Staying Motivated in Game Development

I talked about this a little bit in an earlier post, I think that it’s easy to lose motivation especially for longer projects. I recently had a chance to think a little bit more about motivation and I thought I’d share the results. For me the start of a project is always the most fun — you’re exploring a new idea, you’re coding new code, things are taking shape really quickly. But at some point you hit a phase where progress slows down — the features are implemented and now you have to fix bugs, there’s only hard things left that you put off doing, etc — and at this point it’s easy to get distracted by a shiny new idea. Personally, I feel taking a game from the rough “prototype” phase to being a full, polished game is a ton of work, but in my opinion it’s also something that separates “serious” developers from less serious ones.

So with all that said here’s how I try to tackle the problem:

1. Maintain checklists

Checking things off makes it feel like I’m making progress which keeps me focused. It’s also a good way to gauge the progress I’m making on the project as a whole.

2. Sharing my progress when appropriate

Getting positive feedback can inspire me to keep going.

3. Adding artwork to the game

I usually wait a while to add any artwork but I find once I do I’m much more excited about the project

4. Write publicly about what I’m doing and my timeline

Putting my reputation on the line increases the stakes and can help me overcome spots where I might otherwise lose focus.

5. Avoid working on other ideas and other distractions

This seems obvious but during a particularly boring part of development it can be dangerous to switch to a new project or buy a new game to play. Of course great ideas or games come along when you’re in the middle of a project so you have to exercise some self-discipline.

6. Set a concrete deadline

Work seems to fill whatever time you assign for it without necessarily having more to show for the extra time. Having a concrete deadline gives me something to shoot for and helps organize my decisions.

7. Avoid scope creep

A lot of my ideas are ambitious — they might involve complicated AI or networking, etc — I’d like to pursue some these ideas in the future but the fact is I often find them to be a barrier to getting things done. With a tough idea I can quickly get mired down in the details of a large, intractable problem. Sticking to smaller ideas keeps me productive

There are probably other good tricks but that’s it for now. With Petunk I’ve tried to attack the problem of motivation by working in a really compressed schedule (I have to balance work and making the game in my free time). I’m finding this really helps me because:

1. I know when I will complete the game, so when I lose focus it reminds me I can’t afford the distraction
2. Since time is scarce I can’t waste it on crazy ideas or useless features, the schedule forces me to ask “Would the game be OK without it?” and when the answer is yes then the feature is usually cut

In the past I’ve found that working for contests has helped address many of the issues above, too. For instance, with Adlib I had a set deadline and a topic to work with. This let me focus on actually making a game instead of worrying about technology, etc. One final link with checking out is this post by Positech Games on the subject: Staying motivated while programming games. How do you stay motivated?

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