SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Hi folks, I thought I'd put an idea out there:

Some of you may be similar to me but perhaps not.

The reason some of us are not as productive as we'd like to be sometimes is not because we are lacking in creativity but because we have too much of it.

The overwhelming amount of freedom as an independent hobbyist developer means that we have more ideas going through our head than we can ever give the attention they each deserve.

And so rather than being highly productive and creating game after game we get stuck in the design process, we get stuck being overwhelmed by the freedom or having numerous creative ideas with the inability to actually choose one and start on them.

There are articles in psychology about the paralysis that too much choice can cause....and I feel in my own opinion that this holds an element of reality for those of us who are creative by nature. 

Rather than invest ourselves in particular idea - let us say we have 100 ideas all worth the same or similar value - then how do we choose to invest ourselves in any one of them....we cannot build all 100 ideas, we can perhaps build 2 or 3 in a short time and so we build none of them instead because we are torn in 100 different directions at once......

We are like a cat in the middle of an oval that has no idea where to run to so it sits still in the centre of the oval.

I take note of all possible game ideas and work on the games I want to play. We are not all going to make the next Angry Birds but at least we want to play the game we make.

What I do is if an idea sticks around long enough, I create a folder for it.
In there I put documents with game mechanics, back story, links to references or inspiration, or just describing how I want the experience to feel
I add to these as stuff comes to me or when I feel like writing down the stuff in my head.

The first step does a lot to cut down on the number of ideas for me.
Then I think it would just be picking the one I am able to do at the time.
Or like EdzUp said, do the one you want to.

But what do I know, I still haven't finished a game.

Yeah related to this is the other methodology of making a game:

How do you do it personally...I see it as at least two possibilities;

1. Design whole thing in paper/your mind in advance then implement. I find this very hard and give up easily before even starting.

2. Design a start of an idea, build that first bit, test it and then see where it goes adding to it and altering it and adjusting it in an iterative process. I'm finding that as I get older this is more what I'm suited to.

This goes on in every craft. Everyone is a dreamer, in their minds they can do this/that. They portrait themself as being one who actually does it.
But only a few become the ones who actually do it. Because they focus, they don't let themself be sidetracked. With every craft, the beginning is fun. The end and most of it along the way, it is just dedication and hard work.

The trouble with creativity and design is that you need to be engrossed in it, when you become an adult, too many other adult activities get in the way. Even things such as taking a shower, cooking or spending time with your friends and family can disrupt the flow of creativity.
And when it comes down to it you can often spend most of your time worrying about whether the finished project will be any good, who is going to fund you to make it and whilst you're doing this the rest of the world seemingly moves on without you.

The older I get, the less creativity I've become which is ironic since I can literally make all the dreams I had as a child. Time.

If only I was rich and could dedicate all my time onto creativity without other worries getting in the way.

I think MikeHart answers the question well, Matty. You talk of too many ideas, and the answer is to focus on the really good ideas. If you can't do that then you lack enough discernment to achieve your goal. It's like weeding the garden, you need to tell the difference from a good idea and a bad one. Creativity is a hard road but it's a meaningful one.

Quote from: ENAY on June 26, 2017, 02:22:21
The older I get, the less creativity I've become which is ironic since I can literally make all the dreams I had as a child. Time.

What kills my productivity is when I spent to much time browsing in forum communities or Youtube.
Anything that is basically unrelated to the thing I actually want to do.

I was actually more productive and creative when the only thing I had was an illegal copy of VB6. I remember seeing B3d first time - man I was shocked. After ugly buggy VB 3d engines b3d was like a dream come true. Too bad I never released anything. Now you have the choice of anything for free and some not free but cheap tools that I am really overwhelmed and this is even before writing the game itself. Really enjoy monkey's compile->execute speed which is probably the most important thing for me these days. But creativity as you said is just not there. Spending days coming up with boring particle effects and really crappy gameplay twists...

..if you look at Rolling Stones music, for example, what you are going to see is few simple, repetitive rhythms, very fun to listen..nothing really spectacular if you observe it from 'quality of music' point of view..

I really like to think that, same apply to games..you see, if you manage to get up and running some simple set of gameplay rules, very fun and addictive to play with, then quality of graphics and what not, doesnt play role anymore at all..and game is going to be a blockbuster..so, it seems that whole thing boiling down to one thing, to get up and running mentioned set of simple gameplay rules...

A short time ago I asked a developer who made a rather complete game how he got that far. He stated that switching to working on the fun things in the game was important. Working on things in a game you dislike coding(the boring stuff) can make you lose interest in the project I guess.

My own experience also is that I get stuck if I try to implement things that I have less experience with. I also noticed that when I stop coding and go lay on the bed and think things through I get ideas how to do things. This makes creating something new easier because I can finish it faster.

I remember a few years ago I wanted to code something and I spend 7 hours in a row trying to get this single thing working(block pushing) I was happy when it was working but I quickly went to do something else.

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This goes on in every craft. Everyone is a dreamer, in their minds they can do this/that. They portrait themself as being one who actually does it.
But only a few become the ones who actually do it. Because they focus, they don't let themself be sidetracked. With every craft, the beginning is fun. The end and most of it along the way, it is just dedication and hard work.

Getting sidetracked seems easier as I get older.

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The older I get, the less creativity I've become which is ironic since I can literally make all the dreams I had as a child. Time.

If only I was rich and could dedicate all my time onto creativity without other worries getting in the way.

Me too

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I remember seeing B3d first time - man I was shocked. After ugly buggy VB 3d engines b3d was like a dream come true.

Likewise - I've still got VB6 doorstop manuals floatind around. It was pants compared to B3d, but quite good for UI stuff.

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I remember a few years ago I wanted to code something and I spend 7 hours in a row trying to get this single thing working(block pushing) I was happy when it was working but I quickly went to do something else.

Yeah, I enjoy the intellectual challenge of coding stuff - especially stuff that 'seems' unachievable as an indie coder.

B3d is a fantastic vehicle for achieving those goals - even if the forums associated with Blitzbasic.com have dissappeared for now.

What little coding stuff I have been doing has mainly been in Monkey X of late - however, the recent game competition on these forums for an asteroids style game has seen me dusting of IDeal and B3D again I'm happy to say.