Calling Time on The Waycross Inn… And when should developers talk about what they’re working on?
I’ve officially put development of The Waycross Inn on hold for the foreseeable future. And if you’ll allow me to be shamelessly self indulgent for a while, I’ll tell you why…
Short answer, I lost faith in the project. It started when I was few months in and I wasn’t feeling great about it. From the beginning, I knew it would be a big job, and I thought that I’d ultimately need to get more people involved, and for a while, I told myself that when other people come on board, they’ll throw new ideas in, and it will all be OK…
But then I realised… that’s just an excuse. I mean, loads of games come out which have only one main developer on them, and some of them are pretty big. Mitu Khandaker‘s Redshirt’, Nicholl Hunt’s ‘Fist of Awesome’, and Lucas Pope’s ‘Papers Please’ are the first three examples which spring to mind. I’m sure there are hundreds more.
So even that excuse wasn’t cutting it for me any more… and after two more months of solid development in which the fun just hadn’t appeared, I simply lost faith in the project. Making the game just felt like work, and so did playing it. So I decided to drop it, and I’ve started a new, safer project instead and I’m much happier.
It did get me thinking once again, however, about when developers should talk about projects they’re working on. Because I talked about this one a LOT, got loads of positive feedback, and even a bit of coverage… which makes putting it in the reject bin all the more difficult. Because on top of the feelings of inadequacy and failure, you also feel as though you’ve let people down.
My esteemed friend Mr. Brian Baglow of ScottishGames.net would say “Talk about your games as much as possible, LIKE F*$^*G ALL THE TIME!!!”. And whilst I probably wouldn’t be feeling quite as bad if I hadn’t spoken about this project so much publicly, ultimately he’s 100% right…
When you show your work, you’re showing it because you think it’s cool, and you hope that others might too. You’re not entering in to some kind of contract where there’s going to be ethical or financial repercussions. (Unless you’ve taken money off people on Kickstarter. In which case you’re a very naughty person and you should give them a refund, but that’s another post for another person another time.) Abandoning projects, even very publicly, does nothing to damage a developers reputation. Notch abandoning 0x10c if you would like an example.
All the feelings you’re feeling, they’re caused by your own perception of the situation, which is heavily weighted toward the spotlight being on you. The truth is, nobody else really cares. And since you’re thinking so much about yourself, you should really think about why you chose to be an independent developer as opposed to having a job. It’s so you can make the games you want to make, instead of having horrible projects with unreasonable timescales dumped on you. And if you’re going to stick with projects which are doing your nut in, then why bother?
Nobody is watching you quite s closely as you think. In fact, I could end this post with a bunch of nonsense and I bet nobody would even notice. Blurp, plurpy bleargh, willa willa bang ftumpsh. Joss Ackland ‘s spunky backpack…
I don’’t think anything sums up this point better than this panel from Sub Normality…
Until next time,
S
