Why You Can't Ship Your Indie Game
One simple reason is holding you back.
Welcome back to this week’s lesson from Solo Gamedev School!
Today’s topic: failure to launch.
If you’re like me, then you enjoy the process of making video games.
It’s fun for us to brainstorm ideas, design mock-ups, and build prototypes.
If anything, the reason why we make video games is because we enjoy it.
But that’s also the reason why we fail to finish them.
I had this moment of clarity the other day, which I posted to my Twitter:
I realized that the more we enjoy the process, the less we want the process to end.
I could easily sit around all day and refactor my code to “run faster” or be “easier to maintain”, even if the player can’t experience any difference when playing the game.
For those of you who like to draw, you might feel compelled to go over the same drawing multiple times — or update your old artwork featuring your outdated style.
I’ve seen this happen plenty of times to other developers — the old artwork looked just as good, and it was simply a matter of preference for the player.
Taking the time to redraw everything only increased the game’s development time without adding any significant value to the game — or to some players who preferred things the old way, it might have even decreased the value.
Now the deeper question is this: why do we find the process fun?
In reality, I’m actually a results-oriented person, yet I still succumb to this trap.
The simple answer is that engaging in the process of building the product is naturally more comforting than the uncertainty of releasing the product.
Building the product can be done in isolation, without being subject to criticism.
There is effectively no pressure; we can do and re-do as many times as we want.
Releasing our game is an irreversible action that opens the gates to infinite scrutiny.
It’s much more comforting for us to retain control and continually feel like we’re improving our product (and ourselves) toward an infinitely high standard.
We’re always better at our craft today than we were yesterday.
So we tie our ego into our product — if our product has bad qualities, then it’s a reflection of ourselves, and we feel the need to fix it to maintain our self-image.
In other words, this is perfectionism disguised as fun.
Dealing with perfectionism
Perfectionism is rooted in a fear of failure.
You’re afraid to put your product out there, so you keep iterating endlessly, changing it so many times that you’re not even sure which version is the best one (you just assume the most recent change must be the best one).
You keep thinking to yourself that people won’t like your game, or some aspect of it, until you get all the details just right.
But even the best games receive negative feedback.
Go and find your favorite game on Steam. Despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews, you can still filter by negative and see that some people didn’t like the game.
And they have every right to dislike the game — no game is truly for everyone.
But the biggest critic of your game won’t be found in the negative reviews.
The biggest critic of your game is you.
You know what the game is supposed to be in your head, and it’s not there in reality.
You are the expert who knows all the fancy tricks, yet you’ve failed to use them.
You look around at all the other developers and their games and see their successes.
In your quest for acceptance, you change aspects of your game to fit in line with what other developers put out, until eventually anything that was your unique spin is gone.
This reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite comedians, Conan O’Brien:
It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.
— Conan O’Brien
As proof, there is no shortage of games that look poorly put-together, or maybe have intentionally bad graphics, and yet they became viral sensations.
I don’t want to name any specifics to try and make any game seem “bad”, but you’d be surprised how many times I see a game on Steam that’s “below my standards” achieve financial success.
It’s not even that your standards are too high; it’s you’re applying the wrong set of standards to yourself.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature
Use your own limitations to your advantage.
A long time ago I was attempting to make a platformer and couldn’t figure out how to make the character jump. Then I realized that maybe I could just make that the basis of the game: a platformer where you can’t jump.
A game with a premise like that would certainly grab the attention of people far more than yet another generic side-scroller — it asks so many questions like “how are you going to beat each level if you can’t jump?”
Eventually, I did figure out how to make the player jump. But in retrospect, I’m more curious about that no-jumping-platformer idea and how well that would’ve worked out for me. It’s a lot more unique than the generic stuff I ended up doing.
Make shipping fun
The only way to overcome our perfectionism is to stop “enjoying” the process.
I’m not saying you need to feel bored or dissatisfied working on your game, but instead you should feel far more motivated to release a product.
Your goal isn’t to create something that you believe is perfect; your goal is to deliver value to people who need it.
You might have played so many games that you’ve set your own standards unrealistically high, but there are many people out there with “lower” standards who will appreciate whatever it is that you give them.
I’m also not saying you should do the exact opposite of perfectionism and rush your game — in fact, you should never put out low quality content!
What I am saying is that perfectionism leads to wasting a lot of time and effort on parts of your game that don’t actually matter.
You might get a dopamine rush from spending years in development making your game “better”, but that dopamine rush doesn’t always translate into sales.
Try to reprogram your brain to get dopamine from customer satisfaction, and you’ll instead take steps to reduce development time and deliver an equal or greater amount of value to your players.
Simply put: don’t spend time on issues that your players don’t care about.
As always, keep your scope small, designed around your personal strengths, and don’t get caught up in adding too many features.
You’re just adding more stuff so that you can delay releasing the game and avoid subjecting yourself to potentially painful criticism.
Better yet, build your game in public. Even in your earliest stages, show it to people who can give you comments and criticism from the beginning.
If someone does complain, keep in mind that you shouldn’t make drastic changes on a whim, But by building in public, you’ll realize that releasing content isn’t so painful, and eventually you’ll have no problem releasing the full game when it’s ready.
I hope that today’s article helps you achieve faster and easier success with your game.
Have a great rest of your day!
Anton Strickland