🧗‍♀️Initial Limitations

When talking about video game development, we often read that the project abandonment rate is very high. And it is true; developing a video game consists of a basic and fundamental concept: it is a computer project, which requires many hours of work, dedication, effort, and sacrifice. To take a video game through to completion, and for this video game to look good enough and have enough quality to attract the public is a very complex task.

Many people tend to believe that a video game is to prepare a small project in a few days, often based on prototypes, give it some personal touches, and start making money. Obviously they are wrong. Hence we see the huge amount of projects that are published, and are immediately forgotten. If we really want to stand out from the rest, we must create a game that is fun, attractive, with adequate functionality, and with enough marketing to be seen among the many games that are published every day. Creating a game in two weeks that is based on a prototype or an example taken from the Internet is not making video games, it is taking advantage of an opportunity to make some money.

However, there are other videogame programmers who suffer from the opposite problem. They are ambitious people, who want to create the best game. And that's a good thing. But they have a problem: they don't know how to calculate, nor measure, the limits that the game has to have. They fall in love with a project, and start to expand more and more, adding more and more features, until the game overwhelms them, and they lose control.

These are the kind of programmers who are worth looking out for, and who should be followed. But they should be careful: IT projects tend to grow constantly. We are ambitious, we have illusions, and we want our game to be admired by everyone. It's normal, it's logical. But we must also be aware of our limitations. We don't have millionaire budgets, nor teams of dozens of programmers, designers, sound engineers, etc. We are usually alone, or we have the help of a few colleagues. We would like to imitate the big productions, but we must be aware that this is impossible.

What should we do to avoid this overflow of ideas? Before starting to program, before starting to design, before any other action, we must set down in a document the scope and limits of our project. That is to say, we will have to indicate which elements our project will contain. We will make a list by categories, we will add an explanation detailing each point based on its content, and we will create a conceptual sketch with all the features of our game.

But the ideas are endless, and we will come up with new possibilities. This is a good thing. But it is very dangerous. If we keep adding ideas to the project, it will keep growing, and we will never finish. Therefore, we will create another document with ideas that will be added once the first document is completed, and the game is released. This second document will have a series of points. You will need to add to each point a version associated with the game. Thus, when version 1.0 is released, version 1.1 will be a new feature that has been thought out in advance. Version 1.2 will be the next in the list, and so on. In the end, the game will have everything you wished it had, but it has done so in an organized and harmonious way.

The scope and limits of a project are fundamental. If there are no limits, there is no end. And the project, no matter how good it is, will end up forgotten and you will end up frustrated. Don't let this happen. Organize your ideas, and work according to your possibilities. And work every day and constantly. This way you will have a chance to succeed.

(Excerpted from https://titandscompany.com/2018/07/02/los-limites-de-un-proyecto-en-videojuegos/ SEP 5, 2022)