I’ve been working on the design of my first game for some time now, slowly ticking away tasks on my project plan.
The goal of the game design was to outline a simple game that would also be realistic to complete by the end of this year.
Several revisions into the draft of my design document, I realized something. I don’t want to play this game. I’ve been concentrating so much on trying to keep it simple and within a sane realistic limit with respect to budget and time that I forgot that it needs to be fun and interesting too. I can’t just approach this as a task to complete and get out of the way, the actual game needs to be something that people will want to play.
I selected the game idea out of many because I felt I could tackle it technically and within the budget I alloted myself. I figured it was more important to complete something, anything.
I’m now taking a step back and rethinking my choices. I need to work on a game that fits the budget and is fun. Duh!
Sometimes I get so focussed on the task at hand, I forget about the big picture. Back to the drawing board.
***The goal of the game design was to outline a simple game that would also be realistic to complete by the end of this year.***
Clearly the goal wasn’t what you really wanted. I have a similar goal, and making it fun isn’t as important as gaining the experience of making. I know that going into it. Maybe it is a fatal flaw since the last 90% will involve a lot of grudge work and details that might require more enthusiasm than I can muster for something that I don’t think is fun. I’ll see when I get there, but I also don’t know if what I am making won’t be fun until the prototype anyway. Currently making it fun will be a bonus, but obviously your goal should specify that it MUST be fun.
It’s sometimes the most obvious things that don’t get any attention because they are so “obvious” that they don’t get written down.
GB: It’s not that my goal was not what I wanted, it just wasn’t complete. I still want to target the end of the year with a simple game. But, if I’m going to work on a game project, I feel it should be fun. If it’s not going to be fun, then I might as well work on a business application or other shareware software.
I spend way too much time in my life working on programming projects that aren’t fun to create nor to use. I’m trying to get away from that as much as possible.
Very true about the obvious things, though.