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

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Here's a big old aside: One motivation that comes up a lot is "a desire to get social esteem from an internet forum." Now, dealing with the internet and game design issues is really its own separate post, or series of posts. But I'm really skeptical of this. It is possible that there's a finished, for sale game out there that was just written in order to increase one's position in a forum hierarchy. But most of those games seem to either be in eternal "playtest" or just released in an initial form, prettied up, and not actually revised, playtested, or seriously designed.

I'm going to try to keep this confined within a comment, but let's just say briefly that if your goals are purely status advancement, having endless playtest or a half-assed product absolutely make more sense than going through the muck of actually finish something. Thus, it won't get you through the muck. (That said, if anyone wants to come forward and be like "yeah, I designed my game totally for forum cred" they can. I'll listen. I may or may not believe them, but I probably will.)

[opticalbinary.livejournal.com]

I think you're forgetting a motivation: the desire to impress someone. This is different than social esteem, because it's not generally focused, and different from social responsibility, because it doesn't necessarily follow that you've promised someone something-- you just want to surprise them/make them happy/impress them with your design prowess/prove them wrong/get laid.

I think my games are currently muck-stuck because I don't have the burning desire to impress anyone, which generally tends to negatively effect my quality of life anyway.

[graypawn.livejournal.com]

Are you going to post about getting through the muck?

[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.

[joepub.livejournal.com]

Oh god,
The muck.

Perfect has spent 2 years in revision. Muck.
I haven't written a word of Ribbon Drive yet, though it now feels done. Muck.
Don't Rest In Shadows is brilliant. No playtesting done yet. Muck.
Cheap doesn't consistently deliver on my goal of ilinx play. Muck.

There's one game that I wrote which is absolutely perfect. It plays exactly like I want it to. I wrote it in a single afternoon, have never had a session that did less than exactly what I wanted it to. That game is Dostoevskyan Murder Ballad.

Out of all of my game projects, Dostoevskyan Murder Ballad is the one which I completely forget about, like, ALL THE TIME.

The muck has a way of justifying itself, once you get through it.
Toil equates worth, if you can carry your enthusiasm out the endpoint with you.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

I remember folks mentioning that sometimes, when stuck, playing a bunch of fun, functional games helps give you a compass on what the hell you wanted out of the game you were designing and what you didn't want.