It has been over two weeks since I opened Illic, let alone worked on it. I had looked forward to the Christmas period as one where I would be able to consistently work on the game. Between work and my efforts in Illic I couldn’t do it. I haven’t even wanted to look at Illic. So I decided I wouldn’t work on it until the new year. Instead I have been spending time with family and in general doing things I hadn’t found time for during the year. At the same time I find myself bad at taking a break. I feel as though something is missing.

I have tried working on some lore entries - but after drafting them I didn’t feel much like editing them and making them ready for the game (though I would have needed to make new levels for the entries anyway). So what have I been doing that would require a blog entry to be written? I have been watching Game Developer Conference talks on youtube. I found the channel from Dave Farley's video about Sea of Thieves. While I have never played the game I have thought for a long time that games need continuous deployment pipelines and automated testing. I have found only one other talk about the subject - though they were using continuous deployment they were still reliant on manual testing which I found disappointing. Automation being noteworthy makes me frown. I enjoyed the talks on less familiar topics.

I have already talked about the problems I’ve had with incorrect priorities before, but as useful as that insight is… There is no point in focusing on what you are doing wrong. You need to find ways to improve. I have been so desperate to get the game to work I have been ignoring everything else. There is a lot more to success than just making your game work. I have seen talks from successful indies who admit that their games are held together with digital duct tape and glue. Which made me realise why games have such bad production practices. If you are making a web-based app you have to keep everything up to date and compete with your competition. With a fun video game so long as you plug enough leaks once it is finished it doesn’t have to change. It will probably make ports and HD remasters a nightmare but if you are making one it is because the game is successful. The way game developers adapt to a shifting market is to make a completely new game.

I think that is stupid. Why would you accept bad waterfall processes and work with expensive and fragile code when you could make quality games faster? Especially since it is the developers who are paying the highest price when they have to crunch. I think it is a failure of education. We aren’t taught how to learn - whatever the task, an iterative process of learning is going to be better.

I am trying to gain a new perspective and to figure out what direction I can take which will make the game something that will excite people. It is an obvious conclusion of where I was heading in recent months but… I of course had to crunch hard to get to the point where my game was robust enough to fix things. Yes I realise that crunching to avoid having to crunch is obviously counterproductive. What can I say - sometimes excessive passion can be a bad thing. Maybe that is the real reason why there is so much crunch in the industry. We are all too busy being excited about making the best game the world has ever seen to realise what we are doing to ourselves.

Until next time.