Creativity Conundrum

Good afternoon Dr Internet.

Normally I like to use these blog shaped therapy sessions to throw out some info on what I've been up to and discuss whatever’s on my mind. I find it cathartic; we all like to get things off our chest occasionally.  But recently things have changed, I've realised a few home truths, and it’s doing my head in.

I keep thinking up new game ideas!

Some are better than others (I’ll admit that) but they’re all at least partially original, do-able with my current knowledge, exciting to me in some way and I can’t wait to get started on them!

So where’s the problem? Let me explain…

In the last few weeks I've been working on Newgrounds and Kongregate integration for Bedlam.  Now that we’re finished with the damn thing we want to shove it in front of as many people’s noses as possible.
Even though it’s still being rolled out, in my mind it’s already old news...the next game in the pipeline has been in development for almost 10 months now and is about 80% complete.

So from here I have to finish post production on Bedlam, then complete the next game, then do the post on that, plus probably some website updates and all the socials… all of which before I can get cracking on anything new.

And in that time, (not the whole development cycle – just the last couple of weeks)… I've come up with plans for another 3 games!

Now I’m sure I’ll get faster at coding… and I'm only part time so I could chuck in a bunch more hours if I wanted to… And we could get some more guys in to help us… but even with all that (and the best will in the world), I’m never going to make all the games I want to.

Boom.

There it is right there.

Big sad face :-(

So the vast majority of the games I come up with are never going to be made…  Every time I hit on (to me) a great new idea then I’m fully aware that the chances are that it’ll end up filed away in an imaginary storage warehouse in my mind, guarded by imaginary top men. Top Men.

I guess it goes with the territory of being a game developer. It takes so long to make a game compared with the amount of time needed to conceive one, it’s practically inevitable.

I don’t have any answers on this… only a pearl of wisdom: From now on, no matter how drunk I am, I’m never going to pitch an idea that I have at another game developer. It’s something I try to avoid as a rule: typically when you start gushing at people they can get pretty defensive anyway…

 But now I know another reason: When you start banging on about an interesting new game concept you’re not offending them, but you are reminding them of all the great games they have in their mind that’ll never see the light of day.