7 ms·

It's harder than you realize to make good games! And a lot of good games suck until very close to the end where suddenly everything clicks and they become amaz

by ido 4y ago

It's harder than you realize to make good games! And a lot of good games suck until very close to the end where suddenly everything clicks and they become amazing. It's not really a very predictable process & at the end of the day you have to spend a lot of resources (time & money, some of it you're on the line for to publishers or investors) before you find out. It can very easily be better financially (or at least less bad) for a studio to finish up a game they realized (possibly too late) isn't as good as they hoped than to just abandon it - you have contractual obligations, you get paid on milestones, and everyone still has to get a salary even if you decide to abandon the game.

ethbr0 4y ago
I'd be super curious to get a representative sample on this from inside the industry. Do studios not prototype games? Maybe it's rose tinted glasses from a simpler time, with shorter development cycles, but almost all these famous game retrospectives seem to begin with "once we had the initial systems in playable form, before assets or polishing, it turned out the game was a lot of fun."
- ido 4y ago
  You prototype a lot but a promising prototype doesn't always turn to a good (and original) game. Not every game is fun in prototype form (think for example of SimCity or Civilization - you have to have a certain level of complexity before it's interesting) and other times something that seems fun for a few minutes in a prototype doesn't necessarily translate to a fun X hours game. Or you can find a fun core (matching gems in a match 3 game and causing a lot of cascades is fun!) but is not something that will on its own make a game commercially viable in 2022. And sometimes you run out of time before finding a very promising prototype and have to get started anyway or you'll have people idlying (while getting paid & costing you money you may not have before you sign a publishing deal) so you just take a leap of faith on whatever seemed best among what you did find... The cases in your quote are really the rare exceptions where everything went great but it doesn't go that way every single time.
  - aliswe 4y ago
    Agree, you essentially prototype before you have a budget. when the prtotype is approved or blessed, you get a budget, but that is the point of no return where you lose the mandate to significantly and suddenly change this concept. If you stray from it gradually though, you cannot course correct significantly if that affects budget.
    - ido 4y ago
      I've also on multiple occasions had to send pitches to upcoming games while we were still a year from shipping the current game (as it takes a while to actually get money, if you want a smooth transition of team members you have to do it gradually and plan it well ahead of time). And when finishing up an existing game is when you have the least person-resources to invest in prototyping new ideas. And if you're a small company/startup without a lot of money you can't chance getting stuck without funding, so play with the cards you were dealt and try what you can...

by ido 4y ago

ethbr0 4y ago

I'd be super curious to get a representative sample on this from inside the industry. Do studios not prototype games? Maybe it's rose tinted glasses from a simpler time, with shorter development cycles, but almost all these famous game retrospectives seem to begin with "once we had the initial systems in playable form, before assets or polishing, it turned out the game was a lot of fun."

ido 4y ago
You prototype a lot but a promising prototype doesn't always turn to a good (and original) game. Not every game is fun in prototype form (think for example of SimCity or Civilization - you have to have a certain level of complexity before it's interesting) and other times something that seems fun for a few minutes in a prototype doesn't necessarily translate to a fun X hours game. Or you can find a fun core (matching gems in a match 3 game and causing a lot of cascades is fun!) but is not something that will on its own make a game commercially viable in 2022. And sometimes you run out of time before finding a very promising prototype and have to get started anyway or you'll have people idlying (while getting paid & costing you money you may not have before you sign a publishing deal) so you just take a leap of faith on whatever seemed best among what you did find... The cases in your quote are really the rare exceptions where everything went great but it doesn't go that way every single time.
- aliswe 4y ago
  Agree, you essentially prototype before you have a budget. when the prtotype is approved or blessed, you get a budget, but that is the point of no return where you lose the mandate to significantly and suddenly change this concept. If you stray from it gradually though, you cannot course correct significantly if that affects budget.
  - ido 4y ago
    I've also on multiple occasions had to send pitches to upcoming games while we were still a year from shipping the current game (as it takes a while to actually get money, if you want a smooth transition of team members you have to do it gradually and plan it well ahead of time). And when finishing up an existing game is when you have the least person-resources to invest in prototyping new ideas. And if you're a small company/startup without a lot of money you can't chance getting stuck without funding, so play with the cards you were dealt and try what you can...