Rapid prototyping

Captured from: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexander-brazie_it-took-me-3-years-to-admit-failure-with-activity-7165450119251779584-mxjv?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

It took me 3 years to admit failure with my first.
It took me 1 year to realize the game concept I had was built wrong and couldn’t ship.
Now, I can build prototypes in 3-6 months to evaluate if an idea is worth exploring.
Here’s the framework I use:👇

First: What is the dirtiest, quickest path to evaluating the idea?
Next: "Does 10% more effort in a specific way dramatically improve the test quality?"

• When building a single-player game concepts, it doesn’t matter which game engine you use, as long as you can prototype quickly.
• When building a competitive, real-time multiplayer game, prototyping locally can be problematic. Switching to the architecture required for effective playtesting later is 10x more costly.
• Investing extra time initially to learn the correct approach helps avoid common bugs later.

Once the tech is sorted, do the same with the art:
Ask First - "How can we communicate clearly with a minimum amount of investment?"

• Simple shapes, a simple environment, and colored flashes might be enough.
  Ask Next - "Does 10% more effect in a specific way dramatically level up the test quality?"
• Making a colored cube wobble, jiggle and flash doesn’t take a lot of work, but dramatically levels up the prototype quality.

You can see an amazing example of this type of thinking over here:
https://buff.ly/3T3LNnG

Jakob gets a lot of mileage out of a minimum of assets.

If something doesn’t work out?

No big deal, you didn’t waste the hearts, souls, and passions of your team.

That said, it can be INCREDIBLY hard when you have talented people around and not use their skills to the fullest extent.

This is why working with senior developers is a completely different experience than working with juniors.

Because senior developers have (hopefully) come to peace with their skill in their craft, they can focus on just doing the essential to validate your hypothesis:

Is this fun?

Be the Funsmith, not the pixel pusher.

Caveat: Some games won’t really deliver on the experience without clearly communicated animations, timing and visuals. Elden Ring, for example, wouldn’t work with Minecraft-style animations.

Act wisely.