I hear that it’s difficult to find faults in your children. Or at least that it’s very easy to look past them. When you invest so much time and energy into something, it begins to become a part of you. You begin to see the products of your work and determination embellish themselves out of what was before a slobbering lump. However, sometimes we don’t want to admit when some of those products are unsavoury or unattractive*. We don’t like to admit that the extension we made of ourselves sucks, because we falsely believe it defines us as the creators. Obviously, I will liken this to our ventures in game development.

It is important to realize that you’re going to have holes and problems with every game. The early stages, in particular, are always filled with structural problems, mechanic imbalances, etc. However, it is also important to realize that recognizing these problems will not do you anything if you don’t fix them.

I’ve seen people vehemently protect their games much like a parent would their bullied child. However, unlike children, video games have the added benefit of not having feelings. So they don’t really need to be protected this way. In fact, we should be a little more like the bullies, looking for things wrong with the thing we created.

Lately, I’ve been looking at the structural problems of Loose Cannons. In our stages of transforming from game jam grade to professional, we have begin to see a wave of structural problems. Sometimes it’s major things like fundamental gameplay and objectives, other times it’s collision systems. But I’m glad these problems keep showing themselves readily enough for me, so that I can scrap what doesn’t work and build a stronger overall experience.

Although games don’t feel like children, they can become a very real part in a large amount of people’s lives, not just in the lives of the parent and creator. How have video games affected your life? Tell us your story at facebook/MonsterGrooveGames.

• Adam Meredith @ad_meredith

• it is especially important to make fun of our children when they are unattractive.