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That's not perfectionism, it's failure to prioritize and manage/prevent scope creep. Unless you already have a playable game loop that's so fun it's hard to pu

That's not perfectionism, it's failure to prioritize and manage/prevent scope creep. Unless you already have a playable game loop that's so fun it's hard to put down, you shouldn't be going anywhere near menu systems. You should have what's basically a rickety CLI-invoked developer mode test harness, where the binary immediately enters a playable thing. Only once that is proven as something worth putting a menu system in front of should you even think about that. Most game ideas suck when implemented so they're a total loss, or require a lot of iterating into something entirely different from what you imagined. So the top priority should be implement the game loop of your idea, learn if it sucks ASAP, then maybe try mutate it into something a person can't easily walk away from if you sit them down in front of it, or just cut your losses and do something else entirely.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Sounds like perfectionism to me. Why do you insist it’s not? Nothing you said seems in disagreement with what he said.
- badpun 4y ago
  That's not perfectionism, that's something else. Building out menu systems before you even have the core game loop locked down is basically like building out a house before you know on which plot of land it should be built.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    But how does that make it not perfectionism? Having the wrong priorities is in no way inconsistent with perfectionism. I also don’t think that analogy works because the things he mentioned mostly do need to be touched to develop the core game loop. The problem he has is that once he touches something he can’t leave it dirty. That’s the way in which it’s perfectionism.
    - pengaru 4y ago
      > But how does that make it not perfectionism? Having the wrong priorities is in no way inconsistent with perfectionism. It's not perfectionism because you can't even succeed at making the perfect part without more of the whole defining what perfect even looks like. The requirements evolve/emerge as the whole does. It's just misguided premature effort, but there's a very strong force driving this mistake - it's easier and more fun to trim the sails than build the rest of the ship.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        I agree with what you're saying, but can't resist this little niggle... > it's easier and more fun to trim the sails than build the rest of the ship. That depends on the personality of the dev. Some devs consider the main body of the ship to be the easier and more fun thing. (I suspect that how fun a task is is correlated with how easy it feels to do).
      - syntheweave 4y ago
        Perfectionism is inherently tied to incoherence of thought, because a thought that is perfect in design leads to a perfect resulting action, and "perfectionism" refers to someone that is not taking perfect actions. A perfectionist is often making reactive changes or additions to address specific criticisms, without demonstrating performance at developing or finishing the project as a whole. Digital technologies are flypaper for perfectionists because they enable a lack of commitment: everything is one undo or abstraction layer away.
- pengaru 4y ago
  It's not perfectionism that prevents people from reaching what's, by reasonable standards, a finish line. It's a failure to prioritize. It's perfectionism that prevents people from shipping what's by reasonable standards already past the finish line, because they keep redoing and polishing "good enough" things, ad infinitum. Perfectionism can be a good thing producing exceptional quality results, provided you've prioritized appropriately and are playing "perfectionist" iterating in diminishing returns land. With or without perfectionism, if you can't prioritize correctly, you'll likely fail to finish. Perfectionism causes people to over-finish and endlessly defer shipping.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    I think we have different understandings of perfectionism. I don’t think perfectionism means you do something perfectly. Most of the time I think it’s not being able to trade good enough for best. Often this leads to unfinished work. Perfectionism by no means only comes into play after you have something shippable - you’d likely never get that far.
    - pengaru 4y ago
      Development of anything substantial is an incremental process where parts must exist in an unfinished imperfect state for a time. Managing those priorities and letting parts exist as scaffolding and/or barely working stand-ins is a core competency of our field. e.g. You're not a perfectionist when you used expensive artist-produced "perfect" stand-in art instead of programmer art, you're just incompetent and wasting resources on stuff that won't likely make it into the shipped product. I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what order. You're not a perfectionist when you spent all your time making a "perfect" ECS at the expense of actually completing a playable game, when the latter was your actual goal. You're just a failure/incompetent. But "perfectionist" certainly sounds better for the ego.
      - nonethewiser 4y ago
        > Development of anything substantial is an incremental process where parts must exist in an unfinished imperfect state for a time. Yes, of course. That's why not being able to leave something messy/unfinished/bad is crippling. > I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what order. As you've identified, this thing they're calling perfectionism isn't an asset. I get the sense that you think being a perfectionist is supposed to be a good thing. It's not. It's a defect.

nonethewiser 4y ago

Sounds like perfectionism to me. Why do you insist it’s not? Nothing you said seems in disagreement with what he said.

badpun 4y ago
That's not perfectionism, that's something else. Building out menu systems before you even have the core game loop locked down is basically like building out a house before you know on which plot of land it should be built.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  But how does that make it not perfectionism? Having the wrong priorities is in no way inconsistent with perfectionism. I also don’t think that analogy works because the things he mentioned mostly do need to be touched to develop the core game loop. The problem he has is that once he touches something he can’t leave it dirty. That’s the way in which it’s perfectionism.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    > But how does that make it not perfectionism? Having the wrong priorities is in no way inconsistent with perfectionism. It's not perfectionism because you can't even succeed at making the perfect part without more of the whole defining what perfect even looks like. The requirements evolve/emerge as the whole does. It's just misguided premature effort, but there's a very strong force driving this mistake - it's easier and more fun to trim the sails than build the rest of the ship.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I agree with what you're saying, but can't resist this little niggle... > it's easier and more fun to trim the sails than build the rest of the ship. That depends on the personality of the dev. Some devs consider the main body of the ship to be the easier and more fun thing. (I suspect that how fun a task is is correlated with how easy it feels to do).
    - syntheweave 4y ago
      Perfectionism is inherently tied to incoherence of thought, because a thought that is perfect in design leads to a perfect resulting action, and "perfectionism" refers to someone that is not taking perfect actions. A perfectionist is often making reactive changes or additions to address specific criticisms, without demonstrating performance at developing or finishing the project as a whole. Digital technologies are flypaper for perfectionists because they enable a lack of commitment: everything is one undo or abstraction layer away.
pengaru 4y ago
It's not perfectionism that prevents people from reaching what's, by reasonable standards, a finish line. It's a failure to prioritize. It's perfectionism that prevents people from shipping what's by reasonable standards already past the finish line, because they keep redoing and polishing "good enough" things, ad infinitum. Perfectionism can be a good thing producing exceptional quality results, provided you've prioritized appropriately and are playing "perfectionist" iterating in diminishing returns land. With or without perfectionism, if you can't prioritize correctly, you'll likely fail to finish. Perfectionism causes people to over-finish and endlessly defer shipping.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I think we have different understandings of perfectionism. I don’t think perfectionism means you do something perfectly. Most of the time I think it’s not being able to trade good enough for best. Often this leads to unfinished work. Perfectionism by no means only comes into play after you have something shippable - you’d likely never get that far.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    Development of anything substantial is an incremental process where parts must exist in an unfinished imperfect state for a time. Managing those priorities and letting parts exist as scaffolding and/or barely working stand-ins is a core competency of our field. e.g. You're not a perfectionist when you used expensive artist-produced "perfect" stand-in art instead of programmer art, you're just incompetent and wasting resources on stuff that won't likely make it into the shipped product. I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what order. You're not a perfectionist when you spent all your time making a "perfect" ECS at the expense of actually completing a playable game, when the latter was your actual goal. You're just a failure/incompetent. But "perfectionist" certainly sounds better for the ego.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      > Development of anything substantial is an incremental process where parts must exist in an unfinished imperfect state for a time. Yes, of course. That's why not being able to leave something messy/unfinished/bad is crippling. > I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what order. As you've identified, this thing they're calling perfectionism isn't an asset. I get the sense that you think being a perfectionist is supposed to be a good thing. It's not. It's a defect.