More game design advice: Getting through the muck

[benlehman]

Game design has a terrible muck to it. There's a point where it's just not fun anymore, where looking at your game rules serves only to give you a sense of existential dread, where the playtesters are saying "yeah it's pretty fun" and then sorta sighing, where you've got a list of problems to fix as long as your arm and none of them are the unarticulatable problem that needs fixing.

(this is the first patch of muck. There are many others.)

In order that you will produce a finished game, there needs to be something that gets you through this muck. If that's not there, the game won't be finished. So if the primary reason that you're approaching game design is because "it's fun" then there won't be anything left to get you through the muck, and you'll leave game after game marooned on the shores, unfinished and unloved. This is cool, you should be yourself and accept who you are, just recognize that all us other game designers laugh a little bit when you say "I'm a game designer!" because, well, no, you're not doing the hard part.

This motivation can come from a variety of sources. The two most common that I've seen are a burning, intense, somewhat abnormal desire to create something, and a burning, intense, totally normal desire to make some money. Alexis and Lukas gave me some other possibilities in conversation: A burning desire to have the finished product (this is different from the desire to create something in that, if someone else would just write the game for you, that'd be fine with you: you just want to have it), and a social responsibility to other people requiring that you finish it (you promised.)

It doesn't actually matter for the end product what you use to get you through your muck. There's not, like, a good and legitimate way to do it. But the key thing is that this happens to everybody who is a game designer (or probably any type of creative person.) Creativity is not all inspiration and frenzied action, like they show in the movies. It has long, slow, boring, frustrating and difficult parts. You need something to get you through, and it can't just be "to have fun designing a game" because many parts of the game design process are explicitly not fun. They suck.

Now, that all said, this doesn't actually help you get through the muck. Which maybe I should post about, but it's so individual and particular to the game in question that I'm not sure there's much to say about the general case.

It's just an observation that there has to be something there.

Comments

[evilmagnus]

This reminds me of a quote I once heard and will now mis-remember, along the lines of 'everyone says they wish they were a writer, but what they really mean is they wish they had written.'

I think it was Niven would said that, but it might have been Chaucer or the Space Pope.

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

Terry Pratchett has said, "Too many people want to have written." I don't know if that's who you're thinking of, though. Probably a lot of people have said similar things.

[evilmagnus]

Pratchett is very similar to the Space Pope, so it's probably the same quote. Or Pratchett plagarized him.

[arianhwyvar.livejournal.com]

That's why I will never be a writer. I had discovered by high school that while I produced good results when I wrote, and I was happy with having the finished products, the actual process was an agonizing experience of mental constipation which I know I'll never be willing to put myself through often enough to make money from it. Which is also why I am really thankful to have gotten out of tech writing after a year, and plan never to do it again.