The "I Can Do Anything In a Week" Attitude.

Along that same line - many indie game developers severely underestimate how long something will take, assuming an "I Can Do Anything In A Week" attitude. A sure sign of failure is when your team starts saying things like "Yeah, we can do a 3D engine. Give me four days." or "FMV? No problem, I'll have 10-minute intro by the end of the week." Sentences like those are downright scary. It may not seem very important at first, but if you can accurately estimate how long things will take, and design milestones around those estimates, good things will come to you. Your game will get done, your colleges will respect you (after all, how many game companies do you know that stick to deadlines?), and your team will have a good reason to feel proud of itself.

Good estimates, however, are very difficult to create. Quite frequently, it takes a lot of thinking to come up with a realistic estimate. Make sure you do that thinking when designing your project. Also, remember that it's better to meet your deadlines early than to repeatedly blow past an unrealistic milestone. A good rule of thumb is to take your absolute worst-case estimate, double it, and then use that as your best-case estimate. You laugh now, but it's true.

The Ego War