Photo by: viZZZual.com (licensed under Creative Commons)

Quite often I see posts on Indiegamer about people who have nearly finished making their game but then they’ve hit “the wall” and seem to have lost all motivation to continue. Their story is often all too familiar: been making a game for two years, been doing all the work on their own, recently come to the realisation that there is still a ton of stuff to do before it can be released.

I’ve hit the wall a few times myself, so here are some tips that might help you to climb over or break through your own wall:

1) Should you really be finishing this game anyway? Sometimes you might just be flogging a dead horse. Perhaps the best thing to do is ditch the game and begin work on a new one (or give up making games completely, gasp!). There’s no shame in changing projects when you know that the game won’t be financially viable, or you’ve had a much better idea (providing that you don’t have a “better” idea every week and never finish anything) – you’ll have still learned something e.g. how not to do it and how to make your next game faster and better.

I ditched Iron Fist and made my first match-3 game and it led onto to a fantastic career in casual games.

2) Make a To Do list of all the remaining tasks and bugs. Don’t forget to include publishing tasks, which can add up to weeks or months’ worth of work. Then add time estimates to all those tasks. This way you’ll get a decent idea of how long the game may actually take to complete. You may then decide to cut features and only include the high priority tasks in order to bring the launch date nearer, or you may decide that it’s not worth investing any more of your time in the project.

One good thing about having a prioritised To Do list is that you have a clear path about how to proceed and can get satisfaction from knowing what to do each day and crossing off completed tasks. The game doesn’t feel so massive once it’s split into discrete chunks.

3) Get the game play tested (privately or publicly). If the play testers think the game sucks, then maybe you should ditch it unless you really believe that you can still make it great without too many changes. If they think it’s great, then hopefully this will motivate you to finish it and make it even better – especially if they keep asking you when it will be ready.

4) Tell everyone a launch date. Once you commit to something publicly, you are much more likely to complete it in order to not look like a fool (or a “sayer” but not a “doer”).

5) Get some other team members on board who can help finish it and so you can motivate each other (like going for a jog or to the gym with a partner). Of course getting reliable team members is a whole can of worms in itself…

6) Get a publisher or portal interested so you know that you have at least one outlet for sales.

7) Visualise the goal! Remind yourself why you started making the game. Was it just to have fun? If so, and you’ve stopped having fun, then make another game and have fun again, it’s that simple! If it’s to be financially successful, then see the finished game in your mind looking great and selling bucketloads – and figure out the shortest route to get there.

8 ) Take a break. Maybe totally away from the computer (go and do something healthy). Or maybe by playing games that inspire you to get back to making your own game. Sometimes taking a break allows you to come back to your game with fresh eyes so that you can make better decisions.

9) Make a mini-game for a few days. This may get your creative juices going again so that you can get back to your original game with enhanced vigor. It may even make you realise that you need to ditch your game in order to make a better game.

Tips 8 and 9 may work for some people, but part of me still thinks that they are procrastination techniques when you should really just …

10) Finish it! Professionals are finishers, and hobbyists/wannabes are not – sorry if that sounds harsh but it’s true. Stop messing around, just knuckle down and finish it. It’s not easy, sometimes it’s a real slog, but you just have to push on through and finish it to savor the sweet joy of launching a game. If you want it bad enough, you’ll do it. So, what are you waiting for? Close your browser and get to it!

Someone on Indiegamer was just asking about what sort of budgets people have for making their games. I replied then thought I’d post more detail here.

My first couple of games had tiny budgets but that was years back. Check out these detailed sales stats for Xmas Bonus and Easter Bonus. Also check out the Sales Statistics category in general on my blog for some other great figures.

My 4th game (Holiday Bonus) had a budget of about $2500 (art+music) but made it back 10x over!

My 3rd game (Oz) was higher than $2500 but I can’t say how much due to an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) with the producer.

My 5th and 6th games (Fairway Solitaire and Unwell Mel) were made for Big Fish Games and had *much* bigger budgets (programmer+artists+music) and my current game has the biggest budget yet. When I think about how much money they are trusting me with, it’s quite humbling. Sorry but I can’t say how much due to contractual reasons.

I hope this was of some help to you in figuring out your budget.

One thing I’ve learnt is that you have to speculate to accumulate. So spend more money (when you know what you are doing, maybe not on your fist game) to make better quality and you’ll make more money, it’s pretty simple really!

I just read a really interesting interview with a guy at Facebook who helps developers get their games onto Facebook.

I remember when there weren’t many games on facebook but since then it’s really exploded. Now it’s very cluttered like iPhone, but the top games get HUGE numbers of players (3-8 million monthly players) due to the fact that Facebook now has 150 million members!

Also a while back the revenue model wasn’t clear but now it seems that people are monetising their games mainly via a) advertising and b) micro-transactions. I’m wondering if the ad-driven model will see a slump due to the economic situation. Certainly if you make a good game there is evidence that players can spend a considerable amount of money on micro-transactions, so that seems a more sensible model to me.

Like Casual games Facebook games are becoming bigger and more complex and are costing more to make. Many big players (please excuse pun) are entering the arena so it seems like the days of one-man bands having big successes could be nearing an end (the same may happen on iPhone soon too). Any time there is a new platform it seems that Indies can get in there quickly and make good money at the beginning but soon it fills up with too much crap and then the biggest and best (and most expensive) titles win. But I guess that’s natural in an emerging market – it’s just business.