7 Game Design Mistakes to Avoid!

Game design mistakes can cost you time, money, and quality! In this video we are going to give you game design tips straight from expert game designers that will ensure you save time, money, and build excellent designs. These are the same tips that we’ve seen used while building smaller indie games all the way up to massive triple-A titles.

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[immortalsofar]

30 years in the industry and I've found how to perfectly estimate the time any large project is going to take using the following formula:
1. Break the design down into individual, precise and bounded tasks.
2. For each task, estimate how long you think it will take. If there's no answer, then the task needs breaking down more.
3. For each task, add on time until the revised estimate is longer than it will possibly take.
4. Tally up the times.
5. Double it.
That's how long the project will take. Don't know why but I've never known this fail.

[IceMetalPunk]

Another mistake, that I'm unfortunately guilty of repeating over and over: abandoning one game that's in development to begin working on another. When you have many ideas, and the current project is at a point where the necessary work is a bit boring or tedious, it's so easy to just tell yourself, "Well, I'll just work on this new thing for a little, then come back to the main project." And then suddenly, you haven't touched the main project in months and have lost all motivation for it.

I think a solution to this problem (that I really should take my own advice about...) is to write down ideas for other projects. Keep design docs for them, but don't actually start working on them until the current project is either done or dusted for some other reason. Especially if game development is currently more of a hobby, and you have a day job taking your time, motivation is a key factor.

[oddixgames]

#9 mistake - watch random youtube videos instead of actually making your game :)

[NyxDiscordia]

Ah yes, the classic "throw the ball at the hoop and it collapses and catches fire" bug.

Really plagues a bunch of newbies with their new sports game.

[Biouke]

Another tip: Always precise everything. Schematize, illustrate and prototype as much as you can so your team can share your vision of the game. Particularly true for game jams and new projects. Often you think everyone is on the same page but then realize each member has a different mental image of the final product, thus you fail maintaining a coherent vision. While it's important to allow room for everyone's creativity, as a GD you've got to be as precise as you can in your design documents so to avoid team members going in all directions then asking you to clarify points every 10mn.

[FaySwine]

“Wouldn’t it be cool if the protagonist had a crush.”

[Linuxdirk]

Table of contents


1. 1:22 Starting too big
2. 2:38 Not considering how to onboard the player
3. 4:01 Being too committed to an idea
4. 5:06 Creating an overly rigid design
5. 6:18 Focusing on story too much upfront
6. 6:59 Underestimating polish
7. 7:42 Arbitrarily adding things

[collin]

Here's a tip for people working on their first project: Figure out what size the screen is going to be as early as possible, and scale your assets accordingly. When I started my current project, I was so proud of my sprites that I zoomed the camera in too far. After building a super basic tutorial level, I realized that there wasn't enough space on the screen to make more complex encounters. You can't artificially change asset proportions in-engine without warping pixels and making your game's art style look inconsistent, so I had to build a bunch of sprites all over again and re-design my tutorial level from the ground up. Don't do what I did - Plan your screen size!

[welton.king.v]

working on games for 8 years I'd like to add "not starting with a plan" - this is a huge factor that plays into your chances of completing a game - of course your plan is going to change but it gives you a good sense of direction - just remember, not having a plan is the same as planning to fail - goodluck on all your games <333

[drewcabahug]

So yeah, I got a degree in bscs major in game dev. And I live in a province where there's only 3 companies that develop video games. The (one man) CEO/Client/Producer of the company I applied to, pitched the game to my face and I got all excited because in the back of my head it's a very hyper casual game and it's on mobile platform. And yes I got the job as an intern until I got absorbed in the company as a technical artist. 3 years later I'm already working on a call center as an agent. Why? What did I miss? For the whole three years we got stuck on developing a mobile game. Why? It's supposed to be hyper casual and supposedly done in 3 months.

#7 Arbitrarily Adding Things
In this video is very agreeable on my situation.

Our one man genius CEO/Client/Producer is a retired lawyer and has no background in the video game industry, nor game developing or even pop culture of games. What he did is he lives in the Capital of my country and fly by plane twice a month to check us and visit the studio in the province. Everytime he comes back in the studio he has a new fresh ideas and he calls it "juicy ideas" because it's fresh. What happened is he keeps adding features, new codes, new art from scratch that needs to be polished for months and all the shit he wants to say on a 5-7 hours of nonsense round table meeting. We don't clearly see the end. Or the finished product of the game, we can't even have feedbacks because he wants this tactic of secrecy, and avoid alphas and betas. He didn't even know what's the word PATCH for fuck sake. After 3 years the company pulled out. Because the employees are planning to resign for already a long time plan but one day our best programmer got hired on a different company, fused the bomb, and made everyone to make one decision. To boycott and do a mass resignation. Why did it took that long for us to realize we are going nowhere? Because he's bloody rich. I got blinded and got a raise TWICE. A big money every month for a game development? So good to be true. Now my consequence is I did not grow in that company. Not even a percent. I got rejected to the 2 other game dev companies.

I took everything for granted now somehow I'm out of the line in the video game industry. Now I got obsessed and retracing everything I did wrong. Making my own indie game, selling 2d & 3d assets online, bought a high end PC just to make my portfolio stronger. consulting my friends consulting my mentors, teachers. Opinions here opinions there, ideas here and ideas there. Yada yada yada. That at the same time my current job is not even in game development.

Moral lesson: is don't take Game Dev (especially when you're on a start-up indie company) unless it's a calling for you. If it is then take the leap of faith and prepare to be hurt, prepare to be in pain, prepare to be criticised, prepare to lose. And hope that one day it will all be worth it.

[ishashka]

I always underestimate step 6, even though Polish is my first language.

[peterlantz]

This video is so clear and spot on! I would have to disagree with the examples given for making a game less rigid, they felt far too specific. Open world games can still feel heavy handed if the game tries to make you travel to certain locations and avoid others too much. Destructive levels can still feel boring if there is 1 way that best destroys the terrain (like destroying the base of a building auto-destroys everything above). etc.

A big thing is making sure multiple decisions are balanced against each other to prevent a dominant path.

I guess what I'm trying to say is those items don't automatically add more choice to a game, there's more to the story than that, and some people may not pick up on that after watching this.

There's also the fact that sometimes you WANT to lead a player down a specific path that's more fun, rather than trying to throw every available gameplay option at them. It's like salt and pepper, you need both.

[KaletheQuick]

Oh wow, it's like Extra Credits back when they made video about games.

I miss Dan.

[TSMSnation]

"When you don't know how to make a game so all you can do is story." Rip

[darkunykorn]

One game design mistake that annoys me immensely is restrictive controls that don't account for different player situations. This might sound minor, but for instance, enforcing WASD in detriment to arrow keys (especially when using the mouse as well) has turned me off several indie games... because I'm left-handed and that just doesn't work for me. Be flexible, people, or at least let us configure it!

[fresch]

Not being dedicated enough. I started so many games with people from college, but never finished one game. Because we met once a week. For an hour. For about 3 weeks. After that everyone was busy with something and then it was once a month. once every 6 weeks. Never again

[Pablo-V]

- "Polish, polish, polish"


- "Feature *progess* bar"

[Templarfreak]

This channel is infinitely better than Extra Credits, so much care goes into being as objective as possible in these videos and being about real solid and universal advice that can apply to anyone in any situation, and isn't extremely opinionated about principles and types of design that are very subjective.

[muuubiee]

"Don't make a game too big with too many features"
"You should make your game have a ton of features and possibilities"
Kinda goes against itself, doesn't it?

[Vivi_Strike]

"A delayed game is eventually good but a rushed game is forever bad"
Meanwhile MGS:5 and FF15...