The embarrassing side of game design

I'm really bad at sharing the creative process that goes into designing and making games. It's something that I've often wished I could change, not least because I think it could be a really interesting record and resource for others if I actually talked candidly about work-in-progress.

When I try and analyse the reasons for my reluctance to publicly share what we're working on, I can identify a mixture of natural guardedness, protectionism and worry that too much talk will corrupt the (mostly) spontaneous act of creation. However, more than all those things (after all, who is really going to steal one of our ideas and produce it themselves? - good luck to that person!) is the embarrassment of showing the reality of how wayward the game development path is. I feel a twinge of guilt when I look at our small mountain of unfinished games-in-progress and I feel utterly amateurish when I recall how many times I've declared to myself, "This is going to be our next game!".

I know that recording my thoughts as I go along will inevitably make these failed attempts and blind alleys public (along with my erroneous and changeable opinions). But it's precisely because of the embarrassment factor that I hope this post alone will provide some comfort and resonance to other game designers. Ultimately, it's OK to be wrong. Game design is also rarely a logical, iterative process of refinement. It's frequently messy and unpredictable but in all the cast-aside ideas, patterns and themes reoccur and eventually a cohesive idea grows from them.

Of all the creative pursuits I've tried, I have to say game design is the most challenging. So many aspects have to be right to make a good game that it is often hard to tell you even have a good game until it's nearly complete. And the energy you need to carry you through the process of prototyping-and-testing means that you necessarily have to turn a blind eye to early "warning signs" and plough on regardless. We almost chucked in the towel with War on Terror, for example, at least twice.

So I'm going to try and turn over a new leaf. The next blog post will be my attempt at writing a development update on several games that we're working on simultaneously. I can't promise that it'll last, but my intention is to document the process of producing our next game a lot more openly.

Posted by Andy S on 24 September 2012 - 3 comments

Comments so far:

1. Just had to test this comment form. It's amazingly new to me.Rue from Olongapo,Philippines - 26 September 2012
2. War Criminal Captcha - brilliant!James from London, uk - 26 September 2012
3. Just wanted to test this. Love it.John Travolta from Under your bed - 27 September 2012

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