New year, new me! Says everyone ever haha! And In the game dev world, that often translates to finally finishing one game for once. For those who don't know, there's a major epidemic in the game development industry and it's been going on for years. It's that game developers never finish the game they start. And every year, one of their new year resolution is the classic: "This year, I'll finish the game I started." and then proceed to do the exact same thing. Well, one of the reason why you may be finding yourself in such a loop is because you're not setting a realistic goal for yourself.
How to set a good goal?
A good goal-setting strategy is to first evaluate your resources and brutally honest with yourself and what you have. That includes your skills and experience. Everyone would like to do the next big AAA game that'll sell millions of copies the first day, but the truth is that it also requires AAA budget and AAA skills and knowledge, so basically AAA resources. Most people, especially indie developers, don't just have AAA resources. Even if in the odd case that they would have AAA money, maybe their parents are millionaires, they would still lack the 'how-to' and the structure of knowing how to build such a game from scratch. So even with that kind of money, that goal would be slightly too ambitious for a first game, unless you simply hire a AAA project manager to lead the project for you, then you could maybe get away with this.
What makes a game too ambitious?
As we mentioned above, evaluating your resources is a big part of checking whether your game is too ambitious or not. However, there are a few other things that can make your game too ambitious. You can start off with a budget and overall resources that match what you have and can afford but as you go, you constantly want to add more and more features. That leads to you working on the game for way longer than you should and you end up never releasing the game because there's always a new feature that you want to add. Same goes for being too perfectionist. It's good to want to want your game to be somewhat perfect but acknowledging and understanding that it won't be is crucial to the success and even more to the release of your game. If you keep trying to fix all the bugs that could ever happen in your game, you'll end up working forever and continually finding new bugs.
What next?
Once your game is not as ambitious anymore, you can start setting a realistic time map for when you want to release your game. and perfect or not, just release it! That'll not only give you the experience but also the confidence that you can finish what you started.
Hope this helped you in any way possible! Let us know if you have any other tips that you'd like to share with the community!
How to set a good goal?
A good goal-setting strategy is to first evaluate your resources and brutally honest with yourself and what you have. That includes your skills and experience. Everyone would like to do the next big AAA game that'll sell millions of copies the first day, but the truth is that it also requires AAA budget and AAA skills and knowledge, so basically AAA resources. Most people, especially indie developers, don't just have AAA resources. Even if in the odd case that they would have AAA money, maybe their parents are millionaires, they would still lack the 'how-to' and the structure of knowing how to build such a game from scratch. So even with that kind of money, that goal would be slightly too ambitious for a first game, unless you simply hire a AAA project manager to lead the project for you, then you could maybe get away with this.
What makes a game too ambitious?
As we mentioned above, evaluating your resources is a big part of checking whether your game is too ambitious or not. However, there are a few other things that can make your game too ambitious. You can start off with a budget and overall resources that match what you have and can afford but as you go, you constantly want to add more and more features. That leads to you working on the game for way longer than you should and you end up never releasing the game because there's always a new feature that you want to add. Same goes for being too perfectionist. It's good to want to want your game to be somewhat perfect but acknowledging and understanding that it won't be is crucial to the success and even more to the release of your game. If you keep trying to fix all the bugs that could ever happen in your game, you'll end up working forever and continually finding new bugs.
What next?
Once your game is not as ambitious anymore, you can start setting a realistic time map for when you want to release your game. and perfect or not, just release it! That'll not only give you the experience but also the confidence that you can finish what you started.
Hope this helped you in any way possible! Let us know if you have any other tips that you'd like to share with the community!