7 Gamedev Time Wastes

Working on your game is one thing, but often we fall into the trap of "working" whilst not making any progress on the game. What are some common traps we've fallen into that have slowed down our development.

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Timestamps:
00:00 Why no devlog
00:47 Planning instead of prototyping
02:55 Wrong priorities
04:44 Focusing on bugs
05:34 Reinventing the wheel
06:59 Striving for perfection
08:47 Tutorial hell
09:55 Not knowing when to quit

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[occupationalhazard]

My biggest time waster is earning money to pay my bills so I can work on the game. My second biggest time waster is watching YouTube videos. 🤣 Keep up the good work!

[sealsharp]

"Wasting time and not working the things"
Got it. *closes the video*

[DeadParfoz]

>Don't fix every single bug that you see
I really hope people won't get the wrong idea. ALWAYS fix bugs unless you really know what you're doing. Easy to fix? - do it right away. Huge severity? - plan the solution and fix ASAP. New features incoming? - make sure anything related to them is bug-free. Otherwise you're setting up a situation where fixing your bug may force you to rewrite half of the game features or make crutches to ensure that players won't trigger it, which in turn can make the game near impossible to update in the future.

[PcGamerHero]

I agree with those points, and I would like to add point 8 I never heard being talked about outside of the IT world, but I found it critical to stop wasting time - you didn't account for risks. What I mean by that is that you got your task, planned it out, and know what to do, but then you are a week in and something unexpected has happened and now you can't push that feature out of the window. I'm talking feature creeps, not having the technical know-how, or maybe being lost over interpretations of the game design. If you made games, you have those horror stories of things going wrong.
I discovered that once you are experienced in everything that can go wrong, you can start to predict what issues will likely happen. So - don't let them happen. Before starting to work on a feature, in the planning phase, write down everything that can go wrong, think of strategies to avoid it, and how to deal with it if it happens. For example, if you think that there is a risk of feature creep, make sure to write down with the designer a clear list of minimal requirements.
This is called risk mitigation, and I can tell that once I started doing this with my own projects, everything went more smoothly and stress-free.

[SunSailor]

Regarding tutorial hell - a big factor here is, which tutorials you are watching. Are you watching high quality content, like git-amend, where you really learn how to architect your game or do you watch crap like the Jimmy Vegas channel, where you are tricked into making facades of games, without real systems and structure.

[mandisaw]

Wasted about 1.5 yrs when I started in Unity. Was making everything from scratch, similar to how I'd done my native-Android games. Once I got a better understanding of the built-in systems and the Asset Store, my progress sped up 10X. Having a job & doing another degree also slowed my game down, but having a steady paycheck, new skills, and the many networking opportunities has more than made up for any lost time. Game will take longer to complete, but it's much more likely to be successful now.

[inevgames]

Some game ideas don't even require code knowledge to prototype. We can prototype and test our game using paper, pencil and scissors. This is especially true for card games, RPGs, turn-based games.

[JeF]

I would love to see a video about how to explore an initial game idea. About how to validate the potential of an existing idea for a game, to check if its worth the effort, and if yes, what are the next questions to ask to better organize and evolve that idea(s).

[Seancstudiogames]

You didn't say this Marnix but an immensely fast way to combine both learning and get development done is to participate in game jam's. I don't know if anyone has done an in-depth video as to the benefits of participating in jam's but they have overwhelming positive benefits. You'll gain problem solving skills, learn workflow failures and improve them, gain alot of knowledge and experience and most importantly PUBLISH a game! Even if you don't complete the game, you'll gain alot of confidence. Ideally a developer should participate in 3 jams per year. if you're new to game development, keep them short, 3 -7 days for the first one, <2 weeks 2nd one and third one can be up to 30 days.

[NewGenArtsStudios]

Absolutely LOVE this video!!
I just started as a gamedev, but have done many projects in the past already.
- wrote my own theatre piece, sold out 3 times.
- done many projects in the music bizz
- wrote stories for a few comicbooks
- Been hired as a narrative designer and game writer for 2 projects.

I always wondered why people didn't like to use assets to make their job easier. As long as YOUR idea is original, use all the help which will CUT DOWN your man-hours by possible MONTHS!!

Work smarter guys and girls, you got this!!

[wattstudio]

Youtube is the biggest time waster for me. The algorithm is good.

[emmamason]

The main thing that holds me back is my three kids, 3, 2 and 1yrs old! just finished a diploma in Software Development, and starting to work on my own game. I love watching your videos! Keep up the good work!

[geshtu]

Hard disagree about assets being better than writing your own system. Yes, for some things this is true, but it's not zero effort or zero time to learn how to use the asset, and maybe you still need to add features to make it work with your game. The worst case (and yet extremely common) is that you now have constraints because you're stuck with the features of that system you didn't write, and now that aspect of your game is limited. You'll probably spend longer working around the limitations and quirks of that system than if you made it yourself. Something I learned a long time ago is that for a solo dev, writing your own system is often quicker than learning how to use someone else's. There are exceptions, and if you're working with a team you need to care more about ease-of-use and documentation. But again, there is no guarantee that some random asset on the store with no documentation and limited features is going to save you time. It may end up costing you more. It's not an easy decision. It's something you really need to weigh up. It may be better. It may not be. So my disagreement is to say that it's simply not true that asset save time while writing your own costs time. It's never that easy. You have to make a judgement call.

[Mel-muox]

7:04 Ah, Dwarf Fortress, the game of a lifetime.

The cats vomited, the fish attacked the dwarves, the UI made ppl want to cry XD
It was only meant to be a side project :P

[coachluke]

BiteMe Games:"You'll spend 6 years making a game."
Me: "But what if I only want to make ONE game?"

[RealCoachMustafa]

I wasted over a year working on a 2d platformer. The steam page is still up. Maybe one day I'll make it really quick and just shove a tiny version of that game for the steam page that's already up.

[parkerking]

I think participating in game jams helps out a lot with many of these issues because they force you to go through the development cycle and publish a very imperfect game. And you have to prioritize what to work on or you won’t have a playable game at the end. So I say participate in game jams.

[astromonkey]

2 years for my first game, 1 year for each of the other 4.

Time wasters are everything inconclusive where at best you dabble. I see lots of trailers during your livestreams or in discord of games that are at best a one trick pony, i would categorize them as prototypes, gamedev need to stop thinking using unity physics = game, because no amount of bad quality indie dev games glamourized by influencers will change the rule of quality > all, pick a genre and make a game.

[pixeltroid]

Another game dev time waster is working on devlogs, especiall video devlogs. A lot of small devs have this mistaken belief that maintaining devlogs somehow counts as "marketing". But in reality, they're wasting their time because they don't have too many subscribers and youtube does not promote small channels. And as a result they're making videos that do not get any views. All the time they're spending on recording and editing devlogs could have been spent on making the game itself.

[BakedChocoChips]

okay, a point by point response.
- planning vs prototyping: Really, you need both. The main thing is to keep a clear vision of what you want to build, and figuring out ASAP how to get there. You need a plan on what the game should be, and prototyping to make progress towards it. Prototyping without a plan is just playing in a sandbox or brainstorming.

- wrong priorities: I agree, though it goes back to the "work towards prototype" mindset. If it adds to the prototype, then it's good work. Otherwise, defer it.

- focusing on bugs: I disagree. Log the bugs but don't defer it too far. Otherwise, you're going to keep deferring it for later, and eventually forget it or just work on new shiny features instead. And that bug is going to bite you painfully in the future. Have a clean kitchen to work in all the time, is nicer than a messy kitchen.

- reinventing the wheel: Really depends I think. Godot doesn't really have a good asset marketplace. And the moment you need more than what the asset provides, you're also in trouble. So pick assets that you can easily use and within its limitations, build your own if you need something beyond that.

- Striving for perfection: I disagree. I don't think games should take longer than 10 years, that's probably too long without any player feedback. But shipping fast and making lots of mediocre games is also not great either, and gives you bad habits. If you feel you learn faster that way, then go for it. But there is a middle ground where you learn a lot by making and polishing a high quality game, that doesn't take 10+ years to make. Or change your game release so you can launch to early access, and iterate on it. Or launch the game and release expansions/DLC for it that continues the development. I don't think releasing mediocre games is a good suggestion, beyond learning what a full gamedev process looks like. Do it a couple times, then go make something better.

- tutorial hell: yes, go learn and apply what you learn. Tweak how the tutorial teaches you to do it, use what you learned to make a better game.

- not knowing when to quit: yes, you need to do market research, feasibility prototypes and market feedback to confirm the game makes sense. The faster all the confirm is gotten, the earlier you can decide if the project is worth doing or not.

I think the biggest time waster is not knowing what you are doing. If you were trying to recreate a game, all the game design decisions, art style, assets, mechanics, features, etc. are all decided for you, so all you need to do is implementation. Then you just need to learn everything you need to implement it. But when you are trying to create a new game from scratch, and have to plan, design and implement everything from scratch as well, everything is unknown. And that unknown is the biggest time waster, as you try to figure out what direction to take the game towards.