aug 18, 2015
I have a bad habit when I start a game: before I have made the version I actually want to play, I start designing the version somebody else might understand. I am not really making the game yet. I am making the explanation of the game, the trailer sentence, the Steam tags, the store page, the screenshot that makes the loop look cleaner than it is. Somewhere in there I can feel the whole thing get a little fake.
It's not even a money thing at first. It's more embarrassing than that. I want the idea to look real before I've done the work that would make it real, so I start sanding down the weird parts too early. The thing I was excited about becomes a thing I can describe safely, and those are not always the same thing.
The actual game is usually some stupid little feeling that doesn't sound impressive when you say it out loud. Maybe the reload feels good, or the enemy moves in a way that makes me angry without making me bored. Maybe the dash has just enough panic in it, or I die and restart so fast that I hit it again without thinking. None of that is a pitch, and it is barely even a design document; it is just the part I should be protecting.
When I say make games for yourself, I don't mean ignore everyone and disappear into some precious little art cave. Players matter, feedback matters, and shipping matters. I just think the first ugly version has to answer to you before it answers to an imaginary audience. If I wouldn't play the bad build alone, after the menu breaks and the only sound effect is some placeholder click I forgot to replace, then I probably don't have a game. I have homework I assigned myself.
I have made plenty of that. It's easy to confuse wanting a game to exist with wanting to be the person who made it. Those are different urges. One gets me opening the editor after midnight to tune restart speed; the other gets me rearranging fake features in a notes file because it feels productive and costs nothing.
The annoying part is that the selfish version is usually the more honest version. It keeps the strange parts around long enough to find out whether they matter, lets the loop be ugly for a while, and gives me room to notice the little thing I keep coming back to instead of burying it under a better-looking idea.
There's a trap on the other side too. "I'm making it for myself" can turn into a very comfortable excuse to never finish, never show anyone, never fix the parts that are obviously broken. I've done that version too. It feels pure right up until it feels dead.
To me, the order matters: make the thing you keep looking for and failing to find, then clean it up, explain it, and cut the parts that only make sense in your head. Let other people play it and tell you where it sucks, but don't start by negotiating with a crowd that isn't there yet. Open the editor, make one ugly room, and get the restart button feeling right. That is closer to a game than any pitch I have ever written.