Dave Voyles recently posted 0 to Indie in 5 Easy Steps on ArmlessOctopus, a distillation of a panel at PAX 2011. My favorite advice bit from the five was “manage your scope.” This is such an important step to take, though for me, not an easy one.
In the last few weeks, Escape Goat has really come together, and everyone who’s played it so far has liked it. I’m very proud of that. Yet a lot of play testers also have a few features they’d like to see… and really, how long would they take to add? I’ll explain the specifics after the game’s out and I do my multi-part postmortem on the process, but for now, even the smallest extra features have got to wait until the sequel. I’m holding the line.
I’m in a situation I reach frequently when composing music. I’ve got a pretty good sounding song, but I think that with some more time it’ll get better. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it gets worse. Refining can easily become tinkering. Then, there’s nothing to show for your lost time. That’s kind of where I’m at with this project: I don’t want to tinker much more, because something might be spoiled.
What if I miss some great opportunity? There’s always the sequel.
I struggle with this one all the time too. Things can certainly always get better and better, and small additions can make all the difference, but there’s that striking the balance between making it perfect and just fooling around/cost-benefit ratios to work out… maybe teaching and game developing are similar in that respect 🙂