At first I wanted to write a post for all people beginning their journey in game development, cause many ask me for advice. I wanted to write something inspirational but I’ll leave that for another time. Now I want to write about the aspect of game making that 99% of people never get to experience, because they never ship their game, they fail to finish it. I have just finished Soldat 1.4.2 and released it. What is it like to finish a game? Believe or not releasing the game is the downside of game development.
The main reason I’m writing this is you’ll never finish your game if you don’t get this. You have to accept the downside, that means that it will be hard. You’ll spend a lot of hard hours working on practically nothing. None of the players will see your effort, cause all they can see are the new features or changes in game balance that affect them. This effort is unfortunately necessary because it WILL be noticed if you don’t do it. I’m talking about fixing bugs and glitches. Ironing them out is the hardest and most painful task. It is not fun at all. Worst of all it takes out your precious time which could be spent on adding new ideas.
The typical graph of software development shows you that planning and coding the game is about 30% of the time spent on the product. I’d say realistically it is 10%. I have a personal joke which states that I’ve written Soldat in 3 days, the rest was bug fixing.
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy
And it gets harder and harder. Each Soldat patch brings new problems and the time spent is even more. I had 1.4.2 actually ready 2 months ago. All of this time was spent on hunting bugs and fixing them. There were 6 beta versions and 4 release candidate versions. And this was a small patch that didn’t introduce as much as previous ones. The final stage of developing the game is the most painful and boring for everyone and it takes most of the time. I’ve learnt to compensate this by focusing on other games. About 3 years ago I just started to work on other stuff in the meantime. That is the only way I can keep my sanity and my motivation. Cause motivation is all. Without it you’re a vegetable, a couch potato.
This is why I’m writing this. You must understand a certain paradox. You will never get anything done if you’re not motivated to do it and yet there is no motivation when you reach a point where your game is “ready” but there are bugs which will make a lot of people unhappy because they can’t play. This place is where 99% of game developers fail. All was fun and games until this point. Suddenly you realize making games is actually hard work.
It’s hard work, as everything that you want to achieve in life! You gotta push and fight through it! But I said this is not an inspirational post so I’ll cut the crap. I want you to accept the fact that 90% of your efforts in making the game will be just dull work. If you can accept that and be happy with the 10% you’re on your way to success.
Your brain software version 13 billion
You will be on your way to achievement, because this is how your brain works. Understanding how your brain works will help you solve the mystery how actually YOU do stuff (duh). Your brain is just a complicated mechanism. It is a state-driven AI machine. It is a computer with a software program with millions of years in development time and billions of patching done every generation. This is how it works in the context of completing a game.
You imagine the game you want to make. You drool as if you were hungry and saw a fresh piece of meat. You feel how it would feel to make that game and to have it, to play it. You decide you want it.
Feel that? What have you done here? You have decided that you want the good feelings. Now this is VERY important.
You go do some research, you learn to code etc. You start making the game, you see how fun and exciting it is. You encounter some problems but most aren’t big enough to spoil the fun. You reach the end phase of creating the game. All is ready, you release a beta version. Suddenly all hell breaks loose. Thousands of bugs overwhelm you. You get to know that no two computers are the same. Bill’s XP and a Geforce 4 does not equal Ted’s XP and a Geforce 4 in the real world. You are dumbstruck. You start fixing the bugs. Suddenly it becomes frustrating. You notice you are not having fun anymore. What is this? You didn’t want this, where are the good feelings?
They are gone because you’re a finite state AI machine which communicates with emotions. Problems raise exceptions in the form of frustration and anger. Now you use your logic and you conclude that it sucks to make games. Or don’t you?
This goes a lot deeper, all would be well if you would just accept that you don’t wanna make games anymore. You see, you don’t really know what your brain is telling you. It’s all a matter of interpretation of the conscious mind. The conscious mind reaches false conclusions because it operates on limited amount of data. What actually is just a sense of effort because you have to work harder now you interpret as “I don’t have time”.
Lack of time syndrome
It’s utterly frustrating when I hear this. There is no such thing as lack of time. You’ve all the time in the world! Time is infinite! What you don’t have is motivation! Fuck, when I’m motivated it doesn’t matter how much spare time I have, I might not even sleep or eat just to do the thing I want. There is always time for the motivated person! Work, school, your cat are all excuses, they are all bullshit that you come up with to lie to yourself and to others.
Next time you conclude that you can’t finish the game because you don’t have time, shut the fuck up and listen to me. This is your false reasoning! A bad interpretation of feelings. This is lack of emotional intelligence, a lack of understanding what is actually happening in your body and brain. Lack of proper knowledge of what stage you are at. End result of false expectations.
Lack of time is a lie! You have simply reached a wrong conclusion. So what actually happened when you didn’t finish that game and you stated that you haven’t got time to do it? Remember when I wrote “Now this is VERY important”?
OK scroll up, I know you didn’t remember.
What do you do? What do you do?
You decided you want the good feelings, and at the same time completely forgot about the BAD feelings! This is a problem of even the most intelligent and “realistic” people. Also this is also a fallacy of optimists. You won’t accomplish anything if you don’t think about the downside. If you don’t consider the bad things nothing will happen. This is because they WILL happen. Whatever you think of, how well and beautiful it will be, the fact is in the real world you WILL meet obstacles. There WILL be a downside. If you didn’t accept it at the time you were making a decision to go for it, once you encounter a big problem you will act surprised! Why is this such an effort? I don’t feel like doing this anymore, if only I had more time…
I probably haven’t stated properly what I wanted to say. Anyway I’m gonna write a lot about this subject and all will eventually become crystal clear, so if you are interested in this kind of stuff read my blog. The thing to remember is that you have to know about the bad things that will happen. As I stated in my previous post Why your next 3D MMORPG will fail, if you’re a beginner you don’t know what you don’t know. So educate yourself, read my blog cause I’ll tell you more about the downside and build smaller stuff so you can get a sense of how much effort it will be to make games.
Awesome post, i’ve always had trouble motivating myself towards doing things just because I feel it won’t be worth the time. I find it becomes easier once I take the first steps and see some sort of progression, whether i’m drawing or writing something. There are other times when I feel really motivated and i’ll get a ton of the stuff I wanted done and basically once you put an ounce of effort into something you want to do, it becomes achievable. The internet is pretty distracting, there was always a clearer focus when you had to take a greater initiative, the resources available on the web are so vast yet intimidating at the same time… Programming is a little different but i’ll keep trying just because i’d like to be comfortable enough to enjoy doing it.
Looking forward to seeing more from you soon
yupz i liek reading ur stuff makes a lot of sense. but the things u write applies
“IN LIFE”.. man u should be a motivational speaker.. speak to these lazy ass plp in the world… anyways keep it up MM. u the man.. and for the plp dat dont get this u dont count lol ur still stuck there in the couch. or ur comp hopefully the screen turns off and u c a reflection of ur self.. see the world in every angle..
Yeah, this happens a lot of the time, i make a game up until the point where you just don’t want to make it anymore. It sucks, but most of the time i either take a break or just make something else.
The other big point is:
people that can’t finish a project always start something new. Because they just think that what they where doing wasen’t good enough (that was me in my first day’s of programing).
Until in the long nights that never end I dream that I was finishing the greatest project of all time I figured out that it would appen someday but needed to work more hard.
So I started a project sometimes I changed of “project” but it was always related to the one I have started. Because the engine etc. would help getting the first goal complete faster and finaly all dows project combines into one to make …
(to be continued)
Yes… bug fixing. So bloody damn annoying. You think you’ve fixed it, and then it pops up again.
“Damit!!!”
Hmm… if anyone asks how to make a game, I’ll direct them here.
Nice post, it makes me want to drop everything I’m doing and… sleep ;D
There’s a lot more to it. A lot of times you just lose your motivation cause the game you’re doing sucks. On an intuitive level you know that but you don’t want to admit that to yourself. Again it’s a lie to yourself and you should learn to see this.
There is also something called discipline, which can save your day when you lack motivation. I found nice tutorial on how to become more disciplined:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline-acceptance/
>>Michal Says
>>There’s a lot more to it. A lot of times you just lose your motivation cause >>the game you’re doing sucks. On an intuitive level you know that but you >>don’t want to admit that to yourself. Again it’s a lie to yourself and you >>should learn to see this.
Agreed, but the only reason you lie to yourself like this is because you have worked so hard and spent so much effort making something; Admitting it’s a piece of shit is hard to do.
Discipline is quite useless if you know your project sucks. You don’t want to waste your time developing a project that will eventually still be a piece of crap. But you do need some discipline to actually get certain things done… I’ve found myself planning a really simple game with few features, but gotten out of hand and started designing too many features, never getting a single one finished. Which obviously results in frustration and me ditching the project because I set the bar too high. The ideal thing would be to just write the damn design document and stick to it, put aside every new idea you get along the way.
I don’t advice disciplining yourself. You might get initial results but in the long run it is a bad idea because it makes you a sad person. There are completely natural ways of motivating yourself. Do you ever have to motivate yourself to eat? It is spontaneous, you do it when you feel the urge. Think about that.
>>Agreed, but the only reason you lie to yourself like this is because you have worked so hard and spent so much effort making something; Admitting it’s a piece of shit is hard to do.
Yeah you have to have the courage to let go. I did that with Crimson Glory after I saw it would not be the thing I planned.
I do like the feeling of beating one of those annoying bugs though.
it does bring back those “good” feelings you were talking about.
Oh man, MM wants a good soldat clone soooo bad 😀
“I have a personal joke which states that I’ve written Soldat in 3 days, the rest was bug fixing.”
I agree on that except that it doesn’t seem to be a joke. I think it is time to finally go on creating a new game because without proper planning in the beginning running a single project over several years becomes an uncontrollable patchwork. You’re experiencing the aftereffects.
To the post itself: Your posts always go eventually into the zen and spirit and “it’s a mind thing” direction. I actually don’t like it because game development is far away from such esoteric thinking. Motivation is the key. This is true and it could have been said in a lot less text.
You repeat yourself too often, try to get to your point.
I do believe you have something to say and something to share but you have to work on your style.
Wow, this is pretty motivational.
And the best thing is that it doesn’t only apply to game development. It applies to life in general.
I do a lot of non-fiction writing, and I find myself get a really great idea, then filling in the holes seems to be too big of a project, so I lose all motivation. The only way I find I finish anything is that either A) I don’t plan it, I just write; or B) I think of exactly what I’m going to do, and in my spur of ideas I fill in the holes.
People should really pay attention to you MM, seems like your a wise person willing to give advice. I don’t mean to be just another blind fan, but I can appreciate philosophy and truth.
>> running a single project over several years becomes an uncontrollable patchwork. You’re experiencing the aftereffects.
Yes I agree.
>>To the post itself: Your posts always go eventually into the zen and spirit and “it’s a mind thing” direction. I actually don’t like it because game development is far away from such esoteric thinking.
I completely disagree. It’s all in the mind and how you think about things. I will go deeper into zen in my future posts because you may like it or not, zen is an instruction manual on how to use your brain properly. If you understand how to do things the “zen way” you’ll never lose motivation, because you are using “yourself” correctly.
>>You repeat yourself too often, try to get to your point.
If I don’t repeat myself, you won’t remember what I wrote.
PuddleJumper:
Heh you’re on it. Points A and B are exactly as I learned things happen.
I would say that you need to repeat alot. Because for a big majority of people it’s prouved scientificly that we need to read something 20 times before aving it memorize completle
This must be my favorite post by MM so far.
>>I would say that you need to repeat alot. Because for a big majority of people it’s prouved scientificly that we need to read something 20 times before aving it memorize completle
“A lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word, “a lot” is not one word.
Proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved, proved.
Scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically, scientifically.
Having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having, having.
Completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely, completely.
You’re welcome.
thanks “alot” lol a lot I have memorize this completely
Well i must say that i can’t agree with some of point here.
For example it goes for lack of time. Lack of tiem is real thing unfortenatly ;( Why? Becaust there are terms. I have 2 days to finish small thign for work. I have 1.5 month to make a looot of works for uni. And when i was making game for a competition had a dead line and i lacked the time to finish it right. That’s wha i call a lack of time… Yeah we have all time we wan’t but to for work there are terms and dead lines and they create te meaning of “ack of time”
And creation of games is not only work where you meet problems of good and bad feelings standing on you way. It’s common among creative proffesions. Desginers, painters, singers etc.
From what i know game making is most complex type of creativity at the moment. Why? Cuz you need idea, characters, music, programming, math, voice acting, scripting and a lot lot more. And one man can’t do it all. But where many people are met agreement is a rare thing. So you must be ready that game will take a lot of time to make and it will not be as good as you wanted. And it is common.
hey bug fixing isn’t that bad! You’ve just got to not be childish in your vision of developing a game. Is building a house fun? yes a lot of it is, and a lot is monotomous work. The thought of the end result (or money) drives you.
I recently programmed the ancient chinese game Go/Weiki. It took a week or two to get most of it up and running and another month with the bugs. Luckily i enjoy any kind of problem solving. When i get bored of it i do something else, like the artwork. When i feel like it seems impossible, i sleep on it.
There’s nothing wrong with a little break from things, but too long a break and you’ll never return to finish the work, or if you do it’s doubtful you’ll easily pick up from where you left off.
Very interesting blog. Are you trying to be with my rainy average Do you want a joke?
Why do turkeys eat so little? Because they are always stuffed!
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Really great post. It’s not only about gamedevelopent, its about most of creative work.