Hello I wanted to ask you all were you ever scared of proceeding to create your
game because your afraid that no one would even play it?
These second guessing yourself scenarios are a part of making any big project. It’s only natural to worry if what you are working on is worth the massive amount of work you are going to commit to it.
My advice is when you design the game, make sure you don’t design it with holes that will creep up on you later. Like “in my game the player can pick up books and click drag to flip through pages” and then realize you can’t program that or make the art assets after you already started production.
Before you start, make sure:
-You know how to do everything you need to do.
-If you need help, you have that help.
-You have all the necessary tools.
-The game IP is yours.
Then just start working and don’t worry about if people will like it. Follow your passion and success follows. Getting a game you think is good finished should be your only concern.
Nope. That sort of attitude would have you doing nothing ever. Just make the game you want to play, and make it good. Some people will play it and enjoy it if you are diligent in pursuing your dream. But even if they don’t you have the satisfaction of having completed something that you like, and the experience to do something better later.
Fear is a self-perpetuating myth. Fear is always a lie. Never listen to it. Proceed or don’t proceed, but never on grounds of fear.
Maybe you are using fear as a figure of speech.
Nobody will play your game if you don’t make it. If you make it and it’s reasonably good, someone will play it. If you make it in a state of fear, it will suck.
It may not be the hit game everyone will love to play. But if you want to make the game and succeed there has to be people who will play it.
Unless it’s not polished looking. Polishing your game is very important. It makes games with good gameplay and concept great. It makes games with typical or bad gameplay and concept decent.
Polishing is making sure you choose the correct art style and applying it consistently throughout your game. Most games you can wrap different stories, characters, attitudes, and environment to make your game appear more unique, if you believe your gameplay is not good enough to stand out to be chosen to played.
Like others said the satisfaction and experience of completing a game project is valuable to succeed in the future.
“…the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft
I think Mr. Lovecraft was just trying to figure out how to scare us, but he’s spot on. If you’re afraid to keep going, it’s because you don’t know how people will react. The best way to dispel this fear is to find out. Build the smallest version of your game that is true to your vision (nope, not that one - about half of that … and now half of that) and show it to anyone you can find. Get feedback early and often, and you’ll find that what is now fear (the unknown) will become just problems (the known) which you’ll be able to solve.
I wonder if fear is more symptomatic of something else - half baked design, uncertainty in skillset, learning curve, etc… I think if when looking at my project I was truly concerned about it achieving what I want - that would be a clear indicator that it needs to be further simplified.
I’d just keep descoping and simplifying until the feeling changed so something best described by Sir Robin … “That’s EASY!”.
Complete to that point, then re-evaluate and choose to add only as much as you’re comfortable with each time :).
+1
Also, you learn and grow by doing. If you only put the effort in making games that you ‘know’ will be popular, you may as well give up on making games now. The same goes for only placing value in a successful game. You are doomed to very depressing career if you don’t find joy/pride/lessons in the failures. My proudest game still is one that was the biggest (launched) commercial failures for our company, and ended up in dissolving that studio. The lessons learned lead to one of our biggest hits, and virtually everyone involved was very proud of the game despite it’s complete failure.
Making games is the fun part. Making money off them is necessary to keep doing it.
If you’re a beginner, as I suppose you are from what you wrote, you should do your games for yourself, to get better with practice and find your own personal voice. So people playing or not playing shouldn’t be a hinder at all 
Who cares, make it for yourself. If people play it, then it’s a bonus. If nobody plays it, then just try harder next time, until you get it right.
Well said.
Make the game you want to play. Then you will have at least one satisfied customer guaranteed.
Nope. You never know that people will play it, but you can ensure that they won’t if you don’t make it.
To be honest… don’t expect many people to play your first games. Make them out of passion, or because it’s your job and you’re getting paid for it. As you gain experience you’ll make better stuff, and as you make better stuff and start showing it off more people will want to play it.
One way to think of it to get over that fear is to realize that even if absolutely nobody played it, you’d still have a completed product that you can put on your portfolio/resume. Having the discipline to see a project from beginning to end is something employers generally favor, so that alone can sometimes make it worth it, even if by all other standards you “failed”.
is that a valid question? it implies making the game for recognition/glory rather than for game-making-sake. If you are a company then yes, this is a valid concern. If you are a student (I assume you are judging from the question) then all you have to worry about is making something you will be proud of/getting experience/etc
I’ve had many animations/games that were viewed/played by not that many. Indeed, I once made a 2d top down rpg in flash that was played by very few indeed, however out of the few comments it did receive was one saying that it was the best thing ever - that comment alone - that one dude somewhere played it and thought it was amazing, was enough justification to continue
Years later, I’m sitting here typing from a comfortable armchair from my work as a Unity3d dev + 3ds max animator. nuff said
Fear is always optional and always a choice. Why are you choosing to be afraid of failure? What would happen if you did make a game and nobody played it? Would it devalue you as a person? Is this the flipside of thinking it would value you as a person if you were successful? Don’t let your game define who you are.
Everyone here most likely look at their project sometimes and think about how it will be received, nothing wrong with that. But, its a big difference between that and being afraid, Just aim straight and go for it, even if you only get 10 happy customers, at least you made them happy and you have learned a whole lot of stuff that you can use for your next project.
Don’t look back, just aim and shoot : )