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What are the Most Common Mistakes in Game Development
Do you remember when you were developing your first game projects? You started everything with a great dream, but then you faced a lot of difficulties in the process. Some of us stopped making games at this point, some of us believed that we should join a company and work at this point, and some of us continued to develop at this point and pursued their dreams. It is precisely for these reasons that today I would like to tell people who want to make games and are at the beginning of their journey what not to do. Let’s put aside the dos and don’ts and focus a little on the real don’ts.
Before we get into the details, let’s list the things not to do;
- Setting Off Without Knowing the Target Audience
- Failure to Conduct Competitor Analysis
- Not Working on Marketing
- Not Asking for Help
- Not Listening to Feedback
- Copying the Ideas of Others
- Extreme Perfectionism
- Moving Away from Viability
- Not Preparing an Accurate Game Design Document
- Not Paying Attention to the Testing Process
- Overlooking Performance and Safety Issues
- Ignoring Localization
Let’s take a detailed look at these items one by one.
Setting Out Without Knowing the Target Audience;
The target audience is an issue that I insistently emphasize in every content. It is really difficult for a game to be commercially successful without seeking answers to the question of who will play this game or what other games do the people who will play this game play? As I mentioned at the very beginning of my article, yes, we are realizing a dream, but while realizing this dream, we must also make a revision in accordance with some statistics and technical needs. If you have a game idea in the horror game genre, which is an example I have given in my previous content, it is essential to know that audience in order to present it to people who love that genre in a form they can love.
Not Analyzing Competitors;
Not knowing who your opponents are is a recipe for disaster. If you don’t know what games are similar to yours, how can you make a better game than theirs? Even when analyzing your target audience, you can actually reveal the favorite mechanics of the people in that audience by analyzing your competitors. Competition in the game industry is increasing day by day and in order to survive in this competition, it is necessary to be successful and make a difference. The key to making a difference in a scheme is to know that scheme and the teams in that scheme well, even very well.
Not Working on Marketing;
I always say, prepare the best project in the world, but if you can’t market it, the chances of this project being successful are 0! For example, you have a great horror game and if you can’t announce this masterpiece game, which adds new things to support the best mechanics of its competitors in the industry, has great graphics and sounds, has a great story flow, if you can’t announce it, only you as the creators and a small number of players will know it, and this will be reflected as a loss to you and your game. You need to know how and where you can reach your target audience. After identifying these channels, you need to create the right strategy and allocate some of your budget to marketing. Don’t rely on luck! Remember, strategies exist to eliminate your need for luck and believe me, this is exactly where professionalism starts.
Not Asking for Help;
Yes, I know that the vast majority of professional people in the industry may prefer not to help you or even mislead you so that new competitors do not emerge, but believe me, there are also the right people. If you are not sure exactly how to do something, try to reach me or people like me, believe me you are not alone. Especially if you scan international sources, you will see that there are many open resources available to you, so try to learn English and research these channels as well.
Not Listening to Feedback;
One of the biggest mistakes is not listening to feedback. If we look at Steam data, companies that produce games in a concept can achieve success in their 3rd game on average. So what do you think is one of the secrets of this success? Of course, one of these secrets is that they take into account the comments of the players who buy their games. Constructive criticism is especially valuable for your games, but sometimes very useful feedback can come out of hurtful content. Yes, I know that hurtful and even abusive comments can lower your morale and motivation, but sometimes we see in global analysis that some players have problems in expressing what they want to say. When we analyzed user data, it was also observed that some of the slang comments were actually just to emphasize the aspects they disliked. The best way to get feedback is to put your game out there and let people play it. But you also need to actively ask for feedback from players. Don’t be afraid to ask for honest feedback, even if it’s negative. Remember that pain makes you stronger, and the more professional you are, the more objectively you can evaluate the data in the feedback process and make it work for you.
Copying Other People’s Ideas;
One of the biggest scourges of the game industry is exactly the copying of content one after another. Especially if you have created a successful game, you may soon see games on the market that use the mechanics of your game but differ from your game to a sufficient extent to avoid copyright issues. Or worse, you can get involved in such ways and create copycat content. There’s nothing wrong with copying a developer’s innovative and marketable idea, but copying it will ethically create a negative bias against you both in the industry and in the player base. For this reason, do not steal or copy ideas to make a quick buck, otherwise you will suffer.
Excessive Perfectionism;
Realizing your dreams and leaving a mark on the page of history is something that every person wants, but it should be remembered that sometimes you don’t need to be too perfect for this to happen. In fact, many of the domain-independent products that have become phenomenal today are far from perfect. Success comes when you and your team step by step create the right ideas for your project and execute them correctly. If you try to perfect every idea, it will cost you time, and this waste of time will cause you financial and moral damage, and often even prevent the game from going from plan to live. Remember the important thing is not the perfect idea, but the idea that is most compatible with your concept is the right one. Excessive perfectionism is like a disease, don’t fall into this situation.
Moving Away from Applicability;
When I say moving away from applicability, what I actually mean is the ideas and projects you come up with by ignoring the opportunities and team you have. For example, imagine that you have a team using the Uniity game engine with C# programming language and that this team specializes in 2D games. If you ask this team to make a 3D AAA level game and develop it on the Unreal Engine using the C ++ programming language, this shows that your plan and project is actually very far from the reality you have. You should not forget that it is very important for you to move forward with realistic goals over the possibilities and possibilities you have.
Not Preparing an Accurate Game Design Document;
I have emphasized in my previous articles that the game design document is actually the backbone of a game. The game design document will actually ensure that your game becomes a whole and is loyal to that whole during the development process. No matter how accurate the game design documents are prepared at the very beginning of the road, they will surely undergo changes within the limits of the limits created at the beginning. If you cannot prepare a correct game design document at the beginning and if you cannot prepare this correct document with flexibility compatible with the changes in the following process, you will not achieve a successful result. Don’t listen to the ridiculous rumors that say there is no game design document left in this era, don’t forget that the Game Design Document is the key to turning these projects into successful games while projecting your unique ideas.
Not Paying Attention to the Testing Process;
The separation of the feedback parts and the testing process that I mentioned at the very beginning of my article may have surprised some of you or may seem absurd to some of you, but wait a second, what I’m actually trying to explain is the difference between the feedback process of the games being done by a player and being done by a professional tester. In my previous content I’ve talked about how important a role Game Testers have and that this position is actually made up of people who really know what they’re doing, not people who just test games, and that these people are actually part of the development team. Yes, maybe it’s difficult for people who are making their first game to go and create a professional test team, but at least you need people who can objectively review their own games and do it as professionally as possible. Remember that an objective and detailed testing process will determine the fate of your game.
Ignoring Performance and Security Issues;
The most common problem that game developers usually have is that they create games that are deficient in technical and security issues. In particular, the developer team should pay a lot of attention to performance and security issues. Games where performance and security issues are not given due importance will cause the game to fail and the game to be pirated. It is especially important for developers to speed up their code, set up their algorithms properly, and test for memory leaks in this process. Do not forget that no player wants to play a problematic and insecure game. Code quality reveals unstable and buggy games.
Ignoring Localization;
Localization, as the name suggests, is the process of adapting the translation of any product to a specific country or region. Localization makes everything that is heard in the target market sound as if it was originally made in that language. It is a globally known technique for increasing the worldwide recognition and sales of a product or service. Especially game projects are actually products that are presented to the international market, so if you create a product in your own country and in your native language, you cannot expect it to make a big impact globally. For global success, it is important to ensure that the localization is really high quality. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that the source culture is different from the target culture, it is important not to work with non-player translators, at the last check point, doing the tests with people from the adapted region will give you more accurate test results, and you should take care not to skip many points that you should pay attention to.
Video
If you want to listen to my explanations on this subject and reinforce this subject by examining examples, I recommend you to watch my Youtube video, which I prepared in Turkish but also has English subtitles.
Closing
You can contact me via my e-maill address and the contact section of my website and send me your questions about the Most Common Mistakes in Game Development. You can also browse my consultancy page to get consultancy from me on this subject.
In this article, I tried to answer the question of What are the Most Common Mistakes When Developing Games? See you in my next articles.