Game a Week

I've never heard of a game a week or every two weeks. I've only heard of jams and the one game a month ( http://onegameamonth.com/ ). I'd think that the failures you get with one game a week or two would be the same as the month long one, but would likely run the risk of you getting burned out faster than most programmers.

I've never heard of a game a week or every two weeks.

Hmm, that was unexpected :/

this man's jorunal is amazing: http://www.gamedev.net/blog/704-crawling-with-ideas/

he's created games in a week, detailing each day, and even took the challenge of a 1 new game a day for 1 week. all of them great reads.

I've never heard of a game a week or every two weeks. I've only heard of jams and the one game a month ( http://onegameamonth.com/ ). I'd think that the failures you get with one game a week or two would be the same as the month long one, but would likely run the risk of you getting burned out faster than most programmers.

Yea, there have been some recent blogs and ideas for one game a week floating around. The goal is for people to start writing games, and start small so that it's not as easy to fall into the big ideas trap (have a great idea, a small team...3 months later realize it can't be done with the resources, and there is still nothing to show for it). The idea is that if you design for small week projects ,you will get your creativity out, start prototyping your ideas, and hopefully gain experience in writing games/programs. There are other benefits, but those are just some. Thanks for the link, I think I have heard of it but I forgot all about the onegameamonth.

this man's jorunal is amazing: http://www.gamedev.net/blog/704-crawling-with-ideas/

Awesome, will take a look. I looked at it a little bit and he has some great things to read in there. Thanks!

Thanks for the links, I'll edit them in the original post to keep track.

Hey man, Mondongorongo here; i noticed you linked my blog up there, thanks for that.

Though I blog in spanish and that can be kind of difficult for some people I'll work on a translation of my future blogs in Gamasutra too(maybe in french too, haven't decided yet). I've been doing this for a little more than a month, and it has been great as a learning experience, you have to work hard and stay focused on your deadlines, I've devised some methods that help me accomplish my goals in one week. Let me copy and paste it from here

I start the first day by grasping the idea of the project and doing a conceptualization through rough prototyping that gives me a clearer idea of how the project could unfold, after that i write down my main concept, core mechanics and key features and the expected deadline of the project; i then spend the next 2 or 3 days in sprints of development, that sometimes give me additional features that i prototype and test but if they don't add to the experience or don't seem achievable in the timeline, i toss them out. Finally i go through a couple pf days of playtesting and polish where i balance the opinion of others with my own and see if some improvement is viable.

This gives me a beta that i release to the web(although it's mostly game prototes i call them "betas of prototypes") and one or two days later i postmortem the project.

This has worked in these small scale projects, but i think that the core time management and feature validation process is a good foundation for when i need to scale onto bigger projects.

Besides my delusions of grandeur(i just quoted myself, for crying out loud XD), it's awesome to get some sort of feedback on your games; playtesting is very important, as is the shameless self promoting of your work, but also you have to develop a thick skin and learn not to take it personal, sometimes great ideas and good intentions end in bad product and people can be harsh, specially if your tersters are friends and family as is in my case.

So yeah, just wanted to pop up and give my thanks and my two cents.

*prototes in mondongoronguesque means prototypes

EDIT:

I've been following Jayenkai's blog for a long time. I had a go at doing it myself and managed to get a couple of games released to the appstore but then it just turned into "an abandoned experiment a week".
One thing worth mentioning is that I haven't updated any of my personal apps for a long time but, the only ones still making money are the quick one game a week apps that I did over a year ago whilst the ones I spent months working on with paid for assets are making nothing.

Hey man, Mondongorongo here; i noticed you linked my blog up there, thanks for that.

Hey, no problem, event though I can't read spanish well it's still nice to see your games. I also added your name in the list :-) Thanks for your input!!

you have to understand your limitations and know that you can't aspire to build the WoW killer in thosae 7 days

I think this is really important. I've been a programmer for a while, and I still find I underestimate the amount of work required for things. I think that for aspiring game developers (indie or not), it's important to be able to predict the amount of time it will take to work on something, whether it be contract work or reporting to your manager how much time you think a task will take. This is a skill, and it takes practice to improve that skill in time-estimation. Writing more and more games means that you can start seeing what is realistic to accomplish in a certain amount of time versus what is unrealistic, and this is always helpful for any project that's taken up.

the only ones still making money are the quick one game a week apps that I did over a year ago whilst the ones I spent months working on with paid for assets are making nothing

Wow, this is really interesting. Can you think of anything that you can attribute to this?

Wow, this is really interesting. Can you think of anything that you can attribute to this?

That is the ultimate question. Unfortunately there is no certain thing that works. What works for one may not work for another developer. I think everything in game development is the ultimate example of trial and error (including being a success in it).

...it's important to be able to predict the amount of time it will take to work on something, whether it be contract work or reporting to your manager how much time you think a task will take.

Two weeks

scyfris, on 09 Apr 2014 - 5:48 PM, said:


Wow, this is really interesting. Can you think of anything that you can attribute to this?

That is the ultimate question. Unfortunately there is no certain thing that works. What works for one may not work for another developer. I think everything in game development is the ultimate example of trial and error (including being a success in it).

I have no ideas why either. Just a simple falling blocks game and a snake clone. Both free but with ads. They still get downloaded regularly and they still earn ad revenue.

I've been following Jayenkai's blog for a long time. I had a go at doing it myself and managed to get a couple of games released to the appstore but then it just turned into "an abandoned experiment a week".
One thing worth mentioning is that I haven't updated any of my personal apps for a long time but, the only ones still making money are the quick one game a week apps that I did over a year ago whilst the ones I spent months working on with paid for assets are making nothing.

This is sadly the same for me as well. One of my absolute simpliest games(less than 2 days to prototype, and was finished within a week) is still selling ~100 copys a month a year later, where my 5 other games on the market barely even manage half that combined.

It's left a bit of a soured taste in my mouth, and i've learned to try to minimize my investments as best i can for future games.

Hmm. This is a very good idea. I might try it out. I actually used to do stuff like this. Making ludicrous deadlines that give you that "study the night before the test" crunchtime feeling (in which a lot of people say they do their best work).

Putting that crunch time on something will help your workflow a great deal. I am sure Google returns a lot of results on this. I like this video on an 11 day level design. Might help a bit with the flow of the game design:

I like this video on an 11 day level design

This video is really nice. This gives me another idea. I usually focus on programming, game component design, and visualizing the games during the game a week, but this makes my skills kind of one-dimensional. Instead it would be interesting to focus on a completely different sub-craft of game development, like level design or asset creation (art, music, other?) for a week, and then do a write-up on what's learned as well as the results (no actual game, just whatever content is iterated on or created). This will help to understand the other sub-crafts of game development deeper for when I work in teams with artists/musicians, etc. It will also be a good way to become familiar with those pipelines and tools in those fields.

I actually tried to do something like that my first weeks, but for me it has been mostly about learning to translate my experience of the business world to the game development world. It's kinda humbling to realize that you have so much in your head that wont be useful so i had to start from scratch and see what i could transfer from my background to my passion.

So that's why i've decided to explore more of a technical side of things, like exploring Unity, and then learning about shaders, and about GameMaker or UDK or Allegro or Panda3D and learn the technical side of things in parallel to the theoretical side of game design.

I've been working with mostly sql(postgresql, oracle and microsoft sql server) and java for the past 10 years so programming as a game developer is a different kind of mind set that i have to learn.