Why did I waste my time doing this?

News & General Discussion
1

A lot of times I had the impulse to create a new game. Often it resulted from having had a dream and trying to convert the dream into a game. But more often than not the game just was not interesting, it was more an interactive movie than a game and very short or not long-term interesting.

Or, when I finally finished the game, I asked myself: " why did I have that pulling compulsion to create this?". A lot of what I did were proofs of concepts. Once it worked, I had no further use for it. But for some reason the compulsion to create it was there initially and I had no choice but to follow it.

So my question is this: how do I create a game that is actually worth playing? How do I design a game that is fun to play? And by design I mean the answer to the question: “What makes a game fun?” and not graphical design in detail.

For instance when I used to create podcasts, I just started talking. Today, I prepare my podcasts, have a start, middle and ending. And they are much better.

2

At least your finishing games :slight_smile: Consider those a stepping stone and keep at it!

3

How do I create a game that is actually worth playing? How do I design a game that is fun to play? And by design I mean the answer to the question: “What makes a game fun?” and not graphical design in detail.

4

theres always the option of making something you want to play

5

Just answer my questions.

6

He did. Think about it. You aren’t that different from other gamers. If you like it, chances are someone else will too.

7

He did not. Can you answer them?

8

I decided when I start my plat former game, I’ll worry about making something I personally consider worth my time.

In a way, I’d be making the game I want for my cellphone… honestly I don’t like any of the games I have installed.

9

Creating a game is often a creative endeavour you might feel passionate about it only to realize that the idea was infact no good. It’s better to end it early rather then work and complete a game no one wants or is just another derivative work. If you compare it to say bands, it can take them years to finish there albums, the business wants them to create an album the sooner the better, but you’ll notice only a handful of those songs are any good

10

wow dude you sound kind of rude about the responses your getting.

do you honestly think there is one solid answer to ‘what makes a game fun?’
if there was, then everyone could just make the same thing and it would always be fun.

so how do you make a fun game? well think about the things that you find fun in a game. think about existing games that have fun parts in them. think about parts of games that you’ve thought could be more fun if they had done something a little different. think about things that don’t exist yet that could be fun in a game. think about things that aren’t fun in games and think about why they are that way.

11

Yeah, he did.

People generally like to play games for two reasons:

  1. They like being REWARDED
  2. They like to EXPLORE.

You had a “pulling compulsion” to make a game because you wanted to EXPLORE something. That’s what makes it fun. Now, at some point, you looked back on your game and you felt bored. That could mean a couple things. Either your game truly is boring, or you just got bored of it because you finished exploring. For this, it’s good to ask a friend to play it, because they might feel the same excitement you had when you were making the game at the beginning.

As for the REWARDING part, if you find the game rewarding to make, chances are people will find the game rewarding to play. Simple as that really. Do the art / items / levels feel rewarding to make?

Do remember that games take a long time to build. We usually get bored of games much faster than the time required to finish them.

12

This sounds like you’re not giving sufficient thought to the choices the player is asked to make. I’m guessing your concepts are in terms of 'and then the player clicks this, and then they click that, and when they see the symbol they have to hit a key as fast as possible" etc, rather than in terms of problems the player is faced with and the actions available to him.

If you’re thinking about story, remember that you should be looking to tell a family of stories, not just a single story. They might all start the same way, might have some shared elements, and might even end the same way, but they’re different, not just in the parts you tell but in the parts the player tells as well.

Beyond that: playtest, always, every day, forever.

13

I felt this way after creating Zombies vs. Knights.

See, my grand idea was to make a RTS that I of all people could feel comfortable playing. Instead of having the complicated meta-strategies you see in Command Conquer, StarCraft, or others, I cut down the RTS gameplay to its core. I decided it was all about A) creating units, and B) destroying the enemy base. Not about micromanagement; that’s useless because you’re always going to have to cut through the opposing units anyhow! Map navigation? Ha. Same thing. I’ll make RTSes being complicated a thing of the past!

…So, I spent one month building Zombies vs. Knights.

When I submitted it to Wooglie, I was amazed to get a reply along the lines of, “Umm…this game isn’t quite done. You need to finish it.” “But, it is finished!” I replied crossly. “It’s complete, you can start, play, and win or lose. It’s simple, direct and to the point. I’ll implement some of the things you said, but mechanically it’s complete!”

I uploaded it, and while it’s my best ‘selling’ game yet (It’s made me 14 euros on Wooglie, with 40k views over two years since I released it), it’s a flop.

Back to your question. Why did I waste my time on this? I could’ve spent more time at my day job and made a lot more of an immediate profit, and not ‘wasted’ Wooglie’s time, or mine. I could’ve built something else better, because let’s be honest: the game sucks! I could’ve [insert other thing I could’ve/should’ve done here.]

I ‘wasted’ my time on my game, because I tried to create something I would want to play: a cut-down RTS. The problem is, not all gamers want to play what we would want to play. 40k views over two years, for 14 euros, is financially a failure. If I were a company I’d have gone bankrupt then and there.

Do I regret it? Do I truly feel that time was a waste? Hell no.

Here’s what I got from it:

  • First, the valuable lesson that we don’t make games for ourselves; we make games for others. There has to be a balance between things we want in a game, and things our audience wants; it’s our job to meet in the middle with a positive experience.
  • I built an awesome GUI framework for Zombies vs. Knights. It was so good, I went on to expand and modify it in all my failed prototypes, up to and including my current game, The Hero’s Journey (which, is the best thing since duct tape! [/plug])
  • I created a game. Most people don’t make it that far. This was my second game. And, I did it within one month.
  • Finally (and, where it all began) I learned what gamers want in an RTS - the conventional RTS. Players want to balance between macro-level and micro-level management. Players want to directly control their minions to set up lop-sided battles, and use special production strategies to defeat their opponents.

Long story short, it wasn’t a waste. 40k views and 14 euros, and knowing more of what it takes to build better games is a pretty darn good payoff, I’d say.

Stop deprecating your game, or your experience. Start learning from it. Ask questions. Write a formal post-mortem.

“What’s a post-mortem?” you may ask. It’s a unbiased examination of your project and how it fell out. Most post mortems are structured in three parts:

What Worked
This part, you talk about the things that worked. Did you create an excellent GUI system? Maybe you made an awesome linear dialogue script for NPCs. Whatever went well, this is where you talk about it.

What Didn’t Go Well
This is usually pretty long, even on successful projects. Say what got in your way. Did you constantly break deadlines? Maybe you had to cut a bunch of content and/or features? Maybe you had to perform a major redesign midway through the project?

You also talk about what happened after here. What were customer complaints about your game? Did you get any customer complaints at all? No knowledge of a problem can be just as diagnostic as a bug report full of it.

Derived Best Practices
Based on the first two sections, you can logically draw some conclusions about things you should be doing more. Some practices prevent ‘Didn’t Work’ things from appearing next time; others ensure that things that ‘Did Work’ continue happening. If you have poor knowledge of what worked or didn’t, maybe finding out is a good practice.

It sounds like to me you’re demoralized, flustered, and out of ideas because you see these negative results, but don’t know what to do with them. A post-mortem is where you start.

Figure out what you A) do know, but more importantly B) don’t know.

Then, come back and ask in a calm, rational manner. Game Development is a trade; it’s both art in that there’s an infinite number of paths to completing a work, but it’s a science in that various actions have known consequences, and that in observing actions, we can logically deduce their consequences given enough data.

Ball’s in your court now. I know rejection hurts…but are you gonna let it roll away, or are you gonna pick it back up, and get back to practice? It’s your call.

14

If PoC’s are what you’re making, then find a good story and build a PoC around the story. Plenty of games have done that.

Two Brothers. It’s arguably a game, it has more actual flaws in terms of game construction than would be conceivable to pursue… But its totally sweet. It’s little more than a PoC with a good story, so why not do that?

Plus, if you have fun making them then whats the problem? Don’t be so objective oriented, hobbies are enjoyable, don’t break that. However, if you intended to make money from them then you have other issues. Motivation, commitment, desire and determination is all directly correspondent to indie game success.

15

A game is an experience that happens over time, and one of the elusive things thats is hard to get your head around using most tools is how ot make interesting stuff happen over the course of time. Most tools focus on space, is where to put stuff, and not so much on when stuff happens. I think Unity should have an infinite-length timeline upon which you can hook up various things to happen etc. But anyway… if you play a game, lets say a tower defense like Kingdom Rush (enjoying it at the moment, but stuck, lol), the gameplay is what makes the game, partly helped by the graphics. It’s fun to play, and things happen in a paced manner, over time. It’s not that someone is sat there staring at the environment the same as it was at the start, instead the game evolves and changes over time, new things are introduced, difficulty increases with skill level, etc. There’s a learning process involved. I think that’s what you’ve got to think more about - how to create an experience that lasts over a period of time, rather than a kind of snapshot thing. A snapshot can work in a simulation or sandbox or with emergent gameplay, but people enjoy going on an adventure.

16

AS with all creative processes it will take time and practise before you create something good. The fact that you already see and realise that your own work is not up to par, means you are critical and will become better at it.

Just keep busy, rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes many failures to create one good game.

17

“Pretty please?”

We can’t answer that questions, “how to make a game fun” if somebody knows that he wouldn’t be wasting time in a forum, he would be making millions. You can only make what you think can be fun.

18

I get a lot of ideas that I spend 1-2 weeks prototyping since they usually involve one mechanic or gimmick heavily. My friends get even more ideas but I rarely prototype those since lets face it, time is limited for those of us with day jobs.

I’d say 90% of my gamdev time this last year was just prototypes or proof of concepts, whatever you want to term a week or two of work that you then drop. I spent a lot of money on the Asset Store for some of them which probably wasn’t wise, but it did teach me a lot.

I’m at the point now where I really want to sit down and make a major project and not a prototype, and I think you summed it up well in your OP towards the end: does it have a beginning, a middle, and an end? This should rule out the gimmicky ideas. Also I am going to force myself to sit down and write it all out on paper first, including sketches of the levels, before I write any code. If it doesn’t come out good on paper then I’ll save myself the 1-2 weeks of coding time at least.

19

I’ve been thinking about this sort of idea for a while. In 3D modelling/animation suites, there’s a timeline used to handle animation.

It seems to me you could have ‘one-shot’ (at 14446 ms, execute [event]) and ‘recurring’ (every 42ms, execute [some other event]). It would sure beat having to script timers into my game behaviors…

20

Well, that goes without saying, right? Game and graphic design are completely different fields.

Someone suggested starting with a good story and prototyping around that, but I don’t personally think that’s a good idea.

Someone once described a game to me as " a repeatable action that is fun to do". And while a game is more than that, if you don’t have one of those at its core you’re stuffed. That’s your “core mechanic”. At its heart, someone playing your game is doing something (shooting targets while moving around, telling units what to do, whatever) over and over again in an attempt to reach some goal (shoot all of the targets without getting hit, blow up all of the other team’s units without losing all of your own, whatever). Everything else - the challenge, the story, the graphics, the etc. - is built on top of this by adding things or varying things. If the core mechanic activity is not up to scratch then nothing you stick on top of it will magically make it good. If the foundation isn’t stable your house will collapse.

You said you’ve been making proof of concept projects, but is that really true? The entire purpose of a proof of concept is to a) identify and test a core mechanic and (maybe) b) see what things you can add/vary to make it more interesting and how different factors interact. You typically don’t need fancy graphics or anything else, because those things typically don’t actually effect your core mechanic. (Indeed, plenty of games can be made by re-skinning other games because of exactly this.)

So before you settle on your next project, do a bunch of proofs of concepts first of different things, just paying attention to the core mechanic. See which one has the most sticking power - what’s fun to play for you, what do others play with the longest when you hand it to them? I always feel like I’m onto a good thing when I start getting distracted from building my game by the game itself. :wink: (But note that my professional work isn’t games, and I haven’t exactly made a bundle off my hobby stuff yet… so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.)

If you need inspiration, I strongly suggest getting into board games. There’s a huge variety out there, and a really cool thing with board games is that since the rules are implemented by the players, they need to know them in order to play. After a few games you’ll even start to understand them, and then you can apply your designer’s eye. An important aspect of a good board game is having a minimum number of rules, so ask yourself why each rule exists - what is its purpose, what was the designer trying to achieve by including it? What is the core mechanic, what influencers are layered on top, what are the player’s core decisions?

Edit: Also, your question can not be answered with specifics. Partly because aside from cloning existing things nobody knows what makes something fun. And partly because of the spaghetti sauce principle.