I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to try for accountability on actually releasing a game this year. To that end, I'm going to go through the development process to release a game. Here is the transcript from the tenth episode on examining motivation and my development as a designer:
Welcome to The Adventure Mechanics side quest and it's just me, Chandler. When I first started getting serious about game development, I created a blog as a way to write down my musings and spread my interest and game design with people. Looking back at it, one of the first posts I made was about motivation and completing a solo project. At this point, I was mostly working on game jam games. I feel like I need to readdress this issue, especially in light of how much time it's taking me to get Cartogratour into something resembling my original vision for the game. So in this episode of the adventure mechanic side quest, I'll be doing a little bit of naval gazing and comparing what I thought I needed for motivation when I started and what I think I need now and see how they compared to each other.
In my second blog post, I focused on three things that I thought were hindering me from completing a game: lacking the rush of game jams, the quick burst of game jams versus the slow burn of finishing a game, and the issues of being a solo developer. When I first wrote that blog post (link to it in the show notes), I had done about 6 months worth of game jam games. This equated to about six or seven different games all in various states of having a complete core gameplay loop. That means they're all incredibly rough and barely have anything beyond the core gameplay loop implemented. But, as these are technically games, I felt that I was doing very well in terms of being a developer. At the time, I was working on a number of small prototypes, none of which were worthy I guess, to develop further. Despite that, I felt that I could finish a game and publish it in a relatively short period of time. I mean I got six games out in 6 months, why couldn't I polish one of my prototypes to completion? Now that I'm almost a year into developing cartographer and don't have anything beyond that prototype to show for it, I see that getting a prototype and finishing the game are two very very different things.
To be honest, the rush of game jams is hugely addictive and over estimates your ability to actually build a game. All of the patchwork and papering over that has to happen in a jam are these sort of decisions that are much harder to make when working on your own game. All the shortcuts you make to get the game done in the time frame just don't quite work when you're developing the game yourself. You end up having to go back and rework those quote unquote patches over and over again to make your vision a reality. You have to focus a lot more on polishing than you normally would in a game jam. And I think I was off on the wrong foot when I started thinking I was a game developer because I made six (or I think 16 at this point?) games for game jams. In short, I was able to beat the spread metaphorically speaking and actually set myself up for failure.
I kind of foretold that with my second point. I instinctively knew that it wasn't going to be as simple as a game jam to get a game out, but I still underestimated the amount of effort that goes into actually completing a game. And, maybe it's just being locked away for so long talking, but I underestimated how much work would go in to fighting myself. Doing things that I don't want to do, or haven't come up with a good answer for, yet, is especially difficult for me. Sometimes I end up just staring at my code, not knowing what to work on, or worse yet actively avoiding the things that need to get done to get to that next milestone. I find myself doing this more and more as I get into the more complicated details for Cartogratour. I'll be honest, there have been more than a few 0% weeks, which is the concept of not getting anything done on your game over a given period of time. As this is quickly becoming too introspective, I'll leave that for a bit later.
Difficulties I've run into with cartographer actually ties in nicely with the last bullet point of this post. In the third bullet point I talked about being a solo dev, and relying on yourself to get things done. To that end, I am still crappy at this. Accountability is a thing, and I am terrible about it. If I haven't mentioned it before, I run a game developers forum every weekend. For those interested in what we do, we go over some game theory, what we've done on our games over the last week or whatever amount of time it's been since the last forum, and then go over some lenses to look through for our game. In this context, it's a game design lens. If you're interested, there's a link to the book and the lenses themselves in the show notes as well. This is been my primary form of accountability over the last six years. And although it's been a hell of a lot of fun, it hasn't actually helped me actually get a game out the door. I find myself putting more effort into the forum in some weeks than I do into my games themselves. This is becoming increasingly problematic, especially considering I know how limited my weekly time is, and what I need to do to get cartographer into a more playable state. I can see why some people want to quit their day job to focus on their game, gambling on the facts of that it's going to be successful enough to support them moving forward. Unfortunately, I don't have the faith in my own game design skills, nor do I have the desire to risk my livelihood on a bet like that.
So, where does this leave me? Well, since we've been having a bit of a hiatus for the main line adventure mechanics, it's given me an opportunity to use these side quests as a form of accountability as well. That's why I'm taking a look at my seemingly perennial weak point of self-motivation for my own games. If the last year and a half has proven anything, it's been that left to my own devices (and without having external social commitments), I can't actually get a lot done. I think the key is, though, that I have to be able to say no I need to focus on x today. Despite being an introvert, I do thoroughly enjoy spending time with people face to face. It is obvious to me, though, that I need to budget at least one day a week or something to focused game development time. Talking about game design and researching it is great and all, but if you're ostensibly a game developer, you still need to sit down and actually design and develop games. And I think I haven't given myself enough time over the last few months to do so. We'll see if a dedicated amount of time will help in terms of actually getting a game done.
So, have I changed much as a developer? Not really. I still thoroughly enjoy the rush of game jams, especially when working in a team to get something done. I still need to internalize that making games for a jam does not equate to making a commercial game for release. If anything, doing game jams can put you into bad habits where you think that you're actually further along than you really are. I really need to get the last few features into Cartogratour and start the polishing phase so I can call out for some more in-depth playtesting. I feel that there is a good nugget in what I have already, and if anything, having people look at it and give feedback will motivate me to get more done. Accountability is going to be a continuing issue, especially since this is my hobby and I don't really have the push to get it out that I would have if it was my job. I'm partially okay with that, however, since I just want to release the game for people to enjoy, and don't really expect to make much, if anything, off of it. One of the curses of making your hobby your job is that it no longer is fun. At least, so I hear. I don't really want to ruin game design and development for myself by pushing so hard that I burn myself out. That's not to say I don't want to have my work appreciated, it's more so that I don't want to jade myself.
Where is Cartogratour at right now? I'm actually in the middle of putting NPCs into the game. This is a non-trivial task, especially given the rework that I did a couple months ago, but I still need to get it done since it is one of the core tenants of Cartogratour. I went on a bit of a side tangent and attempted to put a day night cycle into the game, but I ran into a limitation of pygame where changing too many surfaces at once will severely degrade performance. I may end up having to cut the day night cycle from the game at this point. Either that or radically change what's the day night cycle looks like in the game itself. This is been one of the issues that I haven't really wanted to address, obviously. It sucks having to run into those hard limitations and trying to find a workaround. We'll see if I can come up with an adequate work around in the next couple of releases, though.
That's about all that I have for the adventure mechanic side quest this time. As always, if you have any suggestions, comments, or questions reach out to me on Twitter. My handle is @jcsirron. This has been the adventure mechanic side quest and I'll talk to you next time.
