A challenge to myself

Gil,

Wow that mirrors my own sentiments almost exactly. My New Year's resolution was to come up with 3-4 solid games (to use your terminology) this year and then try to publish (either through self publish or via a publisher) one of them in 2006. In all reality, I'd probably like to DTP at least one and sell it on an on demand basis. I'm glad you voiced your opinion, sometimes I too get sick of 'talking about designing games' and I want to get down to actually creating a high quality game, perhaps even just a nice prototype that the folks in my game group will ask to play every now and again.

Great comments, it's good to hear other people are having the same concerns/frustrations that I am.

-Michael

Yes, fundamentally that's about what I feel about it. I've run through a lot of designs with my testing group, and - while some of them were fine, there were very few that did feel "solid": that I knew the testing time would be lengthy but it would result in a good game.
And yeah, I felt that I wasn't going to even think about publishing until I had hit three or four designs that had survived the testing process in a truly robust condition. I suspect that Seth & I jumped the gun with "All for One", which was submitted to Hippodice in a semi-robust form (it works fine, but lacks a spark - the current version may still be lacking it, but it feels more interesting.)
As it is, I've now got about three games that people have actually asked to play (which is, as designers will know, a significant step!) and a couple more that look as though they might reach that point some time this year.
In which case I might actually have to think about that "publishing" step, instead of prevaricating about it... :-)

Interesting topic. I think Gil is quite correct that many of us put the cart very much before the horse by making plans for publication before the game is even done. Creating a game that’s good enough to publish is very, very hard, and to assume that a game will eventually get to that point is indeed naive. On the other hand, though, I don’t really think that maturity as a designer should really be assumed to have been reached when one has created X “solid” games. If you have a game that’s done and ready to submit, submit it! Don’t handcuff yourself with a silly limitation that you may never even reach. I do, however, agree that every designer should try to design several games before even beginning to think of the next step. It’s reflexive for folks to plan to self-publish the first game they design, and I think that’s a mistake. I think it’s important to practice to become a good designer, just as you wouldn’t expect to get a recording contract after just one singing lesson.

Although I know it works for some people, I also don’t really find that setting time constraints on myself is at all helpful to my design process. Usually, it just results in putting in mechanics that feel forced and end up getting changed anyway. When I’m having a problem with a design, I’m willing to put it on the back burner to wait until a solution presents itself, sometimes for years, and I don’t mind the wait. Sometimes, letting a project marinate is actually quite helpful, as I can look at it with fresh eyes after a long hiatus. I’d rather leave the game in limbo than compromise the goals for the project. I think that this is why I have relatively few all-the-way-finished designs, but also why I’m pretty happy with the ones I have finished. I also tend to have a pretty specific idea for what I want a given design to accomplish, though, and I think that I sometimes aim higher than is really realistic or productive.

That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with others setting designer goals for themselves, I just find that for myself, doing so doesn’t really improve my rate of production of “solid” games, and would take me away from the somewhat schizophrenic way I currently work on game designs. I like the flexibility to focus intently on something when it’s working well, but also to blip to other things when something isn’t working or when inspiration for one of those other projects strikes. My hope is that there’s no rush: that a good game will always find a willing publisher. Of course, several of us have seen our brilliant mechanics come out in published form in other games, so maybe I should speed things up after all...

-Jeff