When I look at all the great stuff coming out, X-box live rolls out today, Ensemble is releasing Age of Mythology, the new Metroid game is coming out for the GC in a week or so, I get depressed. Since starting work on my game I took a week to play WC3 and that was it. I can't actually sit down and play a game without feeling incredibly guilty about what a big waste of time it is.

I've always looked down a little at people who say "I don’t play games I just make them" and wonder how good a game they make is going to be if they have no experience playing them. But now I find myself in that very situation.

Do you put a high value on playing games? How do you juggle between working on your game and playing other peoples?

I play a lot less than I "should" but for the reasons you mention. I also find myself playing sort of like a wine-taster: I played the first 20 minutes or so of Dungeon Siege and then thought, "okay, I've gotten what I want out of this game, time to move on." It's very rare that I get swallowed up by a game any more. That's kind of sad in a way, but that's how it goes.

I'm also trying to take this -- and the "what a waste of time this is!" thought that you mentioned -- and apply them to the games I make. If I'm pressed for time, so are a lot of others who probably aren't playing games. If we can create games for these folks -- and I think a lot of shareware games are aimed in that direction -- then we stand a chance of cracking open a market that the retail games industry has barely touched.

Sorta a lemonade from lemons thing. :)

I call it "research." :) Of course, too much research can be a bad thing, so I try to play games only as a reward for completing my development tasks. A notable exception to this is market analysis, which I slot specific time for. If I'm looking at products that I consider direct competition with the product I'm making, I'll play as long as necessary to understand what makes it unique.

Originally posted by Dan MacDonald
I can't actually sit down and play a game without feeling incredibly guilty about what a big waste of time it is.

I'm not having a go at you personally, but I have to say I hate this attitude! Sometime it seems like people are so focused on working and making money that taking time to actually enjoy something fun is "too unproductive a use of the available time and resources".

Yes, everyone has to make a living, but personally I'd like to enjoy my life rather than work 24 hours a day...

I don't play many games, it means less time to work on making games. I don't play games and say "what a waste", I just don't play them. I don't care what anyone says, I can't make games if i'm playing them all the time, plain and simple. So until the day I suddenly make a decent amount of money from that really cool game I'll continue working on development rather than playing.

I play games on a regular basis because I enjoy it. I also do it for research purposes. It's rarely more than five hours a week, though. I have more fun making my games.

I keep the two worlds of playing games and making games separate. At the office I don't play games at all except those we're evaluating or publishing or for market research. But at home I enjoy playing games for fun, both on PC and XBox.

So when I evaluate games at the office, I treat it as 100% work. At home I play purely for 100% fun. This has two major benefits: 1) I get my work done w/o geting sidetracked or trying to justify procrastination as actual work, and 2) I guarantee my enjoyment of guilt-free play during my off hours, not feeling any need to try to justify it as work. I let my work be work and my play be play.

Yes! Thats exactly what I mean. When the working day is done, you should spend time doing whatever you enjoy. And if that includes playing games rather than reading Shakespeare, then so be it!

Originally posted by Dax
Yes! Thats exactly what I mean. When the working day is done, you should spend time doing whatever you enjoy. And if that includes playing games rather than reading Shakespeare, then so be it!
That's easy to say when you're earning a salary or are financially stable. I used to play UT and AoE 2 almost every night when I was working for any game company.

But now, glancing at the bills on my desk, rent day on my calendar, my draining balance, and decreasing muscle mass, I can't even bare the thought of sitting here playing video games. If I can muster the courage to step away from my work day, as an independent developer, it's either to feed myself, fix someone's computer for a free lunch, or get some much needed exercise. When I do launch a game, it's purely for research purposes.

Yes...for those of you able to do game dev full time :rolleyes:

Thanks for the great responses, let me try to address them one by one.


@alchemist:
Yes, that's a very good point. I saw Neverwinter Nights box in a computer game section a while back. On the cover it said "Over 250hrs of game play!". I saw that and said to myself "I just don’t have 250hrs to give to that game." So I didn't buy it.

@elund:
I try to reward myself in a similar fashion but what ends up happening to me is I play games in 5min chunks and never really "get into" them the way they were intended to be played, so I often loose interest.

@Dax:
I hear ya buddy, I have long felt the same way, it was to my own horror that I realized I was becoming the thing which I hated.

@Uhfgood:
There's only so many resources in a day, I know when I evaluate my remaining resources productivity always ends up with a higher priority then entertainment...

@mfassett:
That’s a very good point, making my own game is often more fun then playing someone else’s.

@Steve (Dexterity):
I guess part of the problem is when your full time job is something un-related to games and you work on your game from home, it's quite difficult to separate "My Time" from "Game Development Time" when they both occupy the same space. When I’m greeted at the door by the overwhelming urge to make progress on my game and the whim to sit down and play some games, development wins 9 times out of 10. Especially when you feel guilty about robbing you family of time by spending a portion of the time your home developing. Family is just one more priority that comes before actually sitting down and playing a game.

Although I'm working on games full-time right now, i do intermix gaming playing and game making, but I go by a goal-driven system.

I set daily goals for myself. If I achieve the goals for that day, then I don't feel guilty firing up a game and playing it.

If I don't meet my goals for that day, then I know my schedule has slipped and I need to make up for it. So then I don't play games. I also don't have a problem taking a little time out to play games if I get stuck or burned out on a problem.

I guess my gameplaying changes depending on what development mode I'm in. if it's early in the process, where I'm still workign on the design and ideas for it, I play a lot of games to get inspired. A few weeks ago, when I was designing my new project, I was playing a lot of games. Now, well, not so much.
Try to remember that games are not like movies, which are available in the movie theaters only for a limited time. With games you can hold off until after your game is finished and shipping. And if you do, you'll reap all sorts of benifits: It may be cheaper to buy, there will be more strategy and fan sites on the web, perhaps a few bug-releases/patches will be avaiable. And you still get the SAME experience you would have gotten if you played it the week it came out (unlike Movies, where if you don't see it when it's in the theaters, you'll be stuck watching it on DVD).

For me the schedule is important becuase I can see the impact of playing games instead of working. Even with a very basic schedule you can figure out whether or not you should be playing games. If my time estimates are off, I just re-adjust the schedule. Just having a schedule to look to has made me probably 50% more effecient.

Just my 2 cents

Hanford

I play games every week, on Monday nights...but not computer games. I get together with some friends and we play board games or dice-and-paper RPGs.

I used to play games on my PC all the time. But in the last few years, I just can't do it. I'd rather watch my son play a game than play one myself. Sometimes he & I play head-to-head games, like Age of Kings, but that's about it.

There are several reasons for this. The most significant is that I work from home and my PC is my work. If I sit down at my PC, I'm sitting down to work. It's hard for me to play a game on that PC.

Also, like Dan said, it's hard to allocate the volume of hours necessary to play some of these games (or my own game, Artifact, for that matter).

There's only so much time available, and with a family and other interests besides my work, computer games have to fit me. Not vice versa.

I've never owned a console before, but I've been considering picking one up. Because a console would be in the living room, away from my PC, and I could play it without feeling like I was supposed to be doing something else. But I'll probably wait until Xmas or after to finally do that. If I do it.

It's funny you should mention playing games by proxy. I have one of the rooms in my house rented out to a buddy of mine, and he plays just about all the new games that come out. When I need a quick break from coding, I'll wander on into his room and watch him play NWN or NOLF2 for a while before wandering back into my room to do some more work.

Because of this I'm actually familiar with the gameplay and the stories of a lot of commercially released games even though I've never invested any time playing them.

I do miss the days when I used to rush home and hop on the computer to play UO or Acherons Call for 5-6 hrs straight. But with so many goals, becoming a full time indie (means finishing my games ASAP), raising kids who aren’t emotionally scarred, making sure my wife feels loved, sketching, and doing pixel art... the "free time" that can be allotted to playing games is very small and pretty scattered.

That's why I really liked alchemist's point. I'm beginning to fall into the market segment of people who play games that are light weight, instantly fun, and don't require countless hours to enjoy. Before I couldn't understand people who played these games, but now I’m starting to realize it's not because they don’t like huge epics like NWN, it just that it doesn't fit into their priorities/lifestyle.

My $.02

I think if you don't spend some time playing games, reading, or some other creative fun activity, then you've discovered the formula to create terribly unimaginative games. As a matter of fact you've stumbled onto the forumla for a terribly uninspired life.

Think about it, who is likely to be a better author, someone who's truly experienced life, or someone who spends all his time writing.

Same goes for painters, and other artistic professions.

Brilliance is not something you can force. Ask mister A. Einstein - a very wacky guy. Inspiration comes from all the input around you. If your only input is your computer screen, you aren't getting all the possible ideas you could.

So if your goal is to duplicate what's already been done, then by all means, don't get out and live. (Besides if your goal is mainstream then publishers discourage doing anything that hasn't already been done 1000 times before).

No if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go do some 3D artwork (a programmer doing artwork - ha!).

- He who dies with the most stuff, still dies.

I'm kind of late for this post, so there have already been a lot of good points made about wasting time, making sure you do try new games, and setting goals etc., but I like the reward system too. There are certainly many "good" games that I would enjoy, but this way I end up playing only the games that I really desire and don't feel like the time is wasted. Even then, there's always some fantastic games that I may never have time for, but there's still nothing better than actually contributing to game project or designing it yourself.

Whilst I understand it may be hard to fit playing games into your day, I think playing other games is a must, for me they provide most of my inspiration and my desire to make a game is born out of the passion I have for playing games. - Then again, I am a games journalist at a few places, so I have to play lots of games to keep current anyway....

I have games I have to play through and games that I play through for fun only, although I have restricted these mainly to the genre of game that I am currently working on, so I can call it research. The research is actually very effective and many of my best idea's pop into my head when I'm thinking about how I would do the game I'm playing differantly. :)

I play constantly. Recently (last few weeks) I've been playing...

- Stockboy
- Pumpkin Pop
- hitsuji (I like Mike Hommels games... they sit right with me)
- Serious Sam
- Pikmin (gamecube)
- Eternal Darkness (gamecube)
- Just finished mario sunshine and luigi's mansion
- Pretty Good Solitaire
- The Thing
- Overflow Level Pack "Spillage"

Not to mention playtesting Droptarget, and Space Taxi 2, and solving Aargon Levels people keep sending me.

Really, it's amazing I get any work done at all!

-- shaft --
I think if you don't spend some time playing games, reading, or some other creative fun activity, then you've discovered the formula to create terribly unimaginative games. As a matter of fact you've stumbled onto the forumla for a terribly uninspired life.

Think about it, who is likely to be a better author, someone who's truly experienced life, or someone who spends all his time writing.

Same goes for painters, and other artistic professions.


This is exactly what I think. In his recent book about writing, Stephen King describes reading voraciously as half of the process of writing. Not just to see what an author does, or to pick up plot ideas, or to see what's selling, but to steep yourself in the very thing that you want to create.

If you don't enjoy playing games, then I would wonder at your desire to create them. Stick with writing business apps, they make a lot more money.

To the original question then, I would say that you *must* play games, if you want to be a decent game developer. It's not enough to play the first twenty minutes of a game, or to even play by proxy. You have to get in there, and find those cases where you look up and wonder where the last five hours went because you were so completely absorbed. A game that you can easily put down after 20 minutes is a good example of a game you don't want to make.

I both agree and disagree with you at the same time. Many people have different core competencies. The popularity of the term "Programmer Art" is indicative of the fact that most programmers can't draw. Conversely most game designers can't code. At rainfall studios we have a full time designer, as I stated before he plays through just about every new relevant game that comes out. He has complete creative control over gameplay decisions, while I control how they are implemented.

This I believe is the reason different positions in game development. I don't have to play every single game that comes out because I have a designer who will. I dont have to go to art school to refine my art skills because I have an artist who spends 100% of his time on that.

I'd like to think if I had to I could design a pretty cool game based on a lifetime experience playing games. I've been a level 50+ character in Asherons Call, A GM pole arms & Magery in UO, I've honed my skills at counterstrike so at one point I could drop into a game and immediately rise to the top 3 (not any more though). I played through all the classics, Keen, Wolf, Doom, Raptor, Jazz Jackrabbit, Duke Nukem (sidescroller as well as fps), I loved ever minute of Full Throttle, and finished Fallout 1 and 2. The list goes on and on I wouldn't be in this business of indie game development if it wasn't for the love of playing games over the last 12-13 years of my life.

I'm also a decent pixelartist. In short I could probably be a pretty good lone-wolf. But the thing I’ve realized is that doing game development on your own is no where near as effective as doing game development in a small tight-nit team. Even with my background of playing games I have a limited experience with puzzle and adventure games. You’re right; to make a good game I better become acquainted with all the puzzle games out there. But having a designer means that I can get started on the tile engine while he puts 100% of his brainpower and resources into downloading, playing, and evaluating every puzzle game he can find.

I give up a little of my creativity having a designer. In order for it to work the programmer must give complete authority to the designer and sometimes implement things he doesn't quite agree with. You have to trust your designer because he's spending a lot more time thinking about this then you are. You can still debate your ideas with him and have influence, but you do have to give a part of the game development process up. In my experience it has been well worth the cost, and I believe the game will be much better because of it.

Sure you could go do it as a lonewolf and do everything yourself, but why would you want to?

That makes sense. If you're dealing with purely algorithmic elements of the game, then sure, you don't need as much immersion in game play. That would be a little like saying that a bookbinder doesn't need to spend a lot of time reading, because it doesn't directly impact his job.

Siebharinn, that's true, but what if the book binder is not an employee, but owns the entire shop? Wouldn't he be keenly interested in the entire book industry? Wouldn't he love books? Even if I hire an artist and designer, it behooves me to understand games with a passion, because this is my business -- literally, I'm running a business, which makes me more than a programmer.

I think Dan is talking about delegating work to others that do it better, which is certainly important. However, being a lone-wolf has advantages beyond simple anti-social control mongering. :) The larger the team, the larger the project seems to get. If one needs to turn around a game quickly (say, before the money runs out), they can't afford to let it grow in scope, or be terribly picky about their pixelart skills.

I wonder what Michael Gerber (author of The E-Myth books) would say about this. When the book binder decided to run his own business, did he not know what he was getting into?

Your point is valid elund, Katsu's Journey has been in development for 8 months and is probably only 25-30% done. That's not full time however, just evenings and the occasional weekend. Though I'm not sure it would have been any shorter if I was on my own. I've never completed a game I've started in the past, but I have also never taken development of my game so seriously. Unfortunately I fell prey to many "newbie" blunders. I built my own set of GUI objects for my editor and game interface. I had scrollbars, list boxes, text boxes, buttons, dialogs, event propagation it was a sweet system, but without a resource editor laying out UI elements was slow and it was definitely slowing development.

In the great HD crash of 02' I lost both laptop and desktop hard drives within an hour of each other and lost just about all my code outside of my base tile engine and directX wrappers. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I went out and bought a book on ATL/WTL and started coding, within one month I was back up to where I had been after 3-4 months of coding. Lesson learned: Leverage existing technology when at all possible.

The whole learning-as-you-go thing takes a lot of time and resources, but it is the ultimate goal of our project. If we sell 10 copies we'll be happy. We (Rainfall Studios members) are all in this one to learn what it takes to actually complete a somewhat substantial game. It's tough, tougher then expected actually, but we've invested enough time now that there's no turning back until it's done.

So in the end, I don’t think there’s any way around the time it takes to learn something. In fact having a team means you don’t have to learn design and art at the same time you’re making stupid coding errors, so it may even be faster :)

EDIT: I'm not trying to argue that people who make games shoudn't (or don't have to) play them, just that sometimes there are extenuating curcumstances. I have and will always enjoy playing games, but because of my current situation it's a guilty pleasure for which I do not feel that I can indulge.

If anyone thinks they can chalk up 4-6 hours (or more!) of a game playing a day and still get anything useful done, more power to them. I'm happy to get in about 6-8 productive hours in a day, and then divide up the rest of the time I'm awake between my family, my writing projects, and my RPG and board game hobbies, and so on.

There are people who play our game, Artifact, for 6 hours a more each day. I can't do that. Not anymore. Hell, we didn't even plan that level of commitment when we originally designed the game. We figured people would jump in, play a bit, and jump out to come back later. Tain't the way it worked out. There's a one player who has chalked up an average of 8-10 hours a day for over 2 years.

Fact is, some people get a new game and obsess on it until they finish it (or, in the case of MMO games, burn out and move on). Some prefer shorter "fixes" from a wider variety of sources. That there are a lot of the former who also like to make games doesn't mean that there aren't also game makers just as talented from the latter. It takes all kinds. Don't get elitist one way or the other.

Live and let live, I say. There is no Single Right Way to do anything. Don't get anal about the details so much that you forget to have fun. =)

[i]Live and let live, I say. There is no Single Right Way to do anything. Don't get anal about the details so much that you forget to have fun. =)

here here.....exactomundo!!!

Originally posted by DavidRM
Fact is, some people get a new game and obsess on it until they finish it
<raises hand>

That's exactly what's causing my dillema right now. When I get a game, I find I have a hard time doing anything excepting living and breathing the game until I've won it. I haven't yet picked up a PS2/GC/XBOX. Target is having a nice sale right now...get a GC and get Metroid Prime for $20. That's kind of hard to resist, and I'd like to get it, but I'm afraid for my life if I do (because I probably won't have one until I win it).

The thing is that different people get motivated differently. I don't play many games, and usually if I do, they're pre-90's. I usually get my inspiration from movie, i'm a big movie buff, and I also watch tv. So i'm just getting motivated to do some stuff with my games differently then someone who plays alot of games. The beauty of movies/tv, is that I can work on something while i'm watching them. I can draw while i'm watching movies or tv, I can program when nothing on tv is that good. Or when I want to listen to the newest dvd commentary.

You don't have to play games to make a good game. You just have to finish a game :-) And I've finished 3! The more I finish the better I become.

Just that simple.

I agree Uhfgood, I'm making a game set in a traditional japanese setting. I watch a lot of japanese movies and tv series. Including all of kurasowa's stuff and an amazing amount of anime. On top of that I'm reading some rather dry stuff on japanese culture and the impact of the warrior class in shaping their society. I just ordered the first three volumes of "Blade of the Immortal" a long running japanese comic (manga) that has been translated by dark horse comics.

For some reason I dont feel guilty sitting down and watching a movie. Mostly I think becaues I know it's only going to be a 1-2 hour commitment. Playing a game like NWN all the way through to get the whole expirence is a 180+ hour expirence and I just can't justify that.

Playing games gives you an idea and feel for what good gameplay is and what isn't. As well educating you to the current trends in gameplay. However most of the content in your game really doesn't need to come from other games, in fact I would argue that most games with really great content didn't get it from other games.

Not to mention the original designers way back in the late 70's and 80's they had nothing to go on (except current and past movies and tv shows, as well as comic books, and books in general)

In Dan's original question, no distinction was made as to the role you are taking in the game development process. He merely asked if playing games was important to indie developers. I think it is. If you're doing mostly code, or mostly art, or sweeping up after everyone else goes home, then you don't need to be as steeped in gameplay as a designer would be.

This brings up an interesting question though, that I'll start in another thread.

I absolutely agree that in a game like Katsu's Journey, that it's important to absorb as much Japanese "culture" as possible, so that your game reflects that. I'm not arguing against that. (Heck, I'm not arguing at all).

At the risk of being obnoxious, which I really don't mean to be, I would point out that the games created by some of the people in this thread are extremely simple, and not a good example of what the indie community can (and should) be making. I have nothing but respect for anyone who releases a game, if it's of decent quality, but making a tetris clone while watching Buffy is not a good justification for watching Buffy. If that makes sense.

-- Uhfgood --
Not to mention the original designers way back in the late 70's and 80's they had nothing to go on (except current and past movies and tv shows, as well as comic books, and books in general)


That's the reason that those early games were so simple. We've moved past that. If you use the same sources they did, you'll get the same results. Why are you making games from the 70s and 80s?

Originally posted by Dan MacDonald
Do you put a high value on playing games? How do you juggle between working on your game and playing other peoples?

Hmm yeah, I gues that was my origional question. I asked weather people put a high value on playing games.

Some conclusions I think I can draw from this thread.

1. For someone who is responsible for their games design, they owe it to themselves to stay current and play the latest games both to stay up to date with gameplay trends but also to expose themselves to a pletheora of examples of both good and bad gameplay.

2. I've realized that to me while I enjoy playing games I dont value playing them. It's a subtle distinction. If i valued playing them then my actions would reflect that, but since I dont play them very often it follows that must value other things more. (for better or for worse)

I dont see that thread yet Bill, looks like it might be a good one :)

I believe that to make games, you need not be a major player of games. You need to have good taste. I have tried many games and come away feeling - whats the point in finding the key to complete the level, shoot n number of aliens etc. I have also played games where I have liked certain things like diverting water in Overflow, the tension in reaching a high platform in Icy Tower or governing a city in Ceaser III. I find that many people enjoy it too. When I get a game idea, I simulate it in my head and see if it is fun to play in my head without writing a line of code. If it excites me, theres a good chance that it will excite others too. I do agree that its good to play many games to see what others are doing and you never know where you can get your inspiration from but it need not be a religion or a law either way.

My 2p.

Whilst I am mainly doing design, I think playing games plays an essential role, it's great to know first hand what works and what dosn't in games of your genre, and what could be done better. Knowing whats out and whats comming out also gives you an idea of other games your customers could be playing and how your efforts shape up to the 'competition'. Also you know just how many of your idea's are actually new and what peoples reactions to existing games are.