Plan for Marvin Hawkins

Lessons from a beggining indie. More introspective into the world of beginning game development.

Wow, It has been a while since my last Manifesto like posting. One thing I've learned is that I haven't learned much. (If that makes any sense) What I mean by this is that although I highlighted some of my weaker points in the last .plan I still found myself falling into the same trap. But the good news is that I've learned some new lessons and hopefully I can continue to improve myself both personally and professionally.

Lesson 1: I Don't know much

If anything is my biggest weakness, it's my lack of knowledge. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, no one knows everything. But my problem comes in when I assume that I do know something that I don't. This leads to lost time, asking dumb questions and generally just making a bigger mess than If I had taken the proper time to understand fully something. There are no shortcuts in programming, this is vital lesson that I have learned. Well I plan on fixing this by taking my time to make sure that I actually know what I'm doing.

Lesson 2: I'm too anxious

I've got that drive to make games that's for sure. But I'm too anxious to get out there and finish something. This invariably leads to trying to take short cuts which leads to making a mess of things. In short by trying to hurry through things, I end up taking longer and producing nothing anyway.

I recently learned this lesson in a big way. I was trying desperately to finish a game for the IGF student competition yet I didn't have the programming skills to do so. So I thought that by cramming for a week I'd have it. But it was not to be, everyone on the team agreed that it was better to come up with something good and take our times than to rush and create crap. So I'm going to take Cheri Oteri's advice and "Simmer Down Na". I figure that If if just relax, make the type of game I want, and most importantly, have fun my team and I could make a great game.

Lesson 3:

Don't say, Do. I really learned this in a big way at my latest team meeting. I had been trying to convey the look and feel of the game without much more than the documents. The docs do a great job of explaining the way the game should be built, but it really doesn't help convey the feel of the game. Nothing does that like a good demo or lots of concept sketches. So instead of jumping in full throttle our first milestone will be concept brainstorming.

Sidenote: I initally felt bad about skipping this years IGF. I had some personal reasons for this but also because not only did I let myself down but I let down my team. I am fortunate enough to have a talented group of peers that are willing to work on this game for free just for the experience to learn I really want to do the right thing and give them a finished game.

Well I guess that's enough introspective for now. (Or would this be considered retrospective) I'd better get back to work. After all I'll never finish my game if all I do is write .plans :-)