Development hell

[TheFrighter]

According to wikipedia.org a development hell is "media and software industry jargon for a project, concept, or idea that remains in a stage of early development for a long time, because the project is stuck in legal, technical, or artistic challenges. A work may move between many sets of artistic leadership, crews, scripts, game engines, or studios. Many projects which end up in development hell never progress into production, and are gradually abandoned by the involved parties".

Have you ever been involved in a development hell, in videogames for example? And if so how you have solved?

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[deadsuperhero]

Pretty much all of my game projects are in development hell, but the situation and my state of mind are actually improving.

My Achilles Heel in the past was mainly due to scope creep - a simple idea took on bigger and bigger elements. Early in a game's life, it feels as though your creation can go in any direction: you can design a completely bespoke interface and way of doing things, introduce novel game mechanics, and attempt to do rich world-building.

In my case, this can become a nightmare. An RPG can become an elaborate simulation where the NPCs are designed to follow paths resembling everyday life. A conversation game can expand into an entire cityscape with a transit system and puzzles with a dozen different solutions and outcomes.

This can seem fanciful, and to some degree, can allow you to develop amazing things. But, it can impede development of the actual game, where very little functions outside of the crazy part you built.

My other problem is that I'm a one-man team. I don't like managing other people, can't afford to commission designers, and generally don't feel confident about recruiting a bunch of people or building some kind of community. So, this means that I do all of the programming, character design, background art, animation, music composition, and writing. In the service of making the products of my imagination a reality, it's worth it...but it's exhausting.

What ultimately has helped me is to slow down, take a step back, and take a long break. Game development for me is a hobby, where I explore what's possible for me to create. Taking the whole thing less seriously, and also simplifying the scope of what I want to accomplish, very much help move my closer to the goal.