12 Games in 12 Months
Last year, I set a goal to create 12 games in 12 months. I created 2.
2018: A retrospective
2018 was an insanely busy year. Things got busy at work, I moved, and just about everyone I know decided to get married. External factors notwithstanding, there were a number of things I could have done to improve my chances of hitting my goal:
Clearly define scope.
Last July, I made a game prototype of a randomly generated maze-escape game (let’s call it “MazeGenerator”). All the mechanics were done and it was completely playable in two weeks. Since there were two weeks remaining in the month, I decided to turn the prototype into a a polished, complete game with a tutorial and title menu. The idea was to create something that anyone could pick up and play without needing me to explain the controls and rules.
And that’s how I learned the true meaning of the 80/20 principle. That last “little bit” of polish took significantly longer than building the prototype itself and I spent another month getting it done. I went from being two weeks ahead of schedule to falling over two weeks behind. I was happy with the final product, but disheartened that I was failing my “one game per month” goal and ended up burning myself out from self-imposed crunch time.
Creating a prioritized list of specific features at the beginning of the month would have prevented scope creep from causing me to fall behind schedule.
Set specific goals.
I was very free form in deciding what to work on last year. I would often get sidetracked by a shiny new idea mid-project and drop what I was working on to pursue it. The inevitable end result: I wouldn’t finish either project.
It would have been helpful to set monthly goals based on desired learning and/or output. For example: “Learn how Unity’s particle engine works and use it to incorporate a particle system into a game” or “Publish a game on Apple’s App Store.”
In addition to keeping me focused, establishing goals would have made it easier to define scope. If the goal of MazeGenerator was to “Learn about the basics of procedural generation,” then it wouldn’t have made sense to spend time creating a tutorial. However, if the goal was to “Publish a game on the app store,” including a tutorial would’ve been completely appropriate.
Allow followup work.
“12 games in 12 months” was a fun idea, but it didn’t leave room to continue working on a project that was going well. I loved the MazeGenerator prototype so much that I wanted to be able to share it with people. However, since I was only allowing myself “one game per month,” I felt compelled to crunch on the tutorial and menus since I was only allowing myself to work on one game each month.
To hell with that!
If I would’ve allowed myself to do something like “12 significant game milestones in 12 months,” then I could’ve spent the entire first month tweaking the MazeGenerator algorithm and improving the gameplay. This would’ve enabled me to give myself the entire next month to polish the game up by setting a followup milestone goal like “Turn MazeGenerator into a self-contained product that 10 people are able to play through without any instruction from me.”
2019: 12 significant game milestones in 12 months
Taking all of these learnings into consideration, I’m trying again this year. All of these lessons are easily converted into action items:
- Every month this year, create a new game or hit a significant milestone on an existing game
- At the beginning of each month, set specific goals for what I want to learn and the desired output
- After the goals are set, leverage them to create a clearly defined scope
Oh, and…
4. Blog about it! This will help me keep myself accountable and hopefully be a chance to share my learnings along the way.
Fortunately, my game development isn’t as far behind as my blogging. The “January” post is coming soon!
