, people had a lot of fun. The majority were either first-timers or not experienced game jammers. Most are happy with their games, of which about half work in a web browser. In order to finish on time many people had to cut features and simplify their designs. Not everyone was as familiar with their tools or basecode as they should have been, but only a few tried to learn a brand new engine.
Most games did not run on mobile devices, but many were cross-platform. On average most people did not spend time watching TV or movies, going outside, visiting with friends or playing other games.
Contrary to expectations, almost nobody drank coffee, energy drinks or alcohol. Virtually nobody used version control (such as SVN) or time-management techniques (such as pomodoro). Surprisingly, not many reported having difficulty with packaging, installers or submitting.
This infographic would be complemented by additional stats work. For example sorting the results by the most common response, or by questions with the most “no, not at all” answers would show some interesting trends that aren’t hinted at in this chart. Overall, however, even this cursory examination of the 747 survey results sheds some light on how Ludum Dare game jammers spend their weekends.
Tags: infographic, McFunkypants, postmortem, tips
This is really awesome and interesting.
Thanks for organizing and putting this whole thing together!
Thanks ! A lot of work must have been put into this,
this is very interesting
It funny to see how many people couldn’t decide wich enchine for their game ^^
Tbh I find there is only one choice: One you know.
I’m especially surprised by how many people didn’t drink coffee or energy drinks. How is it even possible to code without (un-)healthy caffeine levels? D:
Hah! I’m in the minority spending too much time on art. Interesting…
I didn’t drink coffee, but I drank a cup of strong black tea about every two hours. I wasn’t sure what to answer, since you mentioned coffee and not tea in the question. So I figured that the “spirit of the question” was about caffeine in general, and answered yes.
Oh… I wasn`t asked to fill it out…
Great survey results. Do you think you can make a version of the results where the green+yellow is descending (similar to it is now, but being both instead of just green)? Since green and yellow are both “positives” it would be interesting to have the data organized that way instead.
Who else tried to use a new language? I’d like o see how your games turned out.
I used PyGame + PGU http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5150
I usually do visual novels, so making a shooter mini game was interesting.
Susan
Why nobody drink alcohol or energy drinks?
The noise level is funny. “Did it work in a web browser? Maybe a little, Yes pretty much” what does that even mean?
Might mean it works in some/most browsers.
If there was a question “Did it work? Maybe a little, Yes pretty much” that would make sense.
So perhaps the game didn’t work properly at all, and the fact that it was a web game was irrelevant.
Similarly, if you don’t like green eggs and ham, then whether they’re served in a box or with a fox is irrelevant.
Wow. I’m surprised about how many people said they’d do this again. I mean, you’d think that making a game in 48 hours might be something that a lot of people find that they don’t enjoy, seeing as it is sort of stressful, especially the first time around. I wonder if there was some non-response bias? Maybe a lot of the people who wouldn’t join another didn’t take/see the survey.
Well, maybe people just love making games 😉
It’s really amazing that the highest “Yes, completely!” was “I want to do another LD.” That really speaks to the awesomeness of LD as an event in general.
Can we have the raw stats for this? I’d love to run some correlations – there’s a huge wealth of interesting stuff to be unearthed here!
I don’t think the raw stats exist john. The survey was hosted by one of those survey websites, who only record aggregates.
McFunkypants said he would gather raw stats next time by using a homemade survey form.
It’s amazing to me how many people just flat out don’t use version control at all. I wonder if there’s a correlation between that and those that used Flash and other development tools that don’t have support for it.
To me, version control is more for when there are multiple people working on the same code. Or when I release something so that I have a snapshot of the code when I released it.
Susan
Would be really interesting to correlate the survey results with ludum dare results . . .