GAMMACART Looking Back Part 1

This is the first of a series of posts looking back on my Flash racing game called GAMMACART. This post is about a lesson I learned, relating to the saying "make the games you want to make."

On TIGSource's front page, at the way bottom, there's a robot that has only one thing to say- "make the games you want to make."

It's like the game making motto... tattooed to the behind of the model indie dev. It's a value that has given us games that we wouldn't see otherwise- like Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft, freaks of nature that are the products of pure passion and pursuit of completion.

GAMMACART is the furthest thing away from that. Let me first say that this is not my engine. This is the product of Rhys (a member of the Stencyl community) and I just made the levels and graphics for this version. His version of the game is actually good- it looks good, plays good, the enemies don't get stuck.

Blech, I wouldn't want to play this either.

And that's why I made this game in the first place. I made it because Rhys' version was good. I made it because I thought I could easily duplicate that success.

But I didn't like the game itself too much. It's not that it was bad, it was... not my thing. My kind of game is a platformer, or some kind of action-y game where you need to make quick moves and you need good reflexes. This is not like that. It's slow... kind of laggy, kind of buggy.

So why is it important to be making the game you want to make? I'll throw in another cliche. "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." Told you it was cliche. While not all good games would be considered "genius", they are the product of a ton of hard work.

Make the games you want to make... OR DIE! *gasp*

So here's the point. If you are making the game you want to make, you will be motivated to work on the game. If you let a small thing like a bug go past you, if you just forget about it, it will be noticed. If you let a huge bug past you, the player will stop playing the game, and forget about it forever and or leave with a negative impression of the game. So if you don't put enough effort into the game to polish it fully, even if you put in the extraordinary amount of effort to finish it all the way in the first place, all your work could be for naught if you don't put in that final push to make it great.

And because I wasn't making the game I wanted to make, GAMMACART is guilty of the aforementioned crimes, which were the product of my incompetence. The good news is that although this game did happen, I can still make games, other games, good games... And maybe I can make up for this one.

Alright, thanks for reading.