can't stop playing my own game...

[Luis]

I'm working on my new project (windboxes) in delphi...

...Ok, maybe this sprite should be placed a little bit higher...
...[editing code]...
...let's see if everything is fine...
...Project/Start (F9) .....

...yeah, it's good now...

...[playing for 45 min]...

...damm it's really late, i should continue programming...
...[going back to developer environment]...

...hmm, maybe that sprite should be placed where it was before...
...[editing code]...
...let's see if everything is fine...
...Project/Start (F9)...
...

Anyone with the same experience?

greetings

Lars

[soniCron]

Yes, I do the same. In fact, it's not limited to video games - I also obsessively listen to my own music. While I do either, I analyze and weigh the creations. Does this build a stronger product? It's hard to say. I generally drop projects I can't perpetually surround myself with - if I can't bear to enjoy it for a period of time, what's to say anyone else can? In the end, I can only hope that with hours of focus on my creations, I find and fix errors and mistakes that would otherwise mar an excellent product.

Or maybe I'm just that self involved. ;)

[robleong]

It's surely a good sign. :) But enough of it - now, get back to your programming!

[moco]

It's surely a good sign. :)

It is! Playing your own game for long periods of time sometimes feels a bit like a waste of time, but what you're doing is putting yourself in the place of a player instead of a developer and that's important. Fine-tuning and tiny adjustments can turn an average game into a great one, and the more you play it yourself, the more you'll see just what needs fine-tuning.

[lakibuk]

It is not a good sign. I believe that you can't judge if your own game is good. You can only see flaws in others' games. But playing a lot might help finding bugs.

[Applewood]

It's a poor tale if you DON'T want to play your own game. If it doesn't float YOUR boat, it's not gonna sail with less biased parties - ie your customers.

However, once you've stopped tweaking the game mechanics and start to develop some l33t skills at what might pass for the final version (of the game mechanics), go get someone else to test the default difficulty settings!

[Grey Alien]

yeah paying your own game helps spot bugs and assess what its fun and what isn't, and helps you to get new ideas. But as Applewood says, get other people to test the difficulty (some noob like you mum), cos I'm a bit l337 on match-3s now.

[Bad Sector]

So, that's why nobody finished the shareware version of Nikwi... :-P

[Nexic]

It is not a good sign. I believe that you can't judge if your own game is good. You can only see flaws in others' games. But playing a lot might help finding bugs.

I totally agree with this. My first couple of games were utterly terrible but I couldn't stop playing them and I thought they were great because I enjoyed them. Now I realise the only real enjoyment I was getting was the thrill of 'I made this!'. If someone else had made them I wouldn't have played them for more than a couple of minutes. These days I will still find myself playing my game and then have to consiously tell myself to stop and get on with more coding.

[Sharpfish]

I suppose i'm lucky in that any "thrill" or excitment of a newly added feature, gizmo, graphic or gameplay element in my games (prototypes and beta) quickly wears off. I'm far too concerned about making the right move dev-wise (analysis paralysis no-less) to get caught up in fun. I know it's there, and I do enjoy it but as I say: I become NUMB to it after a day or two because I know all the tech underneath.

Very hard to judge as a game without Bias (either positive or negative) as a developer, especially a lone-wolf as I am. This is where OTHERS are absolutely essential in reacting to and reporting how they find your game. Though I would only get them on board when it was ~80% done anyway because there are bound to be conflicts of opinions and you would end up getting nothing done if you listened to everyone.

TBH I haven't ever been addicted to playing any game I've written, nor to many other indies games (very few) but isn't that part of it being a business? a product? I think there is a time for the passion and a time for the clinical/cyncial self quality control. It makes the process much longer as you will change things over and over again to find that intial "buzz" as a developer but if you get it occasionally checked by another player to ensure it's not a backwards step then you can only refine and improve the gameplay.

Just last night my WIP underwent it's umpteenth change to core-gameplay (albiet a minor rejig/twist), and no i'm not proud of messing around for so long on gameplay changes, I've certainly learned to prototype faster and sort core gameplay out sooner in the project for the next game!

Maybe when it's finished I will enjoy playing it but right now I have too much to do on it to relax! ;)

[soniCron]

If you can't adequately judge your own game, then I don't believe you have any business making games. Same with any other artistic endeavor.

[Emmanuel]

You can't know for sure if you have a good, great, or mega-hit game on your hands until you put it up for sale, even if you're thrilled about it, but I've learned that the other way around is not true -- if you're lukewarm about something, and try to dump it on customers anyway, it most certainly will translate to a bad game. Being able to move things on the screen or having a great engine underneath doesn't count :) It's more art than science, so once we think we have a solid game, we have it tested by people who have never seen it before, a lot (once they have, the surprise is gone, and we tend to re-show it only when fixing specific issues). We of course get slammed and discover some serious, legitimate gameplay issues that need fixing, in the first iteration or two.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[ManuelMarino]

Well, in our field we always say: never be satisfied with your own work.

This means : always do the best, and continue, and continue, till there's no time left to improve.

In the end customers will feel you've make something perfect, but there is always something more you can do.

[Sharpfish]

Yeah, the last two posts (above this one), kinda sum it up. You simply cannot judge your own work without any bias at all. And by that I mean you will be either over critical or over confident (releasing anything just because "you made it").

It is far better to strive for a kind of perfection that is part of your vision and then get others to feed back on it. You will get positive and negative (because *nothing* is perfect) and then you choose how and what to react on and what to implement, remove, change or ignore - that is where your final "game developer" judgement comes in.

If you just do all that by yourself you may make a very good game, especially as you become more experienced, but for new developers or those who have been out the loop you can't be 100% sure that you have hit the nail on the head, dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's.

To say "If you can't adequately judge your own game, then I don't believe you have any business making games" is accurate in a high level way, i.e does the game compare visually with it's competitors? Are there enough hours of gameplay? and obvious issues that evolve organically over the time of the project. However, I still don't believe anyone (in isolation) can be 100% sure of their own work be it art of any kind (games, music). I would rather be on the side of doubting my own creations to push me into improving them as much as I can rather than resting on my laurels. That is why i'm guilty of over-analysis and reworking of gameplay. The end product (or beta or whatever stage you are when it all "falls into place") you should certainly be pleased with and excited for others to see (and I assume most of us are like that?), but along the way until you reach that point where assets, code and gameplay really gel for the first time there can be a lot of doubt if you are not blindly confident or under the impression you are the next Miyamoto or something. ;)

I think anyone who is making a game would generally believe it is fun (implicit), and judging it (and addressing negative points, prototyping and rewriting parts) is what gets it to a releasable state. The games I see that are released "too early" are where the judgement is needed and too many times that seems to be lacking maybe due to lack of feedback from others or lack of enough dev time (or experience).

I don't think admitting doubts about gameplay before a game is released is a bad thing, especially when corrective measures have been taken (new core gameplay tweaks) to correct it and improve it. I just generally don't like to brag about things or shout from the rooftops about how great I am (or not) so I take the same view with anything I create, striving to give my best but never fully sure and never fully happy with the "last thing" and hoping to do better with the next one.

Anything else is just arrogance or youthful bravado.

[Sharpfish]

It just occured to me, an ommision I made im my last post. It only applies as strongly if you are attempting make a game that has no reference point, i.e never been done before in the way "you" are doing it, or attempting to make it new.

If you are using another game as a reference point (the polite way of putting it) then it's obvious that you can assume there IS a market for that gameplay and that the mechanic works... Bejwelled, Zuma, Tetris, Breakout all fit into those categories so makers of derivitives of those games probably wouldn't have doubts along the way about the viability of the core mechanic and therefore could just enjoy playing the game, because it is built on a proven playable and "addicitve" gametype.

The analysis (that can go on for months) of core gameplay only really kicks in when you are shooting in the dark while attempting something different. :cool:

[Grey Alien]

I think it depends on the person. Some people may love playing their rubbish game because of the "I made this" mentality whereas others may be able to take a mental step backwards and view their game as from the perspective of the customers (and of course customers vary). It's easier to be objective if you check out tons of games and make a note of what is good and bad about them and then just do the same with your game as if it's someone else's. Also, if you don't get hung up about features you've added which may need to be removed then this is good. I find this quite easy and obviously some people don't. It's also a good idea to get other game players to play your game of course and see what sort of things they value in games because it may not be the same as what you value. Then when you are being objective about your game you can also check for stuff that you don't care about but you know that other people do.

[Sharpfish]

Something from the book "rules of play" further illustrates my point (unless you think it's authors are talking rubbish which may be true)

Most paper-based game designers follow an iterative design process, but most digital game designers do not. Typically, a commercial computer game is copiously designed in advance, with extensive storyboards and design documents often hundreds of pages long, completed before any actual game production begins. These documents invariably become obsolete as soon as production development starts. Why? Because the play of a game will always surprise its creators, particularly if the game design is unusual or experimental. Even a veteran designer cannot exactly predict what will and will not work before experiencing the game firsthand. Prototype your game early. Play it throughout the entire design process. Have as many other people as you possibly can play your game, and observe them playing. Let yourself be surprised and challenged. Remain flexible. And don't forget to have fun.

I for one have certainly been designing in an iterative fashion, and when I do play the game (in the prototype > play > evaluate > refine cycle) It is not purely to enjoy the game "as a game" it is part of the design work, I play to design, to see flaws, to be dissapointed by things I thought would work (but don't) I can then correct those flaws and try again. If someone else can also check your work then you get a more balanced view, and the more people who can add feedback into the cycle before the next iteration, the better because it calibrates issues as very important or not at all important.

So, playing your game while developing it is to be expected, but to play it blindly especially in an early stage while not looking for flaws and just allowing yourself to "feel the fun" can be counter productive because it's wasted time until you are towards the end of the project when you can stop looking for flaws and concentrate on polishing the fun aspects.

So I think most game designers would play the game, and judge it (without bias) in the early cycles to get it to feel as fun and as close to their original vision as possible but when it's virtually done it's still unknown if anyone else is going to think that way. The litmus test comes mostly with soft releases and the updated demo/game that is quite viable in the indie-world. If you have a proper play testing team or even a few non-biased mates to help out then even better. I don't think it's essential by any means but if you are convinced your game is absolutely brilliant, and always fun every time you play it and has NEVER had a flaw that needed fixing then it's probably safe to say the game is either too tailored towards you own personal unique taste or you are kidding yourself.


And this wasn't directed at anyone in this thread as none of you have even mentioned this stuff I just find it interesting that some people can make a game in theory (on paper), build it and release it "as is" without any concerns or doubts or spotting and correction of flaws.

And for the record if I slipped out of "design mode" for a while, yes you can bet I enjoy playing the games I make but I am always critical of them, I can't simply forget that "I made them" and that is where the bias comes in (again critical or over confidence). I have often said it would be useful for designers to suffer temporary amnesia and be faced with their own games "fresh" and pick them apart or commend them as fluidly as we do when we look at others games.

Download a game demo today, from a portal or whatever - run it, and notice that in the first 3 minutes you will have a list of mental notes about "how cool something is" or "how sucky something was", you may think the whole product is crappy and want to quit it as soon as you can. If you can achieve that same kind of neutral, and honest apraisal of your own games while you are up to your neck in developing it then you need to let us know the secret. Bare in mind however that those developers who made the games you are now judging, were convinced of it's brilliance before releasing it. The games that tend to be poor had developers who tended to be blind to their flaws. And that isn't to say that someone who is hyper-critical of their own stuff (as I am at the moment) will make any better a game, it could easily end up having the life sucked out of it by over analysis and catering to too many markets at once, and as a developer (still learning) I am prepared for that eventuality in my games, I think over-confidence will lead to big falls and people giving up when their games don't perform. The analysing types will "regroup" and try harder and smarter next time until they get it right.

ok... lecture over ;)

[soniCron]

If you can achieve that same kind of neutral, and honest apraisal of your own games while you are up to your neck in developing it then you need to let us know the secret. It can be learned with extensive practice, in my experience.

The ability to experience for the first time, multiple times, is something I learned while writing music. After making changes to a composition, I sit for a moment and meditate, clearing my mind and shifting my perspective away from my usual analytical, observational tendencies. When I feel I'm ready, I play the piece and let myself experience it, internally mimicking the mindset I get when I hear others' music for the first time. If it was successful and I feel I got an adequately subjective perspective, then I apply what I learned to the piece and repeat. If not, I meditate for a moment and try again.

Shifting this perspective from one artistic discipline to another isn't easy, but I don't feel like I'm starting from scratch each time, either. Developing the ability in art was a relatively simple process, but gaining this type of perspective in game design was a lot more complex and draining. At first, it was hard to keep the perspective - I'd shift in and out several times in a single play session. After a while it began to get easier, and now I can do it with only a little more challenge than when I apply it to music composition. Over the last 6 months, this ability has become incredibly honed and refined, and I no longer struggle to get an externally subjective perspective.

It's just a matter of discipline and patience. It's never as good as real virgin eyes, but it can save a lot from the back-and-forth tedium of seeking other opinions. And it's not magic - just the simple process of self-hypnosis. (Okay, I won't pretend to know exactly what's at work here, but I think that's an adequate translation.)

However, as in every other skill, your mileage may vary. :)

[Sharpfish]

:eek:

Ok... I'll give it a shot, but if I slip into a coma while hypnotising myself i'm sending the productivity loss bill to solaristudios! :D :D :D

[soniCron]

In a way, you kind of have to psych yourself up, much like when you start up a new game you've been waiting to play for the first time. You know, that excited feeling of wonder.

[DangerCode]

Anyone with the same experience?

Absolutely. I do over stuff all the time that other people would think is rather trivial.

I remember when I first got my little avatar dude animating and runing left and right I would just sit there moving him back and forth for ages. It's stupid, but there's a fun rush to be had from seeing something you've done working.