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Why game projects fail

Krice

Arcane
Developer
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
1,289
I've tried to write something about this in a blog, but it's too demanding and I also want to know what you think about this "theory". I think two reasons why projects fail are not knowing what you want and no plans. If you don't know what you want you can't have a detailed plan and development is most likely going to be "something" with repeated refactoring cycles. This is the problem I have in my projects. I don't know exactly how the game (or other program) should be, so I'm just writing some random stuff and refactoring code to perfection while trying not to think about the content. Also I believe that many people think problems are in programming, like how to manage a large project or how to implement something, but it's only a small part of it and not that important.
 

The Avatar

Pseudodragon Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 15, 2016
Messages
336
Location
The United States of America
Around 10 years ago, I was on a small MMO project for 3 years before it was cancelled and the team laid off. The reason it failed? Lack of publisher confidence. Sometimes it's just not your own fault.
 

redactir

Artist Formerly Known as Prosper
Joined
Jul 16, 2018
Messages
696
Yes you need a plan at all times. You must stick to your plan. You also need to be tough.
If you want to improve the chance you'll finish your game you need to do more design work earlier on.

Understand when there's ongoing big boy decisions to be made between custom asset foreplay, borrowing others work outright, or using primitive templates.
Plan that shit out too.

At the sametime you want a tasteful balance of the creative appeal the game has when you have to relaunch it for debugging a million times,
and saving yourself time by just doing little as possible.

You want to get your fun proof of concept replayable features implemented asap. Infact i'd bet this is key to many popular game devs keeping interest in their project.

Most importantly you have to adapt towards a new design if your envisioned goals prove logistically harmful to your development cycle.
Ignoring this point puts you at extreme risk of becoming vaporware.
 
Self-Ejected

Davaris

Self-Ejected
Developer
Joined
Mar 7, 2005
Messages
6,547
Location
Idiocracy
If we are talking indie games. Bad code is easy to write. Good code is hard. Artists don't work fer free. Good teams are rare. People try to copy their favorite games that had bugets of millions of dollars, and wonder why they never get anywhere. You can solve these problems if you make a simple game on your own. Darren Grey from Roguelike talks about it quite a bit. Cut it down to the bare essentials. No graphics or sound, just gameplay.
http://www.roguelikeradio.com/
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,787
The correct question is, why do projects succeed and the answer is, luck. So there you have your answer for why they fail, bad luck*.



*Bad luck includes bad planning, no planning, lack of skills, people not able to work in a team, people not able to work with the specific people in their team, no vision, wishy-washy developers, design by committee
 

Krice

Arcane
Developer
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
1,289
When I was creating the first version of Teemu (a very light-weight roguelike game) for 7DRL contest it took about 3-4 months (a bit over week..). And the reason was that I actually knew what I wanted even though I didn't have any kind of formal plan or design doc etc. I knew the game had a central island with entrances to several places which I also planned on the run. There were only small number of items and monsters. The only problems I had were implementing some level generation stuff, but none of the programming issues were difficult.

So, after that I had an idea to extend Teemu with new locations and a RPG system. That was over 10 years ago... Well, to be honest I've been developing some other stuff as well, but you get the idea. I didn't really know what to add and what the role-playing system is going to be, still don't. At first I thought I can make the game more open world, but that idea didn't work, because then the adventure part of the game falls apart. Now the new version is nearly ready, but it took a long time to figure out, and on top of that I still have to design the RPG system in more exact way, not just as an vague idea.
 

hexer

Guest
I can reply from my perspective of a team lead for a fan game Van Buren: A Fallout RPG Adventure - based on Interplay's original Fallout 3 - https://www.moddb.com/games/f3-van-buren

We failed because we didn't have any funds and we knew we couldn't earn any so that demotivated some people, including me - at the end of the day you still have bills to pay and food to buy.
Also, we used game engine FOnline which was refactored every few months to the point we couldn't keep up converting our source anymore.
And real-life work made it impossible to handle a team of 75 members spread all over the world every day.
Finally, I left the project in the hands of the first team member who volunteered to carry on the torch - a young artist that didn't have the knowledge on how to move on.
I believe we were 2 years away of working full time from finishing the game.
 
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Krice

Arcane
Developer
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
1,289
We failed because we didn't have any funds

I'm thinking more like game development as a hobby when money is not a problem, because no one gets paid. But commercial development is also interesting in ways it can fail. It sounds strange that you ran out of money, but I think stuff like that does happen sometimes.
 

redactir

Artist Formerly Known as Prosper
Joined
Jul 16, 2018
Messages
696
If you want to improve the chance you'll finish your game you need to do more design work earlier on.
How do you properly design a game?

Passion, game design doc, lots of references to start.

When things get serious it's with rules. Particularly rules that make sense to you as stated and together go the farthest to laying out the game.
Rules are meant to bring order out of your chaotic clusterfuck of concepts. Rules want to set limits soft and hard.

You'll want to have programming algorithms in mind that you're sure can implement the rules and engines in mind that can reliably keep the content organized and efficiently allocated.

But before you go too far into rule implementation for realz: you want to first make sure the concepts the rules involve are enjoyable when thrown about in a minified form.
Whether its by boardgame, cardgame, or a small text adventure.

Here's a table to help you understand what you're doing.

6bjd2rZ.png

https://i.imgur.com/6bjd2rZ.png
 

Van-d-all

Erudite
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
Messages
1,557
Location
Standin' pretty. In this dust that was a city.
They fail when they "offer" nothing. It comes from being either technically buggy/janky/incomplete giving too little to play with; or from being overly derivative from other, more successful games, being a poor substitute of said games. Often a mixture of the two. And I mean only the ones that actually get released.
 

Valky

Arcane
Manlet
Joined
Aug 22, 2016
Messages
2,418
Location
Trapped in a bioform
Poor project management and lack of well defined, realistic goals. Hell, I've been guilty of being overambitious too and then dropping ideas because I realized I was trying to do everything and could never get it all done. Don't try to boil the ocean.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
If you work on game projects professionally, they also fail if you failed to assess costs, the amount of hours you will be working on it, and the amount of sales you will need for everyone to actually earn a decent living and the price point you need to charge it at. Passion projects sometimes forego this sort of tedious accounting then suffer once people realize they aren't earning enough to justify the labor and they've got bills to pay.

This is also a major reason why it's important to control scope and make sure you'll get the game done in a reasonable amount of time.
 
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