The creator of Spelunky spoke about the pitfalls for novice indie developers
What becomes the main obstacle for most independent developers? The creator of the indie platformer Spelunky, Derek Yu, tried to answer this question on his Twitter. In his opinion, if a developer wants to succeed in his business, he needs to learn not to abandon projects halfway, but to consistently bring them to the final.
The game designer noticed that many games never saw the light because their creators did not move the project to completion, but were stuck in endless finishing and improving the little things.
In my opinion, it is most difficult for novice indie developers to learn how to consistently complete their projects. Not only to get past the stage of game jams and prototyping, but also not to get bogged down in working on a project that can last for years. Finishing the work you have started is not an easy, but a valuable skill.
Often this situation arises because of the desire of the developer to make the game flawless from a technical point of view. Therefore , Yu gives the following advice:
Try not to get hung up on improving the tools that you use in the process of game development. You will see more than once that successful independent games are full of confusing code. The main thing is to finish the job.
Derek believes that technical roughness is not a reason to delay the work. It’s better to release a game with bugs than not to release the game at all.
I am also sure that even if your project meets a cool reception at first, it is better to push and finish it faster than to delay the release for the sake of trying to find and fix problems in it.
The best advisers and critics are ordinary gamers. Yu says that other game designers are more likely to praise and encourage colleagues than to draw their attention to the shortcomings of the game. This can inspire a novice developer with false optimism.
Feedback from ordinary players is often the best way to understand whether the ideas underlying the game are working. Developers can notice various subtleties, but they often approve of projects as a whole. This attitude supports and motivates, but can be dangerous for novice game creators.
In order not to get lost on the way to the release of his game, Derek Yu recommends the following to future colleagues:
I think developers should always learn to finish projects, go through the initial, intermediate and final stages of development more than once, and also look for elements that you and other people like.
Derek Yu is the author of the popular platformer Spelunky, which was released in 2013 on PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and 4, as well as on PlayStation Vita. According to the Steam Spy service, up to 1 million users own the game on Steam alone.
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