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Daniel Seabra
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« Reply #1667 on: August 19, 2012, 01:27:48 PM » |
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Not quite on par with all of you guys' problems, but I need to unload a bit so here goes.
I've become disillusioned a bit with the game I've been making for two years. I believe, and so do other people, that the game is fun, and I've enjoyed watching people's faces betray their emotions of anxiety, frustration, happiness, whatever, when playing it. Most importantly, I laugh and have fun while playing it, and that was what drove to start making it in the first place.
However, I don't think I have the skill to design the game, to put it all together. What I have right now is essentially a very smooth, polished prototype - a mechanic with 40 pretty cool, challenging levels, but no story, no sounds, no cohesiveness, so to speak. I'm mostly a programmer, and I dabble in pixel art, and I can sort of put some levels together if I try, but rounding-off the edges of a game, creating a branching narrative (which I do have the ability to do with my engine, now), uniting the entire thing into one experience - I have no experience nor talent in the area, I don't think.
When I ask for feedback on how to improve the game people don't tend to offer design suggestions. I've gotten, "fix this bug here," "improve the graphics," "add some sound effects," and etcetera, which are fine suggestions, and things I can certainly do, but it feels like whenever people try the game they stop about halfway through because they fail to see what I want the game to be - by no fault of theirs, since I haven't been able to shape the game in the direction I want.
I added all these (to me, cool) things, like being able to program your own things into the game through a mod interface, and texture packs, and so forth, but it feels like nobody cares because I'm still the only one changing anything. Why have mods if I can actually work with the source code, you know? And I don't blame other people, it's just that I wish I could give them something that they would want to mod, and that they would have fun with, and I don't seem to be able to do that.
And so I've been putting working on my game off for a while, and I've even started working on mockup art for another game, because art is really cool in that I can just draw it and people will say, "Oh, good job, I can see myself playing this," and I don't have to do any design, story, or whatever that I can't seem to do. I really want to finish my game, but I just don't know what to do anymore. It's like the game feels finished but it's not done. I've tried making a feedback thread here and elsewhere and I've gotten some good responses, but I feel like none of that will make anyone want to play the game more, which is essentially what I want. I want people to play it and like it and share it with their friends.
It's not my first long project. I've worked on games this long before. But this time it feels like I can never finish, and it almost makes me not want to even start making another game either, because what if I spend a long time on that too, but am also unable to finish it? May be just a phase, but I almost feel like I want to stop making games. I feel terrible, since it's been something I've always liked from the beginning - both the good times and the wild crazy bugs that I've still not been able to fix and the weird programming errors caused by using a > instead of a <. I don't know.
Summary: Writer's block, but for games. First time it's happened to me, and I'm a bit depressed and I'm not sure what to do. Right now I'm concentrating on work and getting ready for school and procrastinating on working on my game. Although I still play it from time to time.
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