ID:1997331
 
Anybody here ever experience the developer's curse?
The developer's curse is when you start a project with a really simple purpose. Ex: I want to make a chess game. And during development, you go, hey let me add this and then go, hey let me add that. And after 4 years, your simple chess game is still in development and not even about chess anymore, its about monopoly.

If you have experience the developer's curse, please tell your tale and how you got out of it, if you ever did.
Sounds like feature creep.
I totally got that.
Create a design document of the features that are essential to the game at release. To keep yourself from wandering off to random feature or just stressing yourself out, for each development day/week have a list of what needs to be completed. Only work on that list that day/week and if you complete it early, have a nice break.

All you need to do is build discipline.
Get yourself checked for ADHD.
I used to suffer from this extremely badly, until me and Goose developed a systematic way of designing a game

Ideal Product
- Create a bunch of bullet points that is everything you'll ever want from your game.

Realistic Product
- Copy everything in ideal, but then remove anything that is a little too excessive or a "dream feature"

Minimum Viable Product
- Copy everything in realistic, but remove anything that isn't core to the gameplay. You want three classes? No you don't. You don't even need classes yet, you just need a guy that can hit stuff. Need four abilities? Nope, just the one. Literally strip it to the very core.


Now, work on the minimum viable product until you've got everything on your list. Here's a really good chance to check if your game is even worth progressing on, play it for a bit with a friend (Let him know it's just a concept not a finished product), and see if it's fun, if it's not, you might want to go back to the drawing board.

Once you've finished with your minimum viable product, strike it entirely off the list, and start adding everything in your Realistic Product list. Once you've done that, you should have a game to release. Usually I label this "Version 0.5", and ship it to get some feedback. The game should be functional, working and playable.

Now, here's the key part, you move everything from Ideal into Realistic, and based off the product you've already got, re-write ideal. Maybe you thought of a bunch of things that improve the game's quality a bunch, throw them in your new Ideal list. Now you complete everything in Realistic, and repeat - Move ideal into realistic, re-write ideal.

The key is to have the self control to stick to the lists you initially wrote, once you've done your Minimum Viable and Realistic lists, that's when I consider the doors open to feature creep.

Here's an example of my design document for the classes in Deep Dungeon 2, though bare in mind this is just the classes and not the whole project so there are obviously other things required to add to make a Minimum Viable Product overall, it's good to break it up into chunks and repeat the cycle.
Mmh, I'm never satisfied with the quality of my games. Sometimes it occurs to me earlier on and I give up before hardly doing anything.