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[UncleJoe]

What do you learn from your work? What compels you to continue working on the things you do?

(Sorry if there's a similar topic buried somewhere, I did a search and couldn't find anything.) 

Hello there! This has a good deal of potential to turn into something long and riddled with a good deal of rambling. If you're the sort of person with a very "TL/DR" mindset, then you probably won't find much in here that's for you. Now, with that little warning out of the way:

These are a couple of questions I have been pondering for some time now, and felt it would be interesting to discuss on a bit of a larger scale. What, if anything, do you take away from the things you make? I'm really not speaking about simple refinements to skills you already had, such as getting a little better with every drawing you make, but about real, tangible lessons you learn regarding the nature of your work and how you approach it. Assuming there's anything at all!

I'll mainly be using EAST as an example of work i've personally learned from, as it's heavily related to my current projects. If you've not played EAST you should at least take a look at it to get a better understanding of what I'm talking about here. Feel free to use as many examples as you want, should you choose to share anything with us. Hell, you don't even have to use anything specific if you don't want to.

Now, EAST is a very interesting case. I don't think anyone would deny that it's a poorly crafted game. It's plagued by several terrible design and technical decisions. It's a very ugly game all around, and yet, I've heard from several people that they enjoy the game and have fun playing it. Very strange, wouldn't you say?

Many questions arise out of this strange feedback: There's obviously something here that people are enjoying so what were some of the ideas from this game that worked? Which ones didn't? Are any of them worth exploring further? Where did these ideas originate from? Lets go ahead and try to answer these questions.

Having different people sit down, play the game, and describe their experience to me, I notice that there is a similar collection of words from person to person. "Tense, simple, and addicting." As a concept, EAST is very simple to understand: You want to run from the right to the left as fast as possible, before time runs out. The player has a goal that never seems out of reach, and since past records are saved, is compelled to beat their previous scores over and over again. It's simple, and at least conceptually, very fun. That's what works. But what about the stuff that doesn't?

As stated before, EAST has a lot of problems. The concept is compelling, but the mechanics are fighting the player the entire time. While that's apparently easy to forgive for many people, it's certainly not easy to ignore. Most of these problems can be attributed to the game's rushed development cycle. It was built front to back in less than a week (Version 1.0), with some revisions at a later date, the development of which took even less time than before (Version 1.1). As a result, the game wasn't properly play tested, and and a lot of the risky mechanics surrounding the game didn't get the substantial polish they needed. It doesn't do enough to maintain interest for extended periods of time, the collision detection is bad, and the nature of the randomly generated platforms is chaotic and does little to promote strategy. The game, in this state, relies on luck to define your progress. These are the things that didn't work, and from these problems I have learned how to better approach things from a developmental standpoint. There's a lot to be learned by examining one's mistakes.

EAST came from some very simple ideas I wanted to implement into something: work within a standard platformer framework, subtly betray the player's expectations (score not behaving 'properly'), and provide incentive for multiple playthroughs. There's a bit more to it, especially since I've been sitting on the idea for a good 2 years since it's original inception, but I feel that's a good, basic summary. I certainly don't think EAST achieved what I intended, but it at least gave me a better understanding of how those ideas would work in practice, and I feel that they're worth expanding upon.

Now, I've talked a lot about the first question I used to open up the topic, but what about the 2nd? What compels me? I can't say it's easy for me to articulate, nor does it seem possible, but what I can say is that my goal seems to be making things that are interesting and spark intelligent discussion, but not at the expense of a game's 'fun factor'. I find that narrative in games is interesting, in that you can have another person play out and literally interact with the themes you're trying to convey. It opens up a world of possibilities not possible in any other medium. Most of you are familiar with this, I'm sure. Without going into too much detail, as I plan to make a topic about it shortly, my current project is something I've dubbed Compass. It's a story told in 4 parts (games), and a continuation of ideas sparked from EAST, exploring similar ideas through different methods, and presenting an implied narrative, rather than an explicitly stated one.

I like to hear the opinions of others every step of the way, feedback from as many sources as possible gets me looking the ideas in many different ways. This is why I share them, even if I don't finish the majority of my projects.

So, I've gone on long enough. Anything the lot of you want to share?

[Hajo]

My graphics skills improved quite a bit. I was always interested in drawing/painting, but it's been the projects that I have released which required quite strong improvements. Still not comparable with naturally talented people or trained painters, but now good enough for a bigger range of projects.

One project really helped me to improve my skills in object oriented design - but that is so many years past now, that it's not that useful anymore. But still, for a long while it was.

One project also helped me to train my skills as team leader. Not that I am particularly keen on doing that, but I now have better ideas how to work with people.

The question what compels me to continue on my hobby projects is hard and easy at the same time. Currently I only do what deems me fun to do. Fun can be exploring new technologies, new approaches to things, or just enjoying the moment if an ideas comes "alive" and works in such a tiny box called computer. As long as it's fun, I'll spend some amount of my free time on it.

 

[jrjellybeans]

I've learned quite a few things:

1.  Generally, what I like doing.  I like being independent and creative and video games have really helped me define that more.
2.  I've learned quite a lot of organizational skills.  I can see how creative work can be divided into smaller tasks and what the steps are to complete those tasks.

[StSaint]

Developing games was never really my arena, but I once had a lil comic called John, and that taught me a few things. One being never to assume that the loudest voice is the truest; No matter how much one person hates something of yours, it doesn't mean everyone does. I also learned to never sacrifice humor for plot, but then that's not really a thing that can relate with games. So yeah. Also Hi Joe it's me Saint.

[gimymblert]

Never thrust your gut but follow it  

My first game (local to my school) success  was not mean to be ...

I was experimenting programming on CASIO, most game that have 2P mode was turn base, the challenge was a design one: How to make a realtime 2P game. The constrain is that the method to look at key cannot read 2 key at the same time, if 2 key was pressed it return none. I create a TRON bicycle game adaptation. Each player would have only two key to press (turn right or left) and the mechanics naturally discourage long key press else you would collide with yourself. The other problem is that, due to the nature of coding, if players were presented with the same pixel, the first player would always win because his condition is check first. I decide to skip Priorities and it result on a "bug", if players was in that condition there would cross their line, or even fuse if one or both turn in the same direction, and because turn are only 90° turn it would repeat at each intersection because of monte carlo distance, unless one player break the rhythm with an extra turn. The game was slow and the command not that responsive. IT BECAME INSTANT HIT!

Why? well the slowness of the game induce tension because you should not miss the "tick" when control where available. Emergent strategy start to appear, advance level player start to evaluate monte carlo distance to cross the others line unharm, metagame became a part of the game as player would try to nullify the other player key press by pressing at the same time and player would also feint their press to induce a turn to metaplayer, it became a mind game. Because the game was symmetric a lot of risk has to be done in order to break that symmetry and take the adventage, pattern of play start to appear are were charted, people would amass around player match and good play would be save on millimetric paper for posterity... Amazing!

The lessons was playtest always trumps feeling and thinking, sometimes let an accident go and see what happen! Don't try to hard to make a game fun until someone actually play it!