Prototype until it hurts?
I had an interesting discussion with fellow game dev Paul Dana yesterday that I think I’m going to expand into a full-blown article. It concerned what I would say is a bullet-point list of concerns about the direction of my studio. Of course, a lot of the answers to those questions are entirely dependent on your particular situation, but I think it might still be interesting to interview a few other people out there who already have studios and/or make and sell games and put together a summary. But that’s later.
One thing that Paul mentioned that I feel I have to keep foremost in my mind is the concept of prototyping before deciding on what game to make next. In the past I had attacked that decision by putting down a list of ideas on paper and then having everyone pick out one that really seemed like a possible winner. And then just making the game. Which seems terribly questionable, even if you attack the game design in an iterative fashion.
It makes more sense to me to prototype multiple ideas before deciding on which to focus on for a full-blown game. In fact, Paul mentioned prototyping practically until it hurt. For me, I take this to mean don’t be afraid to invest time prototyping a good handful of your best ideas before settling. Don’t worry about getting everything just right in terms of game mechanics, and certainly don’t mess with anything other than programmer art. The key is to get to the heart of the fun as quickly as possible, as purely as possible.
If it is taking too long to prototype and find the fun, take a hard look at what you are trying to do. Maybe it just isn’t fun, or maybe it will take a good while to find the fun. As an indie who only has a few hours per week to work on my products, I don’t believe I can waste too much time on a game design that doesn’t almost immediately reveal its fun.
I also think that just because the very first idea you tried seems like a lot of fun does not necessarily mean you just stop there and go into full-scale production. Who’s to say that the third prototype won’t be more fun and lend itself much better to marketing and better sales? There is a limit to the prototyping phase, of course - the definition of “where it hurts” will be different for each studio. But taking one idea and settling on it as an indie strikes me as just too little and a tad short-sighted. You are possibly betting a little bit too much on good luck, which might be fine for some but not for me.
One last thing. Once you’ve decided on a game and are firing away on all cylinders don’t be afraid to evaluate the game again, and if it for some reason is not turning out as well as expected, don’t rule out the possibility of shelving it. It’s your time and resources that you would be “wasting”, so that’s a painful decision to make, but don’t get into the mindset that you absolutely positively MUST finish the game. Because it’s possible that it will kill your morale and dedication and passion, and no game is worth that. Beware of not finishing anything, however. That would be almost as bad.
When you finish a game, you should have a host of game ideas not only on paper lying around, but also in some stages of prototype that you can then use for a starting point on the next planning phase. That seems terribly appealing.
