Day 81: Today was in the continuity of yesterday. I didn’t do much. It turns out that when I’m not squeezed by tasks to do, I have time to self doubt. Or maybe it’s because Christmas is approaching and that always depresses me. I procrastinated so much that I ended up in the school help chat that I didn’t visited for at least a year. Anyway, let’s get today’s log so I can go play Factorio for the weekend.

Daily interesting stuff:

• Reddit post. Advice to not add friend request during greenlight. Some player would then associate you with scammers.

• Reddit post on motivation. Funny how the timing was perfect, just as I’m at a low point. But it didn’t helped me. One because when I read it there wasn’t a lot of replies. Two because I kinda know all the things they said. The problem is not to know them, it’s to actually manage to apply them when you’re in a down dynamic.

• Stats on motivation of gamers. Study on about 250 000 player to ask them what was their motivation in games.

• Game price strategies. I found the link in Game to market. The marketing book I’m reading. What bothers me a bit with is that no one talks about getting the game into the hands of as many people as possible for the sake of the medium. It’s just all about maximizing profits. This may sound cheesy but I’d like to take into account that as a creator I would rather have more people playing my game than made a lot of money from less persons. Of course it’s not in absolute (is so all games would be free). I just think this should be another factor to take into account.

Tasks done:

• Procrastinated a lot. I shouldn’t consider this as a “task done” but I did do some useful things. I spent more time on twitter and reddit. And since I surrounded myself with gamedev related stuff, I learned stuff. I might not be applicable or useful but at least it’s not time entirely wasted. I also looked at the old school help chat where some classmates still talks. I gave advice on coroutines.

• Did a “follow friday”. I just followed a lot of people on twitter. I gained 5 new followers that way. I have 55 followers and I’m following 200. That’s really low…

• Solved a bug where my automatic grid layout would not have square items. It was a simple fix. But I needed to do it to feel like I did something. When I thought the day would be totally lost, I went to trello and thought of some tasks. Then I worked on them, and allowed me to feel good when I completed them. It was trivial tasks but it helped my self esteem. And I finished the day better than when I started.

• Removed some useless vars in a script. Again this was more than trivial.

• Did a rough planning until the alpha deadline. That’s just to see if I’m okay timing wise. If I don’t stumble on too much hurdle it should be ok.

• Gave feedback on feedback friday. I don’t really like to do this. But since I really want feedbacks when I post, it’s the least I can do.

Sprint end: This concludes the “Upgrades” sprint. Now I have the tools I need to easily create upgrades. It might not look like much but compared to the old way I did this in the prototype, it’s much more stable and scalable.

What went wrong:

• Motivation was at one of its lowest point during the last two days. It’s just that having so much work to do, and so less reward took its toll. There’s not much visible progress since pre-alpha. But I think the hardest part is not knowing if the game would interest anyone. I’m confidant I can finish it. But I have no idea if I can convince an artist or a publisher to help me. If I can’t the game will be way worse. And then I’m not sure it can help to land a job. I have to remember that whatever happens, I learned a LOT and nothing can erase that (except amnesia).

What went right:

• I made it. This is obvious, but I should consider this more often. Allowing myself to feel proud of what I’ve achievement is great for motivation. Even if sometimes it feels like lying to myself.

• After doing some Upgrades scripts, I realized I didn’t need custom ones to do some other upgrades. That made me feel like I conceived a good system.