Keep going... in whatever direction the whimsical winds take you! :)

ts

I am one of the many who have provided you with the recommendation of making a "simple game." Due to not completely explaining my suggestion, I was, to some extent, misunderstood. Of course you will acquire dreams of having a media garnishing game, in which players also praise. But this will require patience. As you know, your indie game will not immediately harvest the attention you may seek.

I believe I have the same aspirations as you, which is why I have yet to release a fully developed game. I want to create the next Space Station 13, Mine Craft, Cave Story, or any other indie game that has received a surprising amount of press. I start off with a great concept, which soon develops into an enormous design guide. This guide will contain tidbits, what I will call glitter, which are obviously not required to make the game playable. But what I have realized is that I earn inspiration from people playing, enjoying, and offering suggestions to my games. Designing a game, for months, based on my oversized ambition with no real public reaction will diminish any motivation I had.

So what may I suggest? I have yet to come across the ideal solution, but I do have a recommendation. Instead of adding all of that glitter to your game, you should focus on creating a list of essentials to get the game playable, and of course fun. You do not need to implement every building your concept originally required, nor do you need every class/occupation and their special abilities. Build the frame/structure first; go onto the walls, stairs, elevators, and floors. Add all of the furniture needed to make the place pleasing to one's eyes, and lastly you can add special gadgets around the place and a playpen, and call I call that "glitter". (Sorry for the horrible analogy!)

The game does not have to be simple. It can be rather complex in game play, but build the game's 'complexity' up as time goes on. Thus far, the route of making a completely unique game has not worked out too well; perhaps you should try a different method?

Anyways, Vehicle Wars was almost certainly the concept I was looking forward to the most. Good luck!

Calus CoRPS wrote:

So what may I suggest? I have yet to come across the ideal solution, but I do have a recommendation. Instead of adding all of that glitter to your game, you should focus on creating a list of essentials to get the game playable, and of course fun. You do not need to implement every building your concept originally required, nor do you need every class/occupation and their special abilities. Build the frame/structure first; go onto the walls, stairs, elevators, and floors. Add all of the furniture needed to make the place pleasing to one's eyes, and lastly you can add special gadgets around the place and a playpen, and call I call that "glitter".

In general, this is good advice. And I appreciate you're attempting to explain his it pertains to me. However, I'm thinking now that perhaps my problem is that I want the core structure itself to be significantly novel. Consequently, I'm not sure I can put off the "glitter" for later, as least so long as the glitter in question is something I see as needing to be implicit in the core structure.

Forum_account wrote:

I don't quite understand what you mean when you say things like "I then realized that the game played like something I had encountered somewhere before. Motivation abandoned me at that point."

I mean that my motivation, mysterious thing that it is, seems to vanish the moment I realize I seem to be making something I played before.

The more complex you want the game to be, the more likely it is that some aspect of it will remind you of something you've played before. It seems like you're setting yourself up to fail.

True, but if I have zero motivation to do less complex projects, setting my goals where I have no interest to pursue them, too, is a means to fail.

It seems like you and I both make games for our own satisfaction. Because of this you stop when you realize "oh, this will just end up like some game I'm already bored of." I tend to stop working on a project when I get the feeling that it won't end up being fun, whether that's due to a resemblance to an existing game or that the gameplay just isn't as interesting as I hoped it would be.

It would appear our motivations are identical. After all, what one is alreayd bored of is something that won't end up fun.

It's certainly alright to develop games for our own satisfaction here. It's not like we're being paid to make them, and the acronym for BYOND is indeed Build Your Own Net Dream, after all.

I guess that's just the nature of developing games for your own satisfaction. The project will fail if you don't like it. If you're trying to develop a popular BYOND game you could be successful even if 90% of BYOND users don't like the game.

I'm an extremely niche gamer, a fellow who has been playing games for decades and has expectations to match, so what's popular for everybody else is usually crap for me. Chances are if it has a gigantic development budget, the development team wants to recoup it, and this requires that they develop for the greater body of people - it needs to be popular - and therefore it's automatically a game developed for an audience that doesn't play as many games, and it's not a game I want to play. This is how much of a niche I am in.

You seem to enjoy coming up with game ideas. Realizing that your game is like another existing game shouldn't cause you to lose motivation, it should give you motivation. It's a challenge to find ways to change the gameplay to make it something new.

Yes, indeed. It's more of a challenge the more of the game you want to be different from what you know works.