Exactly two years ago, I started working on my personal game project and keeping this blog. I am still working on my game and I have learned a lot over the last two years.
I started this whole ordeal by learning to use a few tools properly and understanding the content workflow. It can be quite time consuming creating content, and creating content efficiently is important. Being efficient will make you able to work in less time, but it also tempts you to overcommit because you can become too confident. The project I committed to do, is a bit ambitious for an individual, but it is doable. An example of overcommitment, no doubt. But with my obsessively goal oriented nature makes it actually doable in my case.
I have been preached to, more than once about failing fast. Creating numerous prototypes and get people playing my games early in the process. But, when you are aiming at those things, the options you have for making games become very biased towards those factors. You will not consider some ideas because they will not mature fast enough, they will not fit well with the traditional gaming crowd or they will be very expensive to remove. Making numerous prototypes does not enforce you to create a fresh project every time, a new game or a new brand. You should have a perspective of your own, and you should commit to finishing the projects you start. There are a lot of things to consider when you are creating something of your own, and you should claim an ownership in how you work as well as in what you produce.
I am often asked, “how long will this take?”. And I lie every time I hear that question.
The truth is that I don’t know.
I know what the state of the game is now, I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what the flow of events is, how most of the puzzles will operate and I can point to a lot of similar things in other games or solutions. I know what it looks like, I don’t know what it sounds like or feels like. I know that I am creating a tool called Lump, that will serve as a content creator for my current game and other projects. I hope that I can use it confidently for the coming months to create content and get a clearer picture of what happens next and how people will actually play my game. I don’t know what you will think of it, and I don’t know what I will think of it when it becomes playable. I know I will change it so that I will be proud of it and I know that I will keep working on it.
After I figure everything out and have all the answers, you can just play the game and figure everything out for yourself.
I have every reason to keep on working.
Tata
V 