Good Game Dev Habits Pt. I: Focus on Completion

An Introduction

Hello reader,
My name is JT Anderson. I've been a game designer and developer for a little while now and although I'm certainly not well known even within the niche that is tabletop gaming, those who do know me generally recall me from the work I do with a small games company I run called Deraj Studios.

While I have been writing up, testing and tweaking games for several years, I have yet to set out writing on the different aspects of design and development within tabletop gaming. That is what I intend to do with this blog.
Over the next three posts I'll be going over three habits that help enforce good game design and development.
Some of these are habits that I've practiced myself over the years, and some are habits that I'm striving to commit myself to. The first falls into the latter category.

Focus on Completion

As I've said I have been a game designer and developer (there is a difference between the two but I tend to wear both hats) for the past several years. I have however not yet properly finished a game by putting it through final production.
I started in game design when I was a mere unbloodied kid of thirteen years, mainly making changes (including campaign settings and light rpg mechanics) to my favorite tabletop miniatures game at the time, The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game (by GW). This led to further development of games within the miniature wargaming genre (primarily with my still in-development strategy skirmish game, Portals: Worlds Collide) and has brought me down a long and winding path of developing my skills at game design, development and although not one that's required for most game designers, sculpting miniatures.
I've garnered a great deal of enjoyment in this journey as well as growth as a person given that it's been a large part of my life and daily routine for about a third of my life so far, but there has been a key component missing during my time in game development (and designing as well, for that matter). That component has been a focus on finishing the project.
A lack of focus on completing game development of my games (especially my skirmish game, as that is the one I've been working on for the longest and with the one that has been allotted the most development time) and not knowing when a game is ready to be released has resulted in game development branching off into a near endless cycle of design and revisions of that design.

Generally, game design and development for me goes a lot like this:
1: An initial draft of the game is drawn up.
2: That draft is thoroughly playtested over a series of playtesting sessions, the results of which are recorded and checked against previous results.
3: The draft is changed according to accomodate any needed balances (which, with a skirmish wargame such as the sort that I'm in the midst of, is a great deal due to the ways that various characters and factions in the game interact with the game and each other).
4: After these changes have been made, playtesting commences again with these new rules to see how they play vs. the previous rendition of the rules.
5: Repeat steps 2-4 several times.
6: I come up with an idea of how an aspect of gameplay could be thoroughly improved with a few (often somewhat major) changes. I make those changes to accomplish the improvement and in the process of doing so, I turn into upheaval other carefully crafted mechanics that no longer act the same with the new major change made and essentially have a new draft that needs thorough playtesting.
7: Repeat steps 1-6.

There have been several factors that went into this lack of focus on completion, including not really having the financial freedom to do a proper launch of the game (although, that didn't entirely deter me from making some failed early attempts) which allowed me to treat the largest game in development for me as an exhaustive in-depth practice in game design and ensuing development. Essentially because I knew that a final release was realistically a long ways off I (in the first years) I treated the game like a large sandbox where I could let my creativity determine the direction that development went in more than practicality, and explore ideas in game changes for the sake of exploring them.

There are certainly good things that came from this amount of 'open-ended development'. In addition to being a fantastic way for me to learn and grow as a designer and developer, I think that it is the reason why Portals: Worlds Collide plays with the unique and interesting mechanics that it does. 

But the amount of options that you have as a designer are endless, and although creating new ways for a game to play is one of the most rewarding aspects for me as a designer, at some point a game needs to be finalized. Ultimately the freedom that I was allowed in my younger years created an unfortunate pattern of changing a design that was well on its way in development to becoming a solid, balanced and finished set of rules and setting progress back a few steps by making a change that was more than likely not strictly needed. 

Focusing on completion of a game's development is a habit that I intend to practice because due to the amount of games that I'm currently working on, I can no longer afford to spend the amount of time going through the numerous (some would say needless) major changes as I was previously able to do.

The take-away I suppose is this: If you intend on coming out the other side of game development with a game that you've completed and published, make sure that the changes you make throughout development are necessary and not changes that are being made because you're being over-critical of the design or because you have an idea that will ultimately change the game entirely, essentially making it a new game - those sorts of game changers can, for the most part, wait to be more fleshed out into their own game. 

See you on the next post, until then happy gaming! 

[Have you had trouble coming to a finish in game design? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.]