A Fork in the Road: Choosing The Next Adventure

Diary of an Indie Game Developer: Chapter 31

Jason Tuttle
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

As I mentioned previously, I’ve come to the realization that the scope of my game has become too BIG. I came to this conclusion after spending much of the summer working intensely on the story and design of my game. Working on story and design has involved LOTS of research. So far I’ve worked my way through the following books:

The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences

Before diving into my summer of reading research, I had finished building a pretty complete vertical slice of my game. After my summer of reading research, looking back now on my vertical slice and how long it took to build, I’ve been forced to face the fact that my game is definitely over scope.

So… What to do about that.

Time to make a hard choice. Time to make a different game.

Wait? What?!?

Couldn’t you just cut it back a bit? Reign it in? Well, sure. I could do that, but after lots of thought and consideration, I don’t think the resulting product would be a good game. It would be mediocre at best. A shell of what it was meant to be.

So… I find myself at a fork in the road, kinda like being in one of those choose your own adventure games. Time to choose a new path.

Fortunately, all of my summer reading research has been VERY helpful in this regard. The more I read this summer, the more two distinct thoughts started to form in my mind. One was the conclusion that my game was way over scope. The other was an idea for a new game!

Yup. I’ve already got a new game in mind, and I’ve already started working on it. It’s very early days, but I’m really excited about this new direction!

I knew when I started this journey, that being a lone gun indie game developer wasn’t going to be easy. When I started writing this blog, I also promised all of you that I would chronical the whole journey, the ups and the downs, the good and the bad. Going over scope has definitely been a bump in the road, but it’s not the end of the journey.

As Angela Duckworth says in her excellent book Grit:

“There are no shortcuts to true excellence.”

Time to get back up and try again.

See you next week…

Written by

Indie Game Developer. Formerly, Associate Environment Artist at Santa Monica Studio working on God of War. In a previous life, I was the IT guy at TED.

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