Noob GameDev: Part 1
No matter how hard you try to stay organized and focused on building games, its easy to hit one of the pitfalls that comes with building video games. To date, I have built well over a dozen games, or at least started them anyways. Yet, only a couple have been finished enough to actual publish.
So why is that? Why did I build or work on games that I never finished? As much as I would like to say its all part of the creative process, and in a way it is, I still should have had at least a few more finished games that I could have published.
For me, I know a few reasons as to why I haven't, and I'm sure I will find more as I continue to try and build games. For one, I was always looking for a quick game before I worked on a large game that I was passionate about. Trying to find one I could quickly upload to add in some more revenue to be able to fund the game I really wanted to make.
There is nothing wrong with trying to make a quick game, especially if it is a good one, but if it's just going to be a filler game that you have little intention of maintaining afterwards, then it might not be all that great of a process.
If you really aren't in to the game you are making, then as soon as you run into a problem, the odds of you dropping it and starting a new one is pretty high. You spend a week or so working through a few more complex features and it isn't working the way you want, so you scrap it and start another. Sound familiar?
It's a bit of a gray area though, because you can build games and not finish them, but there becomes a time when you realize that you are spinning in circles and never creating a finished product. I went through and looked at what games I had started and never finished and deleted them all full well knowing I didn't "want" to make them, I was just making them because I was looking for an easy game.
Sometimes it's easier to build a game you will enjoy making, and not one you are simply building just to have a game out there.