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[CaLooch]

I'm looking for some advice on what to do with a personal project I've been working on.

Here's the story.  I've been working on this game for about 6 months now.  The idea at the start was that I was going to make a full game, and work on it for over a year, and release it through steam.  The problem I'm looking at right now is that, where the game is currently and the amount of ideas I wanted to put into will likely take me still another year to make at the rate I'm going. 

What I'm not sure about is whether its even worth it to keep working on this game for that amount of time.  This isn't my first game, but I havent maintained any sort of social media presence or business contacts to actually market the game.  There's also the added factor that we all face as to whether people think the game is as good as you think it is.

I'm looking at a couple options right now. 

The first option is that I stick to the plan and still plan on working on it for over another year.  I was planning on releasing a watered down demo in a few months, in the sense that it wouldnt have any of the ending plot twists and things that I want the game to end on, and then continue working on it. 

The other option is to cut the lifecycle of the project down.  Work on it for a little bit longer, make it have a beginning, middle, an end, and then just release it for free onto itch.io or something.  I'm just leaning towards this option more and more just because of the circumstances I'm looking at.  I don't have a marketing budget, I'm just a one man team, and the lingering question that I see on this sub-forum alot, "should I spend this much time on a game  or make this a smaller project to get my name out there and move onto something else?"

What do you guys think?  Theres a link to the devlog in my sig if you want some reference to the project.

[moomat]

There is such a thing as a time to call it quits on a project. That time sucks at least a little for anyone who is at that time, for them. Doing game development, you do need to be aware that such a time exists.

But you define that time. It could be based on your life, your project, the way things or going, or other factors.

The key question to ask, once you've begun to wonder, is this:

IS this that time? Or...is abandoning what I'm doing not an option?

Some of the glamour around game dev is that, for some reason, people have assumed it's easy. It isn't.

Are you willing and able to pick yourself up and keep going, or not?

As far as the marketing goes, marketing isn't some magic trick you need to start at a certain time, except that the general adage that sooner is better really is true. Start simple. Make a Twitter account for your game, and a Facebook page. Make it easy, to start. What's the harm in at least telling some people that you're up to something awesome

Don't give up because you think there's some formula you didn't follow, though, and that all hope is lost. Keep going if that little thing inside of you insists that you should Or at least never, in the state of work you're in, resign to give up entirely.

Keep going, I say

[bombjack]

It's always hard to limit the feature list when you have plenty of ideas.
Don't try to put everything in one single game, it would be a mess.

Regarding your question, it really depends on your situation.

If you left everything to develop this game and have no other revenue you should try to throw it at Steam.
Maybe, spliting it in episodes could be an option.

If you are developing it in your spare time, then, either decide to continue one year more if it worth it or the episodes could do it too.
If the game is not complete enough, it's probably not even worth to release it for free.
There is still the option of dropping the game. Lots of games are developed and never released.

[VampireSquid]

I suspect this is pretty common.  I know I am in a similar situation with my project.

You are far enough along to solicit feedback so that is what I would focus on.  I would put together a short video on it and put it in front of everyone you can think of.  See what people think of it and go from there.

[CaLooch]

Maybe I didnt word it right in the OP but quitting was never an option.  I'm not in jeopardy of becoming homeless or anything like that from working on this (Im a student currently working on this in my free time).  From day 1, I told myself that I was going to spend 1 year on the project because I was tired of making little flash in the pan arcade games.  Maybe Im not alone in doing this, but I had a flash of insecurity with the project a couple days ago that had me rush over here and scramble for advice.  This is the longest I've ever been working on a single game for so its uncharted territory for me.

I was moreso looking for input on a decision to downsize the scale of the project.  As opposed to spending over a year, downscaling to 3-6 more months of development seems like a smarter decision in my head.  The last thing I want is for a solo project to fall into development hell.  I've never had to deal with dev hell before and doing it alone seems like a recipe for a failed incomplete game. 

*gets back to work*

[VampireSquid]

There is nothing wrong with downsizing the scale.  I know my natural inclination is always to add scope when building games, it is always harder to reign it in.  I am starting to thing that part of being a good game dev is restricting rather than expanding the scope, it forces you to use your brain and pick the important pieces rather than just throwing time at it.

[CaLooch]

It happened to me where I tried to add all of these narrative elements, fancy cutscenes and whatever to the backlog of things to do and it blew up the scope much larger.  Im leaning towards cutting a lot of it out because I think the actual gameplay will benefit if I focus on that more for the remaining time.  Maybe there will be time to tack on all the fancy stuff once the actual game is finished.

[ElstonGunn]

I don't understand why people choose to develop games the way they do.

This is pure simple risk/reward analysis. It's nothing more than that.

At some moment in your life, you got an idea. You decided that it was a good idea, and you decided to invest X amount of time/resources into the idea, with the hope that it will have some great returns in the future.

Now, half way through, you're beginning to have doubts about the idea. Either because it seems like it's worth less now than it did before, or because the cost of creating it has doubled (it will take two years instead of one).

Whether you should continue or not always eventually comes down to one thing. Is this idea worth it? Is it actually valuable? How much will you have to invest to hit the highest point of return? That's all that really matters in the end.

You need be able to put your passion aside, and objectively gauge your idea's value. There are many ways to do this. Ask for input from the community. Compare elements of the game to things that already exist. Estimate the size of your target audience. Estimate how many copies similar games have sold, and how much they cost.

Being the investor **and** developer is a bad thing because it skews your perception both of the development and business side of the project. This is why single-person indie development is so scary. For every Papers Please there are thousands of games you will never hear about.

You can never know 100% whether something is a good bet or not. And you don't have to. You just need to do your homework and decide whether it's a "good bet". If you can do this objectively, you should be able to convince someone else of this. Someone who can give you the resources you need to develop it in an efficient (low-cost) timely manner. This can be an investor, or just the community who will give you crowdfunding.

This "i have a good idea, i will work on it alone for 2 years and not tell anyone and then come out with something that makes more money than minecraft" pretty much never works.

[EvilDingo]

Marketing sucks. So many people on this site put incredible effort into marketing, maybe even more than their game, and then nothing happens and they're left wondering why. It's because: marketing sucks.

You need to break in with a good game first. Build your audience. Once you have a good game you'll find you now have a small (or large, depending, I guess) community. You'll start to see who actually likes your game and then you can try marketing to players like them and grow that way.

In any long project you'll have a lot of moments of self doubt. That's normal. I think it's better to get the core gameplay down first. Shop that around and see if its fun. All the fluff like cutscenes, sounds, music have to come after you're certain the gameplay is good. Otherwise you're gambling all that non-gameplay stuff on a terrible idea.

[ironbelly]

What's your end game plan? Not for the game (poor choice of words!), but for your company/studio.

So you have a game that is half done. You have two options: Finish it fully or cut it into a small free to play project.

The question is: How can option #2, cutting it into a freebie, benefit your company? It CAN, but you should have a plan in place on how to do it. Turning the free to play owners of that project into purchasers of the next.

What you gain is 6 months of work on the next game (yay!). What you lose is the "easier" method of acquiring customers: Selling a complete project.

The common answer is: I will gain an audience with the free game and then notify of the new game. The problem with that is it doesn't answer how.

Will you collect their email? If not, you'll have no way to reach your install base later.

The alternative method may be to finish up the short version of the game and NOT RELEASE IT until your next commercial game is done. Then, use the free game to pimp the other game, accessing 100% of your install base to upsell your commercial product. Kinda sucks that it wont see the light of day for 6-18 months but hey

Just some things to think about!

[gornova]

Like other says it depends!

My 2 cents: complete your work ASAP. Build a plan and finish it. Nothing is better than finish a work!
At the same time:
- open a twitter/facebook whatever account,
- build a little website (you mention you have little flash games ? Collect them in a single page as "past projects") or a blog and talk about your work, share our ideas using accounts, forums and so on => try to engage people, build a fanbase?
- finish you work and publish it. Like you say, decide now if you want money or you want to use this game to build a name a "brand"

But remember: finish your project. It's most hard thing!

[Chris Koźmik]

the amount of ideas I wanted to put into will likely take me still another year to make

Feature creep warning triggered

1) Doing a project longer than a year is not recommended.
2) Cutting down features is almost always good.
3) Do you have a deadline? Do you have a schedule? Do you have a release date? Why you started panicking after a year, while you should have much earlier?
4) Releasing something playable ASAP is almost always a good thing.


As I see it, if you worked on it for a year and need another year to put all the features you want then after beta release you will need spend another year to fix/polish/etc things based on players feedback. So, like 3 years total...


My advice is to mercilessly cut whatever you can and release the first build by the end of THIS month Also set yourself a tight deadline and clear milestones (these always help).

Of course, outright killing the project is always an option too...

[oahda]

If your game was originally supposed to take one year to make and you think you need to start advertising from the beginning of that year, isn't that exactly what you have now, if you're going to be pouring another year into it? You'll have that same full year of marketing, only with something more complete and better to show from the start, which is probably just positive.