Scope Creep is a Poison, Here's the Antidote.

if you're a game developer I have zero doubt in my mind that you've experienced scope creep on some level scope creep is when you want to make a game and you get all these big ideas that end up being a little too ambitious and unreasonable I'll give you an example from my own experience the first game I ever tried to make was a story-driven Metroid Vania it started somewhat simple but then I started adding unique zones and boss fights and upgrades and hundreds of characters and by the time I had all these ideas put together was ready to make the game I could barely figure out how to make the character move it only took about a month into actually prototyping this game that I dropped it completely and moved on to something else I think this happens to pretty much everybody who wants to get into game development you see all these amazing indie game developers make hit games all by themselves like stardew Valley or undertale and you think to yourself if they could do it then so can I then you actually give it a try and realize that game development and especially solo development is really hard if you're new to making games and you're listening to this you're probably thinking to yourself screw this guy I know what I'm capable of I'm super passionate and I'm not going to let anybody stop me from making this game and to that I say go for it prove me wrong people are capable of incredible things if they put their mind to it there's a reason why Cave Story animal well batro all these lightning in a bottle games exists if you're truly driven enough you will make it happen but scope creep is a poison once it's in your system it sucks the passion right out of you until you're left with no drive at all I tell you this as a cautionary tale 99% of games never get finished and a lot of those developers end up giving up on the stream completely but if scope creep is a poison then there's got to be an antidote look to this day I still struggle with biting off a bit more than I can chew but I've also learned a bunch of different ways to not only protect myself from scope creep but also use it to my advantage so today I want to share some of these methods with you I call them the five ingredients of the scope creep antidote all of these tips are actionable and I guarantee that if you follow them you'll start actually completing projects and getting that much closer to your dream game but first hey I'm apox Fox and I make game design related videos every week if you learn something new in this video that helps you in your own game death Journey consider subscribing we'd love to have you so ingredient number one start small maybe it's obvious but it's a lot easier said than done listen I understand nobody wants to make small games the whole reason you started game development in the first place is to make something big and exciting you might even feel like you're wasting precious time making smaller games when it could be spent on that one big game that takes years to complete here's what I'll say if you want to make your dream game one day you got to start small regardless of what you've heard online developers don't just show up with their first game one day and sell millions of copies that's never been true before undertale Toby Fox spent years making mods for Earth bound and he soundtracked like 20 games and web comics that you've probably never heard of concerned ape made a bunch of random small games before stardew Valley was released as much as it's romanticized to say these games are the developers first projects it's just not true at all it takes years to learn the fundamentals of game development but using those first years to make smaller games has a ton of benefits for one there's a lot less pressure instead of fully committing to ideas that take years to come to fruition you can say hey let's spend a couple weeks on this project and see what happens approaching game development this way leads to quick learning and the ability to take risks which is a very important skill to learn early on making smaller projects also allows you to see what developing a game looks like from start to finish everything from idea to prototype to release which are all key parts of the development process but maybe you've tried making small games before but you still ended up getting too ambitious maybe you struggle to come up with ideas for smaller games that you actually find interesting that's where game jams come in I won't spend too much time on this because I've talked a lot about the importance of game jams before but it's still such an insane developer hack that I can't not mention it for one having a deadline set for you is probably the easiest way to learn how to properly scope your games if you know that you have one week to make a game you're probably going to spend a lot less time planning and a lot more time developing which is essential for scope creep game jams also have a lot less pressure behind them of course it's cool to win but everyone who participates is usually there to learn if you struggle with generating ideas game jams typically have a theme to help you decide what you're going to make game jams are also a great place for play testing it's pretty much guaranteed that someone will play your game and give you feedback all in all if you haven't tried a game Jam yet I really can't recommend it enough ingredient two for overcoming scope creep work on your dream game now I know what you're thinking I just explained all the reasons why you shouldn't make a big project why am I now saying that you should make your dream game well hear me out if you're going to one day make a big game with a lot of moving pieces you should probably learn everything that goes into that project beforehand how do we do that prototyping I watched a really awesome video by many meno that really opened my eyes on how it's possible to work on your dream game while also making small games at the same time the idea is that you turn every mechanic of your game into a separate mini project for example she wanted to make a character creator for her dream game so she developed it as a smaller Standalone game instead of throwing everything together all at once it's possible to not only work on smaller scal projects but also make progress towards your dream game here's another example if you wanted to make an RPG break it down into smaller pieces that are easier to digest you can make one game that's just the shop system one game to test combat and one game for managing your party the possibilities are endless here later down the line when you want to put all of these elements together in a single game not only do you now have the knowledge of how everything works but you can also take your old code and reuse it if a mechanic doesn't work out that's totally okay there's no pressure to use it and you can take it as a learning experience this is something I'm certainly going to be doing in the future and I highly recommend giving it a try if you want to overcome scope creep the third ingredient is to play tier strengths look if you ignore the last two tips and just want to Dive Right into a big project all the power to you but maybe this tip can help you when planning out the scope of your game if you're a solo developer you have to wear a lot of hats you've got to be a programmer a game designer an artist a musician a writer a QA tester a marketer and much much more all of these skills are things you should learn when making a game but it doesn't mean that each of these aspects need to be treated equally it's very important to learn what your strengths are as a developer once you understand those strengths it'll be a lot easier to decide what you should focus on in the game you end up making using undertale as an example again Toby Fox was a musician first so when it comes to making his Games music is a very big Focus for the design and polish there's a very rhythmic flow of every aspect of undertale and I truly believe that comes from an understanding of where its strengths lie cuphead is another game that comes to mind although most of development was spent with only two people working on the project Art became the biggest Focus Focus since it was their greatest selling point if their focus was more evenly divided to other aspects of the game it probably wouldn't have the same amount of success when Mike bthl made Thomas Was Alone instead of spending a ton of time on Art he decided to focus on his real strengths of narrative storytelling and level design the point is that if you spend less time on your weaknesses and more time on your strengths you'll probably have a better understanding of how to scope your project don't add unnecessary things just because you've seen them work in other games only focus on the stuff that builds upon and enhances your strengths ingredient number four set priorities and deadlines look if we're being honest this is probably the most important thing that's going to save you from scope creep if you want to make any kind of game you have to set your priorities straight let's use a basic platformer as an example what are the things you absolutely need in order to make a platformer first off you're going to need a movement system this is everything from running jumping dashing any unique twist you add to your movements these are the essentials what else do you need you need hazards a start and finish line some levels maybe a pause menu you gather all these priorities together and then make them don't start thinking about mini games or narrative or anything extra until these things are complete I tell you this from a place of a lot of experience with scope creep adding things that aren't absolutely essential to your core design early on into a project is not going to work out well if you can't figure out the most important elements of your game right at the starts the rest of the game is probably not going to work instead of planning a project by thinking about what you can add finish the important stuff and then later you can find a way to elevate things making deadlines is also extremely important here don't just say I'll get around to making this eventually plan it out how long will it take for you to get there in Solo Dev nobody is keeping you in check but yourself it's impossible to quantify whether or not you've spent too much time on something so give yourself solid deadlines and actually stick to them and the fifth and final ingredients prove your worth listen if you're watching this video and you've spent any amount of time making games you're a Game Dev whether you've completed 20 different projects or you're just starting out only you can determine your worth the trouble is that some people don't recognize their worth as a game developer which is why you need to prove it to yourself if you believe that someone can only be a Game Dev if they finish a game then finish a game make something small and then you have no other excuses but to be a game developer this might sound crazy and unrelated to scope creep but I truly believe that sometimes proving your Worth to yourself is the only way to overcome challenges like this Game Dev is really hard there's a million different skills you have to learn and it's entirely self-driven because of that I think it's important to clarify that scope creep is a very normal part of the process being ambitious and full of ideas isn't at all a bad thing don't think of scope creep as your enemy think of it as the tool used to overachieve and make something truly special thanks so much for watching keep on gaming to the fullest and I'll see you next week peace

Channel: Apox Fox

Views: 32,450

Keywords: indie, game, games, dev, developer, devlog, developement, tips, tricks, pixel, art, scope, creep, is, poison, antidote, apox, fox, apox fox, level, design, log

Id: IAX5iDRpQ8M

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2024