Post by Michael Bonardi in SAINTS WERE MADE : A Postmortem comments

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I think that your reflections are extremely healthy and I can tell that creating something you believe in is very gratifying to you. That honestly makes me quite happy. On watching let's plays, though... doesn't it get weird? I have recently published my first game and after let's play number 10, all I can see are my own failures after a while. Through other people's videos I eventually just fixate on my project's limitations and blemishes. Has that ever happened to you?

I'm very intrigued by your games, especially how you describe this one, and I'll be sure to play soon.

somewhat4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

I have the usual confidence issues everybody has (coupled with a very strong impostor syndrome), but I am obsessed with making sure what I do touches some people, leaves a mark, you know? So yeah, I might be full of myself on this, but I love watching people play my stuff. Is it weird? Probably, I'm opened to that interpretation.

It does happen that I just see the flaws and blemishes in videos of my games. Watching let's play of them, I often see bugs that I couldn't find before release, or even more subtle stuff like players not catching hints (environmental or design-wise) that I thought would be obvious. It's awful.

But that's an opportunity to be honest with yourself. Like, you KNOW why that bug happened or why that hint isn't picked up. Only you truly know where your talents as a game designer or coder or modeler begins and ends, and the true (and often banal) justifications for it ("i couldn't make this work", or "this was my second best idea because I couldn't implement the first one", or "I just didn't know" or "I didn't know better").

What needs to be done then is just persist in making more games. Let go of that one (unless you can stomach keeping working on one title for a few weeks/months after release, I personally just can't) and concentrate your efforts into making a new one. You'll pick up new tricks along the way.

I'm kinda taking for granted that we work in similar ways (lone dev, doesn't know coding, not a lot of time to put into creation), so I might be wrong on that. But I'm one of those people who believe that there are more lessons in failure than in success, and that a finished project is worth a million times more than the greatest idea in your head.

Keep on going, man. Rot was really interesting. Did I pick up some Kitty Horrorshow vibes in there?

Michael Bonardi4 years ago

You absolutely did! It was really inspired by a handful of games and that includes Anatomy. I definitely agree with what you say about just persisting. I don't even really want to go back to Rot and fix it. I think the best remedy to that situation is just to make another game that improves according to the blemishes and criticisms of the previous one.

We are very similar devs. I'm an interactive media student and I don't have nearly as thorough a knowledge of coding as a CompSci student might, and a lot of what I learn is from the internet (particularly YouTube). I also don't find it too frustrating, though, as it kind of forces me to either be creative with my limitations or to learn on the fly which I enjoy. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, by the way!

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