"Gamedev-design" - making game-making more fun

[Martin_H]

In another thread I asked:

@Martin_H

I’m generally interested in what people around here consider game types that give the best feedback loop on the development side. E.g. I think anything multiplayer must be terrible because you expend so much energy on technical/architectural requirements for stuff to even work in multiplayer, that you don’t get the same kind of “reward” for, compared to e.g. when you add a new weapon or make something explode in a nicer way in a singleplayer game. Not talking from experience though…

I’m hoping that some improvements to the “gamedev feedback loop” could be beneficial to my own output.

…and was encouraged to make a thread about it:

@EternalAmbiguity

This is worth its own thread here in Game Design. I’d love to discuss it.

What do you think makes making games a more fun and rewarding experience and how do you think this would help or hinder progress on your projects?

Personally I think that there is a huge general issue with “the act of creation”: You create something, it becomes a novel stimulus for your brain, you keep working on it with the intention to improve it, because it is no longer novel to you you get bored, you start changing it, rinse and repeat till you’re absolutely sick of it and can’t think of more ways to make it novel again.

I once heard a professional music composer say “It has come close to the point where I’m bored by anything that has notes in it”. And another professional film music composer once told me “I don’t listen to music privately anymore. I only ever do it out of professional interest, and then I quite often listen to super polished mainstream pop because there’s so much to learn from their production techniques.”

I’ve studied design and I’ve seen how it is a very typical trend for graphics designers to gravitate towards weirder and weirder things that start to fail at even their most basical intended purposes, like readability. Kurt Weidemann - a German typographer - once said something along the lines of “There is nothing new to discover in typography, just like in the kitchen or in the bedroom”. And I think he has a point, at least to a degree. Though I’m not sure what exact lessons to draw from it and what strategies to apply to making games.

Ultimately I think good things take time and you can’t really change that fact, and you’ll never get entirely over the problem of getting bored by whatever you put hundreds or thousands of hours into. But maybe we can find strategies to mitigate the downsides, identify pitfalls more clearly and learn to avoid bad gamedev habits.

One thing I’m doing with my main project is: no audio till the game is basically finished. I know if I add audio now it would cost me hundreds of hours, and at the end of the whole dev cylce I’ll absolutely hate the audio and will want to redo it all. If I keep audio for last, there’s one cool novel thing I can still add as a final touch and then release it, hopefully at least not being totally sick of the audio yet, albeit everything else probably. As a bonus, if I never get the game part finished, I’ve saved a lot of time working on audio at all.

I’m currently thinking seriously over starting a side project. I’ve set a deadline of the end of the year where I want to decide whether I bury the side project idea or start executing it with the goal to finish that over the course of 2018. If I work on it, that would be my test-case for whatever conclusions we can reach in this discussion, and I’ll be able to - at least to a degree - compare how development feels compared to what I’ve done so far on my main project.

[EternalAmbiguity]

Glad you made this.

It’s an interesting topic. One wants to creative process to be as enjoyable as possible, which will sustain progress. But that’s dependent on what you’re building.

One thing to keep in mind is that it is of course a little different for everyone. However…

I imagine if one were to try to nail down the aspects which give positive feedback to a developer, the most effectual would be gameplay. Having something you can actually engage with yourself as you’re building it is huge. This might include player actions or AI, and to lesser effect smaller changes like an inventory or something.

Then you probably have other elements like audio, or quality graphics, or story, or things like level design. Elements which can enhance a user experience in a directly observable way, but require skill to implement. This is one area where a lot of indies seem to stumble, likely because of the skill required.

Then there are the back-ends, the things that actually run your game. Be it multiplayer networking code, or the logic behind the scenes in a single-player game (in my case it’s coming up with meaningful stat interactions between AI characters for my most recent project)

So I think there are two main factors: how observable the change is, and how much work it takes. In my case the second is probably a bit more daunting that the first, given my inexperience and lack of time to really focus on development.

I’m not sure what the solution is. One option, and one I’ve attempted to some extent, is to focus on adding an element completely to the place where it has an observable impact on the game. Because ultimately the majority of the work does, even if in and of itself it doesn’t–it’s building up to something greater.

As an example, I’m intending to implement competitive events in a project I’m working on. Things like races between AI creatures. So in my case I would want to do all of the work to get that working fully before moving on to anything else.

Another option might be to simply be aware (perhaps make note of it in your “to do” list for the game) of how observable the change will be after you’ve made it, and then bounce back and forth between the “observable” and “non-observable” elements to sustain the “positive feedback” loop before it does out.

I feel like the former option is the better one, but I struggle with it a bit. I have a tendency to always have two or three different things I want to be working on, and when I hit a wall in one area I just jump to another. This has an obvious problem: when I hit walls in multiple places, I feel even more stuck than I would if it were just one area. I have nowhere to turn but to these issues, and because I still have multiple of them I can jump back and forth without getting much done in one place.

I think if one can focus on one area (please note, with all of this talk I’m referring to larger overarching areas to work on - the straightforward list of tasks which can be completed in a day is definitely still needed), one can complete a section of work which one can look to in the future when feeling burnt out.

This reminds me a little of the proposed method for Star Citizen’s development. I say “proposed” because we know they didn’t really do this–they’ve been working on pretty much everything in tandem for years. This means that observable (to the end user at least) progress slows to a crawl as development progresses slowly in multiple areas, rather than moving quickly (like the Hanger Module initially, as well as Arena Commander) in a single specific area.

[Martin_H]

I’m way too tired to write a lot, so here are just some quick thoughts.

@EternalAmbiguity

I’m not sure what the solution is. One option, and one I’ve attempted to some extent, is to focus on adding an element completely to the place where it has an observable impact on the game. Because ultimately the majority of the work does, even if in and of itself it doesn’t–it’s building up to something greater.

I like that, kind of like going on a mission that serves a higher purpose.

@EternalAmbiguity

As an example, I’m intending to implement competitive events in a project I’m working on. Things like races between AI creatures. So in my case I would want to do all of the work to get that working fully before moving on to anything else.

In an old project that I abandoned I had an autoplay mode where the game would just play itself and auto-click all buttons between missions. I found it weirdly fascinating to see that kind of self-test for the AI.

@EternalAmbiguity

I feel like the former option is the better one, but I struggle with it a bit. I have a tendency to always have two or three different things I want to be working on, and when I hit a wall in one area I just jump to another. This has an obvious problem: when I hit walls in multiple places, I feel even more stuck than I would if it were just one area. I have nowhere to turn but to these issues, and because I still have multiple of them I can jump back and forth without getting much done in one place.

Most of the time I think I feel either stuck or too bored already to even start on a task. The channel of tasks that can still get me into a flow state seems to shrink over time.

@EternalAmbiguity

This reminds me a little of the proposed method for Star Citizen’s development. I say “proposed” because we know they didn’t really do this–they’ve been working on pretty much everything in tandem for years.

What did they propose?

And some random thoughts I had today:

• Arbitrary limitations help feed creativity (that’s why gamejams and contests usually have themes).

• If you don’t have a strong vision and don’t own strong IP to guide you, just pick a classic (ideally not a game) and see what you can transfer from it into your medium. E.g. 80’s action film tropes inspired BroForce, and the Mad Max game had the movies to look at for guidance. Fallout 1 also had strong movie influences as far as I know.

• Consider ways to preserve some of the fleeting “novelty” of your game for yourself. E.g. when testing stuff like path-finding you might as well have some ugly-retro-post-fx on your cam to shave a couple dozen or hundreds of hours of the time you look at your intended final game graphics and aesthetics. I’m still looking for a kind of post fx stack that makes it more bearable for me to use untextured lowpoly placeholders because I really struggle with using placeholders, but I also procrastinate more on making 3D art assets than on almost all else.

• Prioritize chosing features and tasks that have easily quantifiable progress metrics over vague goals like “make the game more fun”.

• Keep 80-20 rule in mind.

• Set only goals that you have control over yourself (bad goal: “make successful multiplayer game”, good goal: “finish featurecomplete pong clone”)

• Don’t put off all “chore” tasks for last or you are likely to give up when no more fun stuff is left on the horizon.

[EternalAmbiguity]

@Martin_H

I’m way too tired to write a lot, so here are just some quick thoughts.

I like that, kind of like going on a mission that serves a higher purpose.

In an old project that I abandoned I had an autoplay mode where the game would just play itself and auto-click all buttons between missions. I found it weirdly fascinating to see that kind of self-test for the AI.

Most of the time I think I feel either stuck or too bored already to even start on a task. The channel of tasks that can still get me into a flow state seems to shrink over time.

What did they propose?

And some random thoughts I had today:

• Arbitrary limitations help feed creativity (that’s why gamejams and contests usually have themes).

• If you don’t have a strong vision and don’t own strong IP to guide you, just pick a classic (ideally not a game) and see what you can transfer from it into your medium. E.g. 80’s action film tropes inspired BroForce, and the Mad Max game had the movies to look at for guidance. Fallout 1 also had strong movie influences as far as I know.

• Consider ways to preserve some of the fleeting “novelty” of your game for yourself. E.g. when testing stuff like path-finding you might as well have some ugly-retro-post-fx on your cam to shave a couple dozen or hundreds of hours of the time you look at your intended final game graphics and aesthetics. I’m still looking for a kind of post fx stack that makes it more bearable for me to use untextured lowpoly placeholders because I really struggle with using placeholders, but I also procrastinate more on making 3D art assets than on almost all else.

• Prioritize chosing features and tasks that have easily quantifiable progress metrics over vague goals like “make the game more fun”.

• Keep 80-20 rule in mind.

• Set only goals that you have control over yourself (bad goal: “make successful multiplayer game”, good goal: “finish featurecomplete pong clone”)

• Don’t put off all “chore” tasks for last or you are likely to give up when no more fun stuff is left on the horizon.

Good stuff. Sorry, forgot to mention the Star Citizen thing in detail. But they intended to develop these small little independent modules which users could play, and then eventually stick them all together. They did at first with the Hanger module (you can look at your ship model in a modelled hanger), and the Arena Commander module (dogfighting gameplay), and kind of with the social module (where you could go to a game location with other players, though this never developed fully into it’s own thing), but lately they’ve focused on sticking everything together into one experience and they keep slipping, slipping, slipping from their estimated release dates. For example, the “Alpha 3.0” was originally supposed to come out in December of last year…but it only recently got into the hands of the most “private” group of public testers (which means it will probably be released in December of this year, 1 year late).

[Antony-Blackett]

I’ve struggled with this a lot lately. For me the fun in game design and development is seeing my creations in the wild, seeing real people’s real reactions to my games. I haven’t released anything in a long time, and that is the problem for me. So in future I’m adopting the release release fast, release often mantra.

[Martin_H]

@Antony-Blackett

I’ve struggled with this a lot lately. For me the fun in game design and development is seeing my creations in the wild, seeing real people’s real reactions to my games. I haven’t released anything in a long time, and that is the problem for me. So in future I’m adopting the release release fast, release often mantra.

Interesting. I don’t seem to get much out of seeing people play something I made. I remember letting a friend play the mobile game I was working on and all she said was “can’t they go faster?”, and her boyfriend who is a programmer looked at me with an expression of “I feel your pain right now”.
The only playtest I made with my current project was letting another programmer friend of mine play it. He asked what of the stuff that’s happening on screen is stuff that I made and what Unity does for me, which is a smarter question to ask (he didn’t mean it in the assetflipping sense, he just doesn’t know Unity at all). I find the only metric worth tracking is how long people play till they stop on their own. In that regard it went better than I expected.

(As an aside I think it might be worth tracking the time between you showing someone you know something from your game the first time, and the next time when they are asking you if the game is playable yet. For me it won’t work because I don’t want that kind of questions and always tell everyone it’s years away - if I even ever finish it. But it could be an interesting indicator of market interest. If no one ever gets back to you about it, it’s probably not something the market wants. Oh, and fellow devs don’t count because they might ask for other reasons.)

@EternalAmbiguity

Good stuff. Sorry, forgot to mention the Star Citizen thing in detail. But they intended to develop these small little independent modules which users could play, and then eventually stick them all together.

I think that’s one of those things that look good on paper but might not work as expected in the real world. At least I know no example where that was really well handled and it actually helped.

In gamedesign I like clear goals with a very broad possibilityspace to get there and nuanced degrees of success for achieving that goal. Infiniminer is a great example. Or liberating outposts in any open world game with stealth elements. I like that kind of freedom with a clear objective.

In gamedev I more often than not find the possibilityspace too wide and daunting, and the ways by which to measure “degrees of success” too vague. That’s one of the advantages that I see in taking something that exists already in popular culture and measure your game against achieving qualities of that thing. E.g. if you make a 2D plattformer you could pick Quake 1 as a reference and even though the genres are completely different you’ll suddenly have a much better idea whether a certain element or change gets you closer to or further away from the essence of Quake 1. You could pick a movie or a book or a piece of music instead. I think any clear point of reference could be helpful.

[EternalAmbiguity]

@Martin_H

That’s one of the advantages that I see in taking something that exists already in popular culture and measure your game against achieving qualities of that thing. E.g. if you make a 2D plattformer you could pick Quake 1 as a reference and even though the genres are completely different you’ll suddenly have a much better idea whether a certain element or change gets you closer to or further away from the essence of Quake 1. You could pick a movie or a book or a piece of music instead. I think any clear point of reference could be helpful.

At the same time however it’s possible to have lesser interest or motivation there because it already exists.

Like, a month or two back I was really getting a hankering for a railroad sim like the Railroad Tycoon games from years ago. I was starting to get a look at how to build a train. However, a couple of weeks into it (I hadn’t done much at all yet) I discovered this. And since something exists already, I don’t really have any further motivation to work on that kind of thing.

Part of the problem might be that I’m simply a gamer before I’m a developer . That can be extended in other directions–broadly, I’m a consumer before I’m a creator. I’d rather experience something than create that experience.

I’m probably thinking of it wrongly. In reality the reason one consumes some product and the reason one creates the product are completely different, or should be. This might be a problem with these kinds of “games you want to play” projects like you mentioned in that other thread.

I suppose, to tie this rambling back into the thread topic, for a project where one is building something they want to play themselves, a very key part of keeping motivation would be to get something you can play and experience yourself, and focus on that aspect of the work. Have fun playtesting your own work, which would help you identify the changes you want to make to make the product more fun for yourself.

And for a project where you’re making a game for others to experience, focus on getting it in the hands of players, to see what they think, to see if you’re conveying Jesse Schell’s “essential experience” like you want to.

[Martin_H]

@EternalAmbiguity

At the same time however it’s possible to have lesser interest or motivation there because it already exists.

Like, a month or two back I was really getting a hankering for a railroad sim like the Railroad Tycoon games from years ago. I was starting to get a look at how to build a train. However, a couple of weeks into it (I hadn’t done much at all yet) I discovered this. And since something exists already, I don’t really have any further motivation to work on that kind of thing.

Something very similar happened to me with Brigador. Had to make huge changes to my design to be able to continue working on it (that mech game is what I call my main project). It was even worse seeing that at release they were commercially really unsuccessful.
But there is nothing that can protect you from something like that happening. It happens all the time for youtube content creators too. CGP Grey once said he just stopped looking at what others in similar fields release because you’re never gonna be the first nor the last one to make a certain thing.

@EternalAmbiguity

Part of the problem might be that I’m simply a gamer before I’m a developer . That can be extended in other directions–broadly, I’m a consumer before I’m a creator. I’d rather experience something than create that experience.

Much of that is true for me too, but I can’t go on forever without working on anything myself or I feel like I’m going crazy.

I wonder if on reasonably small and technically simple games any additional motivation can be derived from withholding extensive playtesting from yourself till you’ve reached a featurecomplete alpha state. At least to whatever extend is possible realistically without slowing down development too much.

@EternalAmbiguity

I’m probably thinking of it wrongly. In reality the reason one consumes some product and the reason one creates the product are completely different, or should be. This might be a problem with these kinds of “games you want to play” projects like you mentioned in that other thread.

It is for sure! Though the things I really wanna play are all hyper immersive AAA games that I can’t make myself. All that I can make myself by its nature has only a small subset of overlap to what I like to play myself.

@EternalAmbiguity

I suppose, to tie this rambling back into the thread topic, for a project where one is building something they want to play themselves, a very key part of keeping motivation would be to get something you can play and experience yourself, and focus on that aspect of the work. Have fun playtesting your own work, which would help you identify the changes you want to make to make the product more fun for yourself.

And for a project where you’re making a game for others to experience, focus on getting it in the hands of players, to see what they think, to see if you’re conveying Jesse Schell’s “essential experience” like you want to.

The two problems I see with that is that invariably the fun you have with a game diminishes over time, as does the reward value of positive feedback. Just like you’ll get bored by your game you’ll get jaded by getting praise for that game and will start to want praise for your other game.

Seemingly the answer to both would be: pick smaller scoped projects to finish quicker. But I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Lack of patience was what originally in my teen years made me think “It’s unlikely I’ll be happy as a programmer, I’ll better train to become an artist where I get more direct feedback from what I work on”. Little did I know that I would never really come to grips with the fact that “art” never feels “finished”, and that I’ll miss out on that sweet numerically quantifiable measurement of progress that some programming tasks have. Performance optimization probably is one of my favorite tasks in game dev, because at the end its faster by a clear percentage and there’s no arguing about that. I can put 10 more hours into a painting or a piece of music, and someone I show both versions to might say “I liked it better before”. Games are like art in that regard.

[Antony-Blackett]

@Martin_H

Interesting. I don’t seem to get much out of seeing people play something I made. I remember letting a friend play the mobile game I was working on and all she said was “can’t they go faster?”, and her boyfriend who is a programmer looked at me with an expression of “I feel your pain right now”.
The only playtest I made with my current project was letting another programmer friend of mine play it. He asked what of the stuff that’s happening on screen is stuff that I made and what Unity does for me, which is a smarter question to ask (he didn’t mean it in the assetflipping sense, he just doesn’t know Unity at all). I find the only metric worth tracking is how long people play till they stop on their own. In that regard it went better than I expected.

(As an aside I think it might be worth tracking the time between you showing someone you know something from your game the first time, and the next time when they are asking you if the game is playable yet. For me it won’t work because I don’t want that kind of questions and always tell everyone it’s years away - if I even ever finish it. But it could be an interesting indicator of market interest. If no one ever gets back to you about it, it’s probably not something the market wants. Oh, and fellow devs don’t count because they might ask for other reasons.)

I find this interesting. If you’re not interested in what others think of your game, why are you making it? Are you making it for yourself? That’s cool if you are, but if you are making it for yourself then why are you making it if it’s no fun to make?

[Martin_H]

@Antony-Blackett

I find this interesting. If you’re not interested in what others think of your game, why are you making it? Are you making it for yourself? That’s cool if you are, but if you are making it for yourself then why are you making it if it’s no fun to make?

When I was working on my first game (screenshot below) that was the first time in years that I felt my life has purpose and I was passionate again about something I make. I burned out on the project and ended up abandoning it for a number of reasons, and never wanted to touch mobile games again.
I’m still trying to find something that I can replicate that original passion with again. It’s not so much that I enjoy all of the process of making games, I really don’t sometimes, hence me making this thread. I feel like my life is pointless and wasted if I don’t at least try to make games on my own. Even if I try to stop, I can’t stop thinking about what could be my next project. I’ve invested obscene amounts of time into becoming a “jack of all trades” so that I can do art, coding, music, and sound, myself on a game project - if I don’t at least try to make games now, that was a huge waste of time because it’s time not spent specializing to get really good at one thing.
And it’s not like I don’t care one bit what anyone thinks of the end result, I still care about what some individuals would think of it when it’s finished. Those that have my respect and where I know “if they like it, it means something”.
I consider solo-gamedev the ultimate interdisciplinary challenge. If I ever manage to actually finish a game I hope that’s something I could manage to be proud of, because I know how hard it is to do that on your own, and that the quota of people who give up along the way is enormous.

[snacktime]

If making games is a career then the perspective is just completely different then a hobby. While I enjoy making games, it’s not anything game related per say that motivates me. What motivates me the most is the quest to be the best in my area of expertise, and to stay ahead of the competition. Making games is just a very fun context to do that in.

When I was making games for a studio, a lot of them were not even games I would personally play. It was never really the games themselves, it was applying my art to the games and doing it well, and seeing it all work smoothly once released.

As an indie it’s not much different. I get to choose the type of game I want to make, but it’s still largely driven by strategic decisions more then this is a game I would want to play. And that’s fine because as long as it’s in an area where I can leverage my skillset well, then I’m in my happy zone.

Making games is hard enough that you just absolutely need motivation that is bigger then the game itself. When you ask yourself why am I doing this, you have to answer that in a way that drives you back to work. And I don’t care how cool the game is, the game itself will never provide that.

[Martin_H]

@snacktime

As an indie it’s not much different. I get to choose the type of game I want to make, but it’s still largely driven by strategic decisions more then this is a game I would want to play. And that’s fine because as long as it’s in an area where I can leverage my skillset well, then I’m in my happy zone.

That reminds me a lot of something that I remember Ian Bogost say in a talk: play or fun (can’t remember which one) being essentially “doing something with a lot of attention and care”. You’ve turned making games into a game it seems.

@snacktime

Making games is hard enough that you just absolutely need motivation that is bigger then the game itself. When you ask yourself why am I doing this, you have to answer that in a way that drives you back to work. And I don’t care how cool the game is, the game itself will never provide that.

I think you’re probably right on that one.

I’m glad you joined the discussion because I wanted to invite you to talk about something that you said in another thread:

@snacktime

What’s interesting to me is that I’m completely convinced that art assets and visual work should come as late as possible. I think you can almost mathematically prove that is the most efficient flow. But hardly anyone does that, even among larger studios. I don’t think it’s because the people there are dumb. I think I understand a lot of why this happens, but figuring out a systematic way to break out of it, that has eluded me.

This is something I would like to hear more about, because so far I not only always start with artwork very soon, the idea of a certain aesthetic or feeling is often what drives me to think about or work on a project in the first place. This is just how my brain is wired, probably comes from my primary work all being painting-related and that being what I spent the most time learning in my life. I would be very interested to hear your (and other’s of course) thoughts on that “mathematical proof” you mention, and speculations about how to best implement such a workflow in general.

[snacktime]

The math on that is really just the practice of just in time. Another way to look at it is decide as late as possible. This is especially true on complex projects. It’s extremely difficult to predict how a change in A will effect B. And the more distance between them the more difficult it gets.

Now at the same time I always solve for the big challenges up front. But solve for here just means I run things forward in my head or on a whiteboard, the goal being to eliminate any surprises. I just want to know ok I can see how I would do that, so I can budget for it, or change my design if it’s going to be a major issue.

In most games general art direction and style usually don’t change much. And I do think you should have a fairly clear idea of what that looks like up front. But most of the technical art stuff is driven by design and mechanics, not the other way around. And given that the technical side of art can be very time consuming, it just pays to put that off as long as possible.

What makes this hard to do in a team is that the game itself is the point of reference everyone is using. I might have a detailed picture in my head of what the end result should be. But how can I express that to someone else without actually putting it all in the game?

I think this can actually be solved in a systematic way. And I hate to leave this hanging but it’s late, I’ll pick this up later:)

[TonyLi]

@Martin_H - Since @snacktime mentioned teams, have you considered joining a team? The challenge is to find the right team. Jacks-of-all-trades are usually highly appreciated, especially in small teams where everyone wears many hats. You can complete larger, more interesting projects in the same time that it would take a lone developer to make a smaller project. A good team carries its members over motivation humps, and members’ different perspectives will challenge your assumptions in ways that you get can’t on your own. And this happens continuously during the life of the project, in contrast to the echo chamber that occurs in solo dev.

I’m writing this from experience. I’ve been on after-hours teams where I get home from a long workday and don’t even feel like booting up the computer. But I know the whole team’s waiting for a script change, so I get cracking, and in a few minutes I’m back in the zone. Plus, the next morning I can wake up to see what cool things they’ve done with the new functionality that I wouldn’t have come up with myself.

Autumn is game jam season. It’s a good opportunity to try out some teams for very short time commitments.

[Martin_H]

@TonyLi

@Martin_H - Since @snacktime mentioned teams, have you considered joining a team? The challenge is to find the right team. Jacks-of-all-trades are usually highly appreciated, especially in small teams where everyone wears many hats. You can complete larger, more interesting projects in the same time that it would take a lone developer to make a smaller project. A good team carries its members over motivation humps, and members’ different perspectives will challenge your assumptions in ways that you get can’t on your own. And this happens continuously during the life of the project, in contrast to the echo chamber that occurs in solo dev.

I’m writing this from experience. I’ve been on after-hours teams where I get home from a long workday and don’t even feel like booting up the computer. But I know the whole team’s waiting for a script change, so I get cracking, and in a few minutes I’m back in the zone. Plus, the next morning I can wake up to see what cool things they’ve done with the new functionality that I wouldn’t have come up with myself.

Autumn is game jam season. It’s a good opportunity to try out some teams for very short time commitments.

All very good points, but I really want to stay entirely independant. Being tied to other people for hobby projects is a source of stress and anxiety that I don’t want in my life. I know good things can come from it but I also know that if bad things come from it, they can get really bad really quick. I’m all but certain that there are more team projects that fail, than those that succeed. GameJams likely are different (who can’t get their shit together for 2 days?), but I’m not interested in those kinds of sprints at the moment.
And personally I have trouble feeling like something is “mine” if I didn’t make as much of it as I possibly can. I’ve worked on dozens of team projects in my professional life. I’ve worked much more in teams than I have worked solo on things.

@snacktime

I think this can actually be solved in a systematic way. And I hate to leave this hanging but it’s late, I’ll pick this up later:)

I’m looking forward to it! In case an example helps, let’s pretend this was concept art for a game, how would you go from there?

[Antony-Blackett]

@Martin_H

When I was working on my first game (screenshot below) that was the first time in years that I felt my life has purpose and I was passionate again about something I make. I burned out on the project and ended up abandoning it for a number of reasons, and never wanted to touch mobile games again.
I’m still trying to find something that I can replicate that original passion with again. It’s not so much that I enjoy all of the process of making games, I really don’t sometimes, hence me making this thread. I feel like my life is pointless and wasted if I don’t at least try to make games on my own. Even if I try to stop, I can’t stop thinking about what could be my next project. I’ve invested obscene amounts of time into becoming a “jack of all trades” so that I can do art, coding, music, and sound, myself on a game project - if I don’t at least try to make games now, that was a huge waste of time because it’s time not spent specializing to get really good at one thing.
And it’s not like I don’t care one bit what anyone thinks of the end result, I still care about what some individuals would think of it when it’s finished. Those that have my respect and where I know “if they like it, it means something”.
I consider solo-gamedev the ultimate interdisciplinary challenge. If I ever manage to actually finish a game I hope that’s something I could manage to be proud of, because I know how hard it is to do that on your own, and that the quota of people who give up along the way is enormous.

Nothing is a waste of time, if you’re learning things it’s all good.

I’d say that having the courage to start a project and give it a real shot is something to be proud of in of itself. I know when I first gave it a shot, that’s all I wanted to do. Give it a shot and see what happened. If it didn’t work out then at least I wasn’t left wondering what could have been.

Learning the skills to do everything yourself is a hard thing to do. I’d say it’s the hardest part of the process and the most nebulous as you’re never finished learning, you’re never going to be perfect at any skill no matter how good you get because there is no such thing. So again, becoming a specialist isn’t actually any better than being a jack of all trades in that regard. If anything being a specialist can limit your options and opportunities in the future. So I wouldn’t say you’ve wasted time in learning a breadth of skills. Especially if those skills are at a level that can be applied to a commercial project in some capacity or used to help others learn and surpass your ability. Even if you’re not directly applying those skills it’s useful to know what others on a team do/need/want, it helps communication and makes everyone around you perform better.

As for finishing a game. It’s not as hard as it feels. The hardest part is reigning in your own expectations of yourself. A game is really finished whenever you decide it is. You could release whatever it is you have in front of you right now and it would be “finished”. So why not?

But then, what is “Finished”? I think game developers should through away that word. Nothing is finished it’s only not currently being worked on. To classify something as “Finished” makes things a lot harder for yourself. Suddenly everything in the design needs to have a purpose and fit into the whole, it has to be perfect and you can’t have any mistake anywhere or the whole things falls apart, your game balance has to be spot on because there’s no way to fix it after it’s “Finished”!

[Martin_H]

@Antony-Blackett

Nothing is a waste of time, if you’re learning things it’s all good.

I’d say that having the courage to start a project and give it a real shot is something to be proud of in of itself. I know when I first gave it a shot, that’s all I wanted to do. Give it a shot and see what happened. If it didn’t work out then at least I wasn’t left wondering what could have been.

Learning the skills to do everything yourself is a hard thing to do. I’d say it’s the hardest part of the process and the most nebulous as you’re never finished learning, you’re never going to be perfect at any skill no matter how good you get because there is no such thing. So again, becoming a specialist isn’t actually any better than being a jack of all trades in that regard. If anything being a specialist can limit your options and opportunities in the future. So I wouldn’t say you’ve wasted time in learning a breadth of skills. Especially if those skills are at a level that can be applied to a commercial project in some capacity or used to help others learn and surpass your ability. Even if you’re not directly applying those skills it’s useful to know what others on a team do/need/want, it helps communication and makes everyone around you perform better.

As for finishing a game. It’s not as hard as it feels. The hardest part is reigning in your own expectations of yourself. A game is really finished whenever you decide it is. You could release whatever it is you have in front of you right now and it would be “finished”. So why not?

But then, what is “Finished”? I think game developers should through away that word. Nothing is finished it’s only not currently being worked on. To classify something as “Finished” makes things a lot harder for yourself. Suddenly everything in the design needs to have a purpose and fit into the whole, it has to be perfect and you can’t have any mistake anywhere or the whole things falls apart, your game balance has to be spot on because there’s no way to fix it after it’s “Finished”!

Thank you for your kind words, I think you have a very healthy attitude towards these things. I’ll try to start seeing it this way too. You know the studies that say learing new languages or doing Sudokus helps protect against things like Alzheimer’s disease? I yesterday heard in a podcast that any kind of learning has that effect and that there’s just strong correlation between people that learn these kinds of things at an old age and people who keep learning new things in general. You’re also right in so far that as a specialist I’d likely feel there are still just as many people who are better than me.

I very much like the idea of starting to think of games as not-finishable. The decision “what project do I want to work on right now?” seems a lot easier than “how do I get this game finished?”. I just need to find a way to actually release something before I stop working on it for an indefinite amount of time. My own expectations are definitely the biggest thing that stands between me and “finished” games.

Yesterday I did a tiny bit of work on my main game again, after I came to the conclusion that in terms of gamedesign it just has more to offer, than what I could come up with for my side-project idea so far. Also it has orders of magnitude more room for explosions.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

@Martin_H

Thank you for your kind words, I think you have a very healthy attitude towards these things. I’ll try to start seeing it this way too. You know the studies that say learing new languages or doing Sudokus helps protect against things like Alzheimer’s disease? I yesterday heard in a podcast that any kind of learning has that effect and that there’s just strong correlation between people that learn these kinds of things at an old age and people who keep learning new things in general. You’re also right in so far that as a specialist I’d likely feel there are still just as many people who are better than me.

I very much like the idea of starting to think of games as not-finishable. The decision “what project do I want to work on right now?” seems a lot easier than “how do I get this game finished?”. I just need to find a way to actually release something before I stop working on it for an indefinite amount of time. My own expectations are definitely the biggest thing that stands between me and “finished” games.

Yesterday I did a tiny bit of work on my main game again, after I came to the conclusion that in terms of gamedesign it just has more to offer, than what I could come up with for my side-project idea so far. Also it has orders of magnitude more room for explosions.

Even if you are the type of person who “works best alone”, being part of a team, even a mediocre team, will still amplify your effectiveness more than going solo. Doing anything alone is really hard. It’s easy to get caught up in your own head and lose perspective.

Although I am not working on a specific game project right now, just learning in general, I regularly explain what I am doing to my wife even though she doesn’t care and gets annoyed. Why? Because talking to somebody else kind of changes the way I see my own work, and every once in awhile my wife will make a suggestion/comment that helps me immensely even though she doesn’t know anything about the subject.

[Martin_H]

@BIGTIMEMASTER

Even if you are the type of person who “works best alone”, being part of a team, even a mediocre team, will still amplify your effectiveness more than going solo. Doing anything alone is really hard. It’s easy to get caught up in your own head and lose perspective.

Oh, for sure! There are pros and cons to both approaches. I’ve done multi-month freelance art jobs alone and I’ve done contracts of the same size as part of a team. I couldn’t even tell you which one I really “like” more. But I’m absolutely 100% certain that I don’t want to team up on my hobby gamedev projects, for the same reasons that I wouldn’t want to do a kickstarter without a finished game, or accept venture-capitalist investments. I want to stay free of obligations towards other people with this, for as long as I can.

@BIGTIMEMASTER

Although I am not working on a specific game project right now, just learning in general, I regularly explain what I am doing to my wife even though she doesn’t care and gets annoyed. Why? Because talking to somebody else kind of changes the way I see my own work, and every once in awhile my wife will make a suggestion/comment that helps me immensely even though she doesn’t know anything about the subject.

I like that idea. Just make sure to never accidentally call her your rubber duck . ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging )
When I try to tell my girlfriend what I’m working on I have to keep it very brief, or else she will just fall asleep. But I have an artist friend who worked in gamedev to whom I can show what I’m working on and get good feedback in return.

I’ve listened to an episode of hello internet today and they touched on a concept that I had never heard of and seems quite relevant to gamedev: “brain crack”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM29TL35ZIw

(sorry can’t find the exact timecode, should start around 30 - 35 minutes in or so.)

What they mean with brain crack is when you have an idea, and you spend too long thinking about how amazing it’s gonna be, you are in danger of moving into a cycle where a) thinking about how amazing it’s gonna be is more fun than actually working on it, and b) if you’ve dreamed about it for long enough it’s actually impossible to get it into a shape where you feel like you’ve reached your goal because your dreaming always outpaces your making.

I feel like this is immensely relevant to me, but I don’t know what to do with that information. On one hand I definitely struggle with the last part. I abandoned my first game in a state that far far exceeded my expectations at the end of the concept phase, while falling far far behind the expectations I had at the time I lost the will to continue working on it.

But I also need a feeling of “this is a worthwhile idea and it’s going somewhere” for me to want to work on a thing at all. I don’t have “faith” that things are gonna work out, if I don’t have a relatively clear vision of how they’re gonna work out exactly.

I wonder how one finds a balance between these things? How does one keep their own expectations in check?

[EternalAmbiguity]

@Martin_H

I feel like this is immensely relevant to me, but I don’t know what to do with that information. On one hand I definitely struggle with the last part. I abandoned my first game in a state that far far exceeded my expectations at the end of the concept phase, while falling far far behind the expectations I had at the time I lost the will to continue working on it.

Write down the idea immediately. From there, make sure to write down every planned change or addition.

That doesn’t keep you from dreaming, but having it down on paper both allows you to go over it another time as you write it, and allows you to look at it later on when you’re not in your “dreaming mode” and just making up stuff to make it seem awesome. From that point you’re analyzing as much as dreaming.

Not saying that’s a surefire way to do anything, but it’s worth a shot. Plus it keeps you from forgetting things. So many ideas I’ve just straight up forgotten…and quite a few ideas I wrote down, forgot about, then came back to months later and continued (not talking about games, but music or writing).