Game a Week

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13 comments, last by mondongorongo 10 years ago

Does anyone else has experience doing a one game a week/2week exercise, or know of others doing it? It would be nice to get your input on your experience. I've started doing this at my blog http://gawahse.blogspot.com/ and would appreciate any criticism or comments anyone has about the games I post up there. They are usually 1-1.5 week long development while I do school/work at the same time, so each one just really investigates one design element.

I would be interested in collecting links to everyone doing this. The few I have found are:

Adriel Wallick's blog: http://adrielwallick.com/

My blog: http://gawahse.blogspot.com/

LessMilk: http://www.lessmilk.com/

Jayenkai's website: http://jayenkai.socoder.net/

Mondongorongo's blog: http://mondongorongo.wordpress.com/

Jonathan Gaiser's blog: http://gameaweekchallenge.tumblr.com/

Some articles about it:

http://indiegames.com/2014/02/what_one_dev_learned_while_doi.html

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdrielWallick/20140226/211761/Make_Many_Games_Learn_Many_Things.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RamiIsmail/20140226/211807/Game_A_Week_Getting_Experienced_At_Failure.php

Thanks!

Edit: I'll put links from posters on here to keep track of them

One game a month -- http://onegameamonth.com (Thanks BHXSpecter )

ManTis' Gamedev Journal -- http://www.gamedev.net/blog/704-crawling-with-ideas/ (Thanks slicer4ever)

11 day level design process overview --

(Thanks Tutorial Doctor)

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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 :/

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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.

Check out https://www.facebook.com/LiquidGames for some great games made by me on the Playstation Mobile market.

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.

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 tongue.png

EDIT:

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.

That's not 100% true, they are somewhat different; you have to understand your limitations and know that you can't aspire to build the WoW killer in thosae 7 days, but it helps a lot to develop a kind of lean approach to design that's very interesting; not only that but it also helps you to focus on identifying your themes, key features and concepts clearly and faster.

Also, and paraphrasing, Rami Ismail, the process of releasing a game is sort of a muscle itself, you have to flex it to develop it, and i flex it 4 times in a month instead of 1; don't get me wrong, eventually I'll scale to a game a month, or a game every three months, then onto bigger projects, but as I mentioned before, you really need to develop the thick skin, the ability to promote your work, to approach testers, to ask for feedback and criticism. It's crucial for the learning experience, as developers we tend to focus exclusively on the tech side of things, but a greater understanding of the whole process has a great educational value.

Game a week is not done to create the greatest game ever(though if it happens that's great) it's more about flexing the game development and game design muscles needed to become a better developer. It can be burning for some if you strech it too long(kinda happened to me this week), but if you can use it correctly it's a great tool for starting game devs.

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 tongue.png biggrin.png laugh.png

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