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5 Reasons Not To Pursue Your Dream Game

Many people are tempted to create the game of their dreams when first trying to design games. Please don't! It's one of the worst ideas you can possibly have, and there are plenty of reasons why, of which we'll discuss just five.

1) It won't get finished

If you build a game after an image in your head, the urge to make it absolutely perfect can be hard to resist. Given that nothing will ever be exactly how you imagined it, you'll often need to leave features in an unsatisfactory state or leave them out altogether! If you don't and keep perfecting the little work that you have done, you'll never get to the important parts of designing a game and quit long before you're ever able to release it to the public.

2) Your game will be bad

Chances are your game won't be all you're hyping it up to be. It can be tough to regard your own projects objectively, especially when working on something close to your heart, but it's imperative. If you never pitch your game or listen to feedback, you'll have your sights set on what you want, not what the gaming community wants. Make this mistake and your game is bound to crash and burn.

3) Changes are hard to make

An idea usually forms itself subconsciously, somewhere in the back of your head. This is detrimental to most every aspect of game design, as it should be as conscious as you can possibly make it. One of the results of subconscious design is that your entire game might hinge on something that holds it back, making the process of creating it unnecessarily rigid. If ever you want to change something about a subconsciously designed game, you'll likely need to do more work than you bargained for.

4) It is hard to design

Closely related to reason three is the fact that subconscious design will lead to flaws in how you imagine your game to be. Memory can be a funny thing and if you don't write down what you want to do you can quickly get cornered by conflicting mechanics, plot holes, incoherent play and so on. To create an engaging experience, you need to leave behind some of what you hoped it to be in favor of creating a more solid product.

5) You don't have the capability

If you're a newcomer, game design might seem easy and even an article like this might not convince you of the fact that it isn't, so it's time to turn to technical limitations. Creating a game is not only a matter of designing it; achieving that design is equally as important.

As a programmer, if you don't know your limits, any project you attempt will find itself filed in the bin before long. The reason for this is twofold: both you and hardware are limited in what you can achieve.

The latter might not seem troublesome at first; after all, machines get faster every day. However, if you can't write good code, I can almost guarantee that your game will slow down to a crawl halfway through the development process. On top of that, larger projects pose many unique obstacles. The only way to overcome these is to have experience, so please start with something small.

What should you do?

Game design is not something you should turn away from just because you can't make your dream come true right away. As with everything, learning from others pays off. Try dissecting simple games such as Mario or Tetris. Find out why the developers made those games the way they are and use that knowledge to create something simple of your own.

If you want to become a well-respected game developer, you'll have a long road ahead of you. However, if you take the time to make yourself proficient in design, you'll find that it's a fun experience all the way. Always be wary of overstretching yourself and be aware of your limits, and you'll surely be successful sooner or later.