Edy Zahid Blog The Thoughts of One Game Developer

Keeping Motivation in Game Project

After suspecting it might happen eventually, the dreaded "losing interest on a game project" has finally struck on me leaving me feeling demotivated to work on the game project. I can use my sheer power of self-discipline to force myself to work on this game project but it will be a destructive process in the long term.

Motivation = Belief + Control

Why do I lose interest in a game project since developing game is part of my passion? The answer to that is as long as you believe in the game project and you will be able to control most aspect of it, that gives you a strong powerful motive to keep do it. This is the reason why I can sustain working on Blade Thrust Tactics for 6 years full time as I am a firm believer of it and I control almost all aspect of it - design, coding, art and others.

A total control if this gives an unparaleled power of motivation to me to keep finishing this game project. I've finally been able to release the game after 6 years of gruelling development and that represent my greatest achievement so far considering how technical and complicated the game can be to people.

On the other hand, working in a team will surely make you losing some control on several aspect of the game. This is actually quite OK if you believe in the game project and you are feeling comfortable with limited control that you have. When I received an offer to join Math Quest development team, I was assigned coding aspect of it. For several months joining the team, I can adapt to the workflow because I receive ample design details to work on accomplishing some features in the game although there is some lacking in receiving arts to be integrated to the game.

But over several months working on the game project, I was frustrated to see many changes to the game direction that slows down the game development progress. There is now 2 separate version of the game - demo version and full version which is basically the same game having a different content to it. Maintaining 2 separate game version is a nightmare. The reason why there has been 2 versions is because the demo version was developed quickly for testing requirement to students so it lacks proper storyline. The full version on the other hand contain proper storyline as the team managed to find a  script writer to write the storyline. In addition to it, there is some development to do contract work for education portal but later scrapped as it affects the main game development

The plan is to release a single game module by the end of July 2010 which represent a single civilization player can play and interact but due to this changes, the team can only manage to complete only half of it. Because of this, I don't feel that I've achieved a sense of accomplishment as there's plenty of things to do. This in turns demotivates me because I have an expectation I will be able to finish a single game module by the end of July 2010 but due to this changes, that's not going to happen.

Lessons to be learned

1) Stick to the game plan and do not change direction unless the project is deemed unfeasible.
2) Every team member has to know every single task he/she need to do for the rest of development time.
3) Separate development into milestone and reward the team member for completed milestone.

So how can we learn from this experience? The most important of thing is to have a clear direction of what the team want to achieve in a specific amount of time. This mean if the team want to finish a game by the end 2010, do whatever it takes to achieve the goal and do not change direction and add another project because it surely will distract the team from completing the game.

The team has to sit down together and list down every single tasks each team member has to do and its deadline based on feature needed in the game. That way each team member will know how much workload they have to face in relation to each others. It's a good idea to separate the development into several milestones and once the team managed to achieve the milestone, the team should be rewarded with something. The completed milestone and its reward serves as motivator to work on the next milestone.

This is what currently lacking in Math Quest development team as there is no milestone to pursue. I've been coding for more than 6 straight months for this game project and boy, I do feel tired! If there is a milestone to be achieved and some reward to it, that can rejuvenate me once the milestone have been achieved.