3 Gamedev Ideas (March 30, 2020)

Hello,

Hope you’re doing well. The world is definitely a bit chaotic these days.

Here are this week’s ideas!

3 Gamedev Ideas

I.

The bigger your project becomes, the harder it’ll be to work with it.

Tracking down bugs gets more difficult. Compiling takes more time. 

Overall, a lot of things become slower and more annoying to do.

II.

In my experience, making a game is about 20% fun work and 80% boring work.

Fun:

  • Coming up with ideas and concepts
  • Designing the game
  • Coding the initial main systems
  • Etc.

Boring:

  • Adding content
  • Polishing stuff
  • Fixing bugs & glitches
  • Menus & UI
  • Managing different input devices and resolutions
  • Remapping controls
  • Localization
  • Etc.

I believe that’s actually a big reason why people love doing gamejams…

Because you only have to make the fun parts of a game before moving on.

But you need to be able to do the boring work if you want to publish a commercial game.

III.

Some people think publishing a game on Steam gives you loads of free traffic and sales.

Truth is… if you don’t bring in sales from external sources Steam does practically nothing for you.

But get some traction first and Steam will make your game exponentially more successful. 

Like 10x or even 100x as successful. 

Because Steam only wants to promote winners – the games that’ll bring in the most revenue.

I’m not sure what’s the indicator that matters most though. Sales? Reviews? Wishlists?

Until next week,

Thomas Gervraud,
Developer of Space Gladiators: Escaping Tartarus