42 Essential Game Dev Tips That Are Immutably Correct and Must Never Be Disputed by Anyone Ever At Any Time!
Featuring the worst picture I will ever use in a post
I quite enjoy reading “advice lists” even though “all advice cancels out” (Jeremy Giffon) - you can often find one thing which is a useful reminder or which particularly resonates with your current situation.
At the same time, as I called a few years back, the burgeoning popularity of gamedev has brought with it a frustrating and largely counterproductive meta-culture of “the right way to do everything” mostly propagated by people who aren’t busy shipping games. You have to use clean code standards, you have to find a publisher, you have to make a cozy city-builder…these are all good and valid suggestions that are worth considering but you don’t have to do anything. The truth is that you can make a silly card game in whatever “Love2D” is with giant if statements; you can make a funky 2D action game for PC with no shoot button in whatever “the Phaser framework” is, then completely miss your launch day…you can do anything you like.
So, while I thought it would be fun to collect together a few maxims I foolishly believe are sacred truths, a grab-bag of “wish-I-knew-this-earliers” and a few other things I find myself repeating either internally or externally, the ultimate goal of this exercise is to encourage you to continue working to establish what is really true for you.
Here are somes tips for you to take, leave or disdain as you wish!
Use source control or at least make regular backups
Your game is likely both too boring and too shallow
Your pitch should include a budget
Your budget should be justifiable using non-outlier comparators
A stupid idea that would make your friends laugh is often a great concept
Criticise a game you hate by making a good version of it
Changing a core mechanic usually means that you need a new ground-up design
Design documents are only bad because most people write them badly
Make the smallest viable prototype in each iteration
Players need an objective even if they are looking to be distracted from it
No genre is ever dead or oversaturated
Games in difficult categories need to be doing something truly exceptional
Learn the history of games
Forget the history of games! Unpredictable novelty arises every year
Great games have been made by both amazing and terrible coders
Be as messy as you want to get your game design locked…
…then think about readability, performance, extensibility, modularity, portability…
Procedural generation is a stylistic choice not a cost-reduction methodology
Depth is almost always more important than UX
Plan for exit even if you plan to never exit
Your opinion of DLC is likely not based on data
There’s no point owning your IP unless you use it, license it or sell your company
PR will always matter but most devs don't understand what PR is
People want to hear about even the most mundane parts of your dev process
Be grateful when you win awards and gracious (or silent) when you don't
Announce your game and launch your Steam page simultaneously
Get your Steam tags right
Make sure your announcement trailer destroys its intended audience
Excite, intrigue, inspire with possibilities
Your announcement is an invitation to your game’s community
Make “be respectful” a community rule and enforce it vigorously
Celebrate great community members
Post updates at minimum once per month
Community trust is established by correctly calling your shots
Find an accountant who understands games
Understand salaries, dividends and pension contributions fully
Find a lawyer you can trust with anything
Read contracts as if the identity of the counterparty was unknown to you
A publisher without a defined advantage is just expensive money
Just because you had a bad publisher once doesn’t mean all publishers are bad
“Get publisher money” is hustling. “Make a profitable game” is a real ambition
Keep trying - be specific, optimistic and generous
His eyes look like he is doing a forced task 😂
Really good stuff (I think)! I guess it's a good sign that while I was going through your list, nothing really came as a surprise. Bonus that I already luckily have lots of them covered from past experiences (e.g., a lawyer you can trust with anything).