Start small, fail fast, learn fast

Hello Steemit!   

I only recently joined and what I immediately noticed is that the Game section was not in the popular list. I know that there are lots of websites out there talking about games from a consumer and developer perspective, but I think Steemit could be an interesting platform to talk about games and the industry from a different angle.    

So I am going to try to post regularly about my humble experience in the games industry. Hopefully this will interest some of you, and encourage people to posts more about games and finally help the game section get more visibility and the love it deserves :)  

So here we go, as a first post, I would like to talk a bit about indie game creation and where to start when you want to create a game.   I remember when I was younger, I wanted to create awesome games and I had no idea where to start. But nowadays, game engines such as Unity, Unreal Engine 4, Game Maker… have made the creation of games more accessible and it is now much easier to publish a game on consoles than a few years back. However creating a game is still a complex process, which can be quite daunting and it is easy to make mistakes and fail.    

I will go through some advices, which may sound obvious but are very often the cause of early failures:    

1. Start small and release  

Usually the first mistake that is made is to thing big. Very often people want to make the next MMORPG or FPS without having even created or released a single game. Game of this type usually requires a huge team and / or developers with lots of experience. I am not saying it is impossible as it is now possible to create big games thanks to procedurally generated worlds and / or careful planning.   

However tiny teams like Hello Games, which have been developing No Man’s Sky, started small with Joe Danger before working on their highly anticipated game. They have learnt from their mistakes before undertaking such an ambitious project.   

  

It is always a good exercise to make a small game and go through the whole process (from concept to completion). It is important to fail when you start to learn from your mistakes and avoid making these kinds of mistakes later.    And finally, there is no shame in copying an existing game, especially when learning. It is a good exercise to reproduce existing, even more if you can improve the game experience.   

2. Know your strength and weaknesses 

Before you start making the game of your dream, try to assess your strength and weaknesses. It is important to identify early what you can do and what you cannot. This will help you define the type of game you could make without any help.   

If you lack certain skills and you absolutely need them for your game, you might think to recruit people. But unless you are willing to pay them, it is usually pretty hard to assemble a team of motivated people who want to work for “free”. People usually have different expectations and they also have their personal life aside. I have myself tried over the past to find people to work with me on a game and most of the time they would simply lose motivations or interests because of their personal life.   

Again if you can assemble a team, do not hesitate, but you will need to keep the team motivated over time. There are many amateur game projects, which have been canceled over the years because teams split up.   

3. I have got story but no idea about the gameplay 

It is really cool to have a story ready and to set the universe for it but if you have no idea what the game is going to be and its gameplay, well it is a bit pointless. It is really important to define what you want the player to do, what you want him to experience before writing down the full story.    

If the game has a really cool story but is a dull experience, the player is not going to find the game fun.    

4. Avoid Pizza – Sauerkraut 

What is your game? What is it that makes it special or stand out compare to the rest of the games out there? Why should I as a player pick your game rather than someone’s else? These are all fair questions that you should ask yourself before starting developing your game.   

If you are happy to say that your game is a copy of a specific title, well that is fine but be upfront about it and make sure your game is as good as the original. Make sure you understand the design of the original game completely so you can improve the experience rather than just copying. Why play a copy when I could play the original game if it is better?   

If your game is supposed to be original, avoid saying my game is a bit like X title with a bit of Y title and a bit of Z title. Taking the best of different title and assembling them together, very often does not work like you would not have sauerkraut or pasta as a topping for pizza (well after checking the internet, you might do, but I think you get my point). 

If you cannot define your game in 2-3 lines or make an elevator pitch, rethink it.   These are just a few obvious advices, and there is obviously a lot more things to make a game successful. Nowadays making a fun game is no longer enough; you need to know how to market it. Developing a game is just the beginning.  

sources: top image from archisys.co bottom image from cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com