In the same vein as the amateur vs professional discussion of late, I'm going to take the opposite tack here and say "When is the right time to give up on a product?"

Specifically, to use my own experience as an example, a year ago I started a project which was partially a learning project, and partially serious. (I have been doing software for 10 years, but this was my first "indie" project)

Unfortunately, I either didn't do my research well enough, or had such high visions in my mind of what my end result would be, that I didn't take into account that I already had some pretty stiff competition.

So now, here I am, a year later thinking "All those other companies are 100% better than me! How can I possibly compete with that? They have more features, and a more established customer base." Truthfully, I don't even know that I WANT to compete with them. I am torn between not wanting to give up, and a desire to go in a different direction that might be more fruitful.

When is it appropriate to call a product a flop?

Tough question, and impossible to really answer without knowing you and your product intimately....

Knowing when to give up on a product depends on your own goals and values, so those will be different from anyone else's. A product that might be right for you to give up on might be just a starting point for someone else.

I haven't ever consciously chosen to give up on a product -- instead I focus on pursuing my best opportunities. So a weak product will become a posteriority while I focus on better priorities. But one's priorities are driven by one's values.

For example, if your goal is to have a product making $3000 per month within a certain period of time, and you feel it isn't possible to reach this goal with your current product and you see a better way to get there, then abandoning the old product and moving onto something else seems like it would be the right choice for you. Another reason to move on might be if you feel that deep down, the game isn't fun or doesn't provide any real value. If you feel you have to get people to buy vs. giving them something of real value, that's a good indicator that it's time to move on.

In terms of deciding when enough is enough, I think you know deep down what the answer is. I'm not sure what your goals are but there is a value in being clear in what you are trying to achieve. If for example your goal is to become a financially independent game developer and you are absolutely clear about that goal, then when you find yourself on a path that isn't leading you in the direction of that goal you don’t hesitate to change your direction.

One of the biggest motivators for us not to change our current path or direction is the fear of failure. We fear that we will be failing to accomplish that which we set out to do. That fear can often cripple us when we consider much needed changes to our current approach to achieving our goals. I fall prey to this all too often myself. What we need to realize is that intelligently changing direction is not a pathetic failure but a valuable lesson learned. Imagine how hard it would be if we saw our initial ambition through to the end before realizing our folly?

In Steve's Article Do It Now (http://www.dexterity.com/articles/do-it-now.htm) he has an excellent analysis of the NECESSITY of failure in order to achieve success. It's a 3 paragraph discussion so I wont quote it here, the whole article is very good, so I recommend you real the whole thing to get it in context.

jgd,

it already sounds like you have given up. You may have seen those posts complementing Steve's latest article, but did you read it? If previously, you had a positive outlook on your own project, it's clear that you have lost that view at some point. Perhaps you did set unrealistic goals for your game, but the main issue is actually your attitude. It may be time for you to postpone any current or planned game projects because right now, the most "fruitful" direction for you to go is to do a little work on yourself by restructuring your beliefs, attitudes and the way you think about competing among other things. I wish you luck. :)

Attitude is important HydroAxe, you're right. But all of us were full of "newbie ambition" / "armature ambition" at one point. We all had our eye on that MMORPG, or FPS RTS that we thought we would design and change the world with. One of the important parts of becoming a professional and moving away from amateurism (is that even a word?) is being able to identify which of our ambitions are realistic and which aren't.

A professional takes stock of what he has and aims just beyond his abilities giving himself room to grow and develop as he works towards his goals. There really is no point in trying to take dethrone Blizzard in the RTS arena, that's not a realistic endeavor for a first project. Realizing this is not a poor attitude, but rather adopting a more realistic one.

However, I like the direction Steve is suggesting as to not totally abandon the project. What you could do jdg is come up with some way's to re-factor what you already have so that you are no longer targeting such a competitive market. Make a new twist to your game, appeal to women, or children... then you wouldn't be loosing the resources you've built up thus far.

A year just isn't long enough to know one way or the other.

And don't compare yourself to others to measure your success or failure. Only you know if you succeeded in what you wanted to accomplish.

EDIT: I found this quote a few weeks ago. Maybe it will help inspire you some:

"Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use." -- Earl Nightingale

Excellent advice here.

This is a difficult decision to make though, no matter what. Being willing and able to decide that a beloved project just isn't worth the cost (even if that cost is only opportunity cost) may be another one of the divisions between amateur and professional.

But there are all sorts of reasons to stick with something. Even just the ability to finish something is incredibly valuable. As they say, getting the first 95% of something done is easy; it's that last 5% that'll kill you.

As one example, I have a Java game on my site (Cave Dweller (http://www.onlinealchemy.com/oaprojects/cavedweller/dweller.html)) that's pretty simple -- even shallow -- and so hasn't found a home on any of the java game sites nor as (say :) ) a Dexterity game. But that's okay -- I don't consider it a failure in the least, as I learned many important things from it. And, now that I have the code and artwork, and know more about what's lacking in the game, I'm much better placed to re-design it and try again, hopefully with more lucrative results. Which is exactly what I'll do, as soon as the higher priority tasks in front of it are done.

I guess my point is, sometimes you have to step back and admit that more effort on a project either isn't going to take you where you want to go, or is going to preclude you from doing other things that are more important. Doing so can be difficult, but there's nothing that says you can't go back later and try again.

My opinion my not be as important as any of the rest of these guys since they've obviously been successful, but I would say not to quit. While it's true that finished projects aren't going to necesserily give you more fame, or cause anyone to buy your product, it's important that you go through it all, so you can feel what it's like. In alot of cases you have to go through stuff you don't like to get to the good stuff. And maybe this program will turn out better than you expected because you worked so hard on it.

The other reason to finish it, is so you know not to do it again. If it was a pain all the way through, then later you can realize what mistakes you've made, and minimize or remove them all together. Also if you don't finish one, you may not finish anymore because it may be your pattern to give up right when you need to work on it the most. This being your first indie project, you really need to finish it to learn what all it entails, and to decide if this is what you want to be doing in the future...

And just so you know, i've completed 3 games, two of which got onto the cd of a programming book, and i've also sold my 3 games online, and actually got 7 sales of the third game, and 5 sales of the other two (cheapy little puzzle games that I put together in a pack). So I do know a little bit of what i'm talking about, although i'm not as successful yet as Steve or the rest of these guys. (Just so you don't think i'm bragging, I haven't gotten any new sales since then, and they've been up for 6-8 months now)

The reasons you sighted may infact be good reasons to move on to another project.

If your product truly can't compete then maybe a change is in order. Not sure what your game is, but perhaps you can give it's direction a nudge into a less stiff market. Can you reinvent the game?

If you are making a RTS game, perhaps you could ( and this isn't a suggestion hehe) make it about Real estate (think monopoly) or Ants... maybe it would make a neat kids game.

Think about how your game might be salvageable and be honest with yourself.

One thing I would say, is that it's easy to be hard on yourself. We made a game that ya would have been kinda stupid called "Tragen" and we really had it pretty much done back in 94. We didn't put it out and decided to work on Hardwood Solitaire instead. But looking back, it wouldn't have hurt to put that game out, it wasn't 1/2 as bad as we thought for the time and would likely provided us with some extra cash.

By far your worst enemy can be yourself. You might want to finish the game so at least you can know you did if for nothing else to not take that whack against your self-esteem. It's kinda like going bungie jumping, walking up to the edge and backing down...you may never be able to face that situation again. If the end of the project is in sight, see if you can wrap it up, send it out and move on to the next one.

Yep I agree with most of the posts here.. The only other thing I would like to add is this, from my own experiences.

Maybe simplify the project a bit so the *finished* project IS in site. Take out some of the bells and whistles and get a playable game done (of course making it flexible enough that you can add B and Ws later..). You'd be surprized how your attitude changes when you can actually play the game and have others playing it too :)

Good luck!

I completely agree with Tams. The only thing I really learnt during the way is to have things playable. It is much easier to grow and refine something playable than to do some great dash you don't see the end to. The next thing you notice is that you hace something that your friends like to test, you don't have to force them any longer .. In a few moments you release it at your website as it simply is sooo funny. Keep up the spirit!

My first (and only) product was a new animation editor plugin for Maya (http://www.aliaswavefront.com/) . It was a new idea I got in 1999 and took 2 years to develop adding all the bells and whistles but without taking feedback from the animators that were going to use it. The result was quite complex and hard to use. The price was $99 but no one bought it.

Luckily a good animator liked the idea and offered to be a beta tester for the 2nd release. I was going to abandon the product but thought will give it a second shot. This time, I stripped all the unessential features, streamlined the interface to integrate well with Maya's other tools, repriced it at $25 and released it last May. 5000+ downloads have taken place, 15 licenses sold so far. One of my customers is Microsoft.

I find that the product targets a niche market that has already paid $2000 for a Maya seat and probably intersted in freebie plugins only. Its also possible that my product is something an animator can do without although its a useful addtion to his arsenal. I have also given the full version with a Winzip style nag screen hence there is no compulsion for the users to register. I will address that in future releases of Maya when I have to recompile the plugin. The plugin is also feature complete for what it does and since this is such a small market, I honestly dont have the motivation to add features only to see the downloads increase but hardly any conversion.

So my plan is to keep the software alive as long as possible and hope that people keep buying it. A great lesson that I have learned is to develop products that stand on their own (.exes as opposed to plugins), reach a large audience so that conversion rate is better and that e-commerce works! In creating this product, I have developed a decent order processing system (key generation, web-site tracking/analysis, mailing lists) that I hope to improve and use when I release my first game.

I welcome you all to visit my product site and offer feedback as to how can I improve my sales:

http://www.poojyum.com/titan/

Hope this helps.

Originally posted by jgd
Specifically, to use my own experience as an example, a year ago I started a project which was partially a learning project, and partially serious. [/B]

It sounds like to me that you're trying to make your learning project into something that it isn't. That's like trying to make a prototype into a product.

A prototype is written when you don't really understand the problem, and you're still trying to learn the tools, language, APIs, etc. As a result, the code is often poorly designed, and hacked to 'just work'.

The danger is that once the prototype is working (often just barely working!), there is a great temptation to just keep tweaking the code to make it. After all, you already wrote all this code, right? You'll waste all this time rewriting the code, so it'll be faster to keep working on what you have.

I've done this at two companies, and it is a bad scene. The code just gets more and more horrible, until you get sick at the thought of working on it. Or you quit, which is what I did. ;)

The best thing to do with a prototype is to learn from it, then throw it away and start over. The new code will be far better structured and maintainable. Some people even recommend writing the prototype in a completely separate language, to remove the temptation of reusing it.