The Stages were a double edged sword for the competition I think.

From personal experience..

One the one hand, they were great for pushing me towards completing certain aspects of my game on time, meaning that I didn't get to the end and realise I'd still got a lot of stuff to do.

But on the other hand, it meant that I really had to push myself during those times when spare time wasn't always readily available.. I still had real life (tm) to worry about, a house purchase, a pending redundancy looming and a wife who needed my attention too. It was very hard to find enough time.

Perhaps having fewer deadlines would help or instead of deadlines, have publishing dates where you have to publish your game for peer inspection, regardless of state it's in. make it so that no points are gained or lost by publishing, but you have to keep publishing something to remain in the competition.

I think the peer pressure would force people to get as much ready as possible for these dates without worrying about meeting certain targets..

While I was developing, I did see some of them as tick the box, get the feature working to get the points.. where I wouldn't have normally included the feature.

But they were a good driving force, making me focus on building the foundations of the game early on so that I could polish it later, but that's sort of forcing a process and it's not everyone's cup of tea.



it would be a shame if the compo was canceled this year.

I won't be entering this year, but I'll be a judge.