There is no Scope

What if I told you that there is no scope management, because there is no such thing as scope?

Your game has one script that determines enemy behavior, it has one bit of logic that determines health, and speed, and rewards.

Your gameplay is a Matrix of complexities that reference a singularity of fun. It might be contorted into a skeleton NPC, or a myriad of progressively faster cars, or other puffs of smoke into mirror to try to distract the user from seeing the truth: there are no goomba's, there is no princess in any castle. 

Year after year, we developers have become hypnotized by our own illusion, and tranced by the siren's call towards fool's gold.  We believe when we get the pirates and space ships in we're checking things off the list, that we're getting closer to the fun.

When we are beginning our gamedev Journey, we have these notions of what a game is, it's that fun level with enemies and powerups in it. It's built by game designers, by animators, by environment artists, by a team of people to create this expansive world, and each area of that world must be created with care and talent by a team of craftsmen.

But this is the fool's path to game design, the amateur's, the gamer who's never lost a fool hearty bout in the arena trying to create their first game.

I have built up so much rubbish over the years. I look back on this project and a majority of the time was building castles in the sand. Adding hundreds of little variations of imperfect assets with art and sound chunked together in a futile effort to stitch together the fun.

Mario, Tetris, Dota/ LOL, Candy Crush, GTA, Call of Duty, Minecraft, Terraria. What do the greats have in common?

They all have a singular moment of play that defines them completely. All the levels, the narratives, the powerups the enemies, the weapons... they're all a different coat of paint on that same perfect structure.

Yesterday I wans under the usual deluge of stress, "I still have to finish the level setups, I need to make all the seacrit areas, I need to write billions of dialogue boxes for NPC's to unfurl an epic story, and it must be the greatest ever, every elements of every inch of this expansive project must be perfect, and I must do it all in my lonesome, and this will never end and I am doomed for failure..."

Let go of all of this. 

We don't have to make 50 perfect levels, we don't even need 1.  We need but one tiny fraction of a level for a singular engagement of play to happen. Not a whitebox level, just a whitebox room. Just a floor, maybe a wall or two and an enemy or a car, or whatever defines your game for that moment of play to happen.

If we build up all the tertiary things, enemy varients, new levels, powerups, story NPCs; the things we think makes a game, each and every change must be propagated to each and every bit of content, this exponentially expands the amount of work required to make forward progress.

WANT TO MAKE A GAME!? THEN STOP PLAYING HOUSE! 

PLAY TIME IS OVER. No more mucking about building massive swathes of content.

I don't know why it took me so long to have this realization. But for the first time ever, I feel as though I am free to make this game of quality in a measured capacity that is feasable.

1 ENEMY. 1 TINY LOCATION. THAT IS IT! IT WILL DROP 1 ITEM!

And we are going to polish the EVER LIVING SHIT OUT OF IT. Every animation, every ai routine, every blade of grass -err seaweed, the camera zooms, the colors, the post processes, the ambient effects, the sounds.

We are going to make this small section of play as good as we f*cking can.

But what if we set such a high benchmark it's not sustainable? What if we're unable to make much other content because it will take too much out of us?

GOOD! THAT'S THE ENTIRE F*CKING POINT! 

QUALITY > QUANTITY.

We found our goomba, now we're going to polish the hell out of it.

Not sure what we're going to work on today, maybe we'll tweak some animations, maybe we'll adjust some stun value durations, maybe we'll polish effects, maybe all of the above.

It was dumb to try to make lots and lots of content (We still will at some point, the random level generator is working and kicking ass), the focus must be on a singular section.

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted, and I'm excited to see how much we can push the core play in the coming days.

Not long ago my great fear was we'd finish the game and it would be crap. These days I've been wondering if health would hold up enough to allow me to finish at all...

Don't want to jinx it, but feeling better the past week and the game is coming along better than it ever has before. Actually been able to enjoy the ride a little as of late.

Fuck world, let's fuckin' go.