It’s rather apparent to me that the dreams and aspirations of game developers, are much like the ones I have myself. They want to make the most original game possible, the most fun game possible, and the most artful game possible.

With this in mind many will aspire to go straight for their dreams, and set their marks too high. They’ll first set out to coding the most beautiful engine possible, or writing the most intricate story, or modeling the most perfect models to take part. They try with all their heart and passion to make the game they want to make, and inevitably fail.

What went wrong?

It’s not wrong that these developers strive for the most perfect project possible. Infact, all developers should, and for the most part do,  make it a priority to make a very high quality product. But with this kind of aspiration, there comes a severe flaw, especially for those developers starting out.

By making it your priority for the game to be good, you tend to make a refusal for anything less. This benchmark becomes unachievable, and defeats any semblance of self confidence a developer and his team might have. This self defeat is the reason that so many otherwise good ideas don’t make it to the final stages of development and polish. So many good game ideas fall out because the non-professional developer loses faith in his product, and it goes unfinished.

The hardest thing to face for these developers is that they need to compromise, and lower their standards a bit so that their game idea can become some form of reality. It’s something that the best of developers do. Some top-tier developers will pay for a good-enough quality 3D engine, and then adapt things to their needs. Animators and artists will often times have to make compromises on the models and level designs that they make based on a 3D engine. Due to time constraints the writers will have to chop up their story and tie it together in a more solid way if it happens that time simply runs out, or a level design doesn’t work the way they wanted it to.

As seems to be the central idea of my first post, simplicity is once again the key to success with game development. Don’t over-complicate the system, just do what works. There are several companies that base their business model on the income of the quality 3D engines and development kits that they put out. They tend to make engines affordable enough for the needs of a developer.

Be willing to compromise for the needs of performance. A good game is a game that plays well, so if that means downplaying your models and textures a bit, do so. You’re players will thank you for the performance boost, regardless of whatever complaints may arise.

Another portion of this is the fact that it doesn’t always work to use whatever bizarre concepts you think will revolutionize the gaming world. If you experiment and your idea doesn’t work in play test, throw it out. Pick a genre it’ll work as, and make the game as closely to the original idea as possible so long as it remains fun.

No player will ever complain about a game for being the same if it isn’t fun, they’ll only complain if it’s not fun and its the same. They’ll complain if it’s not as fun as some other game, and they’ll complain if its not as fun as they feel it could be if some rather minor changes had been made.

Just keep things simple. It’ll go a long way.