I made a mistake once upon a time into thinking that I should start a game by making all the art assets for it first before writing a single line of code. I was wrong.
So I "finished" the Demo 0.1 sorta kinda almost not really. By "finished" I mean that I'm done working on it, not so much that it's what I hoped it would have been. The reason for this is what I'm calling a lack of real vision. I went into it with the workflow of 1) Assign yourself a manageable task. 2) Make all the artwork you'll need for it. 3) Implement it into code. My mentality was that making something that looks good will inspire you and push you to complete it. The problem with this as you might suspect is there is a huge blaring possibility that you don't end up with anything... fun... which is kinda the point of the game.
How does this happen? Couldn't you just keep reworking the programming and change the artwork as you go until it's fun? Well, yes... but kiss your road map goodbye because there is no way that you'll be making any of your mile markers if you have to keep taking breaks to make new art then re-implementing that into your code then it not fitting right and then reworking it and then getting frustrated and wanting to quite because it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. I'm not saying that you can really avoid doing this completely... it's called the polishing phase of development and it can take AGES! But frankly, you shouldn't be polishing at all until you've got your product fully fleshed out in terms of game play. The reason the frustration comes in and starts nipping at your coattails is because you don't have fun game play backing your artwork up. If you have a fun game but cruddy artwork... it's ok... because GAMES DON'T NEED TO LOOK GOOD TO FULFILL THEIR PURPOSE!!!!!
That's what makes us Indies. That's what makes us the ones that "get it". We're not ever going to be able to match AAA teams in terms of quantity of artistic content but where we can compete with them is in the mechanics. AAA teams often spend the least amount of time here because to them, mechanics don't sell games. Trailers sell games. Paid off journalists sell games. Really flashy this and that sell games. So they'll make another run of the mill shooter game with really fresh new graphics. Now I'm not one of the haters that can't see any value in this because heck, I love art in any way, shape, and form and AAA devs make some gnarly stuff. But while they're making a museum for people to walk around in wondering where the laser tag is they were promised, we'll be the ones with the actual equipment to give them their laser blasting action.
Now I'm not saying that you should feel forbidden to do any artwork whatsoever because that'd be silly. Some mechanics require you to know beforehand what something will look like in order for it to work at all. If that's the case though I'd say do the absolute minimum. If you have a game like Prince of Persia where it's based on the animations to decide how far you move, instead of deciding that you then need the final animations before moving forward, think about the distance you need to travel for each step and code that in instead using super crummy stick figures if you need them. If you have awesome ideas for how something should look, AWESOME! Draw some sketches, flesh it all out if you want, it's incredibly useful to keep your mind thinking about the final product... just don't put it into your actual game. Keep it looking as dirt cheap as possible until it's 100% beatable, then go from there.
This advice goes for those who hire artists as well. There's nothing more frustrating for a freelance artist then having that annoying developer that makes them create all this kick-awesome art that nobody ever gets to see because you change your mind about what your game is in the end. That's money out of your pocket anyway, paying for stuff that doesn't make any return profit, it's just bad business. Now if you have money to burn and you really just can't stand to look at the same stupid sprites anymore then it's cool, I get it, don't feel judged by me. Sometimes it becomes incredibly hard to see the end product with nothing but blocks to work with. But realize that that's what you're paying for. It's not the final product and make sure your artist knows that too. The bottom line here is that you should never get so attached to visuals that it hurts the gameplay in any perceivable way.
Alright, enough lecturing and more updating on Spaced Out. This week I've filled over 10 pages of notes on what will actually make Spaced Out fun and exciting. I dug deep and uncovered the reason I originally thought this concept was fun and instead of building on it I cut away it's extremities, got out the excavating tools and brushed away the dirt to reveal the details of where the excitement originated from. And I'm just going to say that it's going to be fricken awesome. Like so awesome that I'm getting things to work already that make me so giddy I can hardly keep still.
TL;DR? Going forward... you're not going to see a ton of artwork to reel you in, so I probably won't get a ton of newcomers and that's fine by me. But if I do hook you, and I'm pretty sure I'll have a good chance of doing so, just wait, because when the artwork comes in it'll blow your gobber-smacking mind!
Edit (5/27/15): I've changed my mind again and decided that ultimately the reason that a game will fail is if you don't finish the designing process before you decide to engage on a project. In the case of Demo 0.1 I did quite a bit of pre-production work but at no point did I ask myself whether there would be any fun involved in the final product. Certainly the art itself would be fun and playing around in it like a sandbox wouldn't be bad but that's not my kind of game. Since the original posting, I've spent much more time working on making Spaced Out fun mechanic wise and story wise. I'm also not working on Spaced Out for the time being although it's still something I hope to incorporate into my future series if at all possible. If not, I'll probably still make it as a standalone someday if I stay in the game industry for long enough to get that many games out. Either way, I love this game, it means a lot to me and I will never fully abandon all hope that it will eventually come to fruition.
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