iDevGames

Foreword

The iDevGames Forum thread from which this article originates was sparked off by a sudden burst of posts detailing apparently serious, but wildly optimistic plans to change the face of Mac gaming forever. Some people tried to explain why a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) is too complex for a first project; others claimed that a team of developers with enough dedication, no matter how small or inexperienced they were, could make any game they wanted. I thought I should say something, so I did; some charming people suggested that it was worth putting into article form, so I did. This is that article: a long, somewhat preachy, but nonetheless heartfelt diatribe.

Dedication

Yes, if a small, unfunded team has enough dedication, they can make the world’s best game. The trouble is that dedication tends to wane after you’ve worked for a year or so and you realize that you’ll need to keep working at this rate for the next four years if you want to have all those “essential” features. And by that stage someone else will probably have released something that makes your game look like a cheap me-too, even with all your fancy features. You may all be “dedicated” now, but can you really guarantee that all the team members will be on board for the duration? I think most developers with any experience at all will be familiar with overambitious projects that end up going nowhere, and projects of this scale set the mental alarm bells ringing automatically, whoever the developer is. When money, a publisher, and nasty little no-complete clauses are involved, there is a chance of keeping even the most disillusioned employees, so the project may well get finished… but it’s rare when the final product lives up to the initial hyperbole, however big the budget.

There’s a temptation to think that people are just attacking these projects because you’re new, and that they think you’ll never finish them because you’re new, but the fact that you’re new is not relevant. I think we can be safely expected to criticize anyone, old hand or rank newbie, who goes around with unrealistic plans and expectations—we want you to make games and we’d love to help you, but we want to see games that get finished.

The best advice we can give is what we’re giving: make something which you will have a realistic chance of completing. The only assumption we make about you is that you don’t have godlike powers—hardly rash or insulting, really.

Be Realistic

If you want to make a game, make a small game. You’ll gain more wisdom, happiness, and fame than by doing the same amount of work to produce 3.5 percent of what’ll be the Best Game Ever (once you’ve added in the AI, the realistic physics, the levels, and all the countless other pieces which make a game a game).

A good place to gently divest yourself of some illusions is the postmortems section of iDevGames, where you may get some impression of how much work goes into even a simple-looking game, and then perhaps the postmortems on Gamasutra, where you’ll see some of the problems encountered in the course of the bigger projects. Then look at your game. Whatever your paradigm-shifting video game is, I’m sure it’s a great idea, but it’s inevitably a bad project to start off with. Pong with a twist is a good first project. If you’re that good, you can probably knock a Pong clone off pretty quickly, right? Even if you do manage to do it fairly quickly, you will learn the invaluable Hofstadter’s Law:

It always takes longer than you think, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

…and an awful lot else, all of which will help you immeasurably when you come to make bigger games. In addition, you’ll have something to show potential collaborators that you’re serious; whether you’re a coder, designer, or artist, if you have no examples of your previous work, don’t be surprised if nobody wants to work with you. A Pong clone may not seem like much, but any finished game is far more impressive than yet another great idea.

Another great idea? Yes. The thing is, everyone on this site has ideas for computer games, and most of the games-playing population has had them too. Most of these ideas, big or small, never see the light of day. Even the ones that get off the ground often fall by the wayside long before even a beta release. Because of this unhappy fact, very few people will want to spend their time on a project that might get finished—in these circumstances, “might” usually means “won’t,” and the time that’s “spent” is usually “wasted.”

Conclusion

Ultimately, making any game is difficult, and making a big game is much harder than making a small one. Neither task is impossible, but don’t saddle yourself with more than you have to when you’re just starting out. Bungie had years of collective experience when they started making Halo, and even that game (sublime though it is) doesn’t really live up to the scale and scope of the original plans. Ambition is a fine thing, but it’s brittle unless tempered with realism.

Bio

William Reade is a Macintosh game developer. MAFFia, his first title, won Best Gameplay at uDevGames 2002, and he intends to make many more great games. He can usually be found in the iDevGames forums, and he’s always happy to receive feedback on anything he’s made. In the basest physical sense, he lives in London.

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