10 Dos and Don'ts in Game Development

 While you’re sitting on the computer, making the next “hit” game, have you ever thought what you should do, and what you shouldn’t? Well, you can’t simply make games and expect them to be the next hit. Here are five dos and five don’ts in game development that will help your game get more chances of success as an indie developer. 

DOs

Do Take Time Brainstorming

Don’t rush into making a game with ambiguous idea, go to your room or office, sketch up ideas, make game design documents and choose the right game idea to make and then polish it. This process is one of the most important processes because it is the base foundation for your game.  Besides, as an indie developer, you are probably a hobbyist or a professional without a publisher (or else you wouldn’t be indie, duh!), which means you don’t have a deadline by the publisher, you can choose your deadline (if you want to), thus take enough time to come up with your next game

Do Get Help & Assistance

If you ever felt you are not capable of doing a part of the job, don’t be afraid to ask for some help and assistance. You might get stuck at the Graphic Design part (since you are a horrible graphic designer) and if you are selling the game as a product, you must know that your customers won’t like bad graphics.  Thus the best solution to you is either has to ask for help from a friend of yours, hire a freelancer or even better, and make your own indie team, because as they say “One Hand Don’t Clap”.

Do Communicate and Socialize   

 If you thought game development is for computer nerds who sit all day on the computer then you are wrong, definitely wrong (probably bazillion time wrong). It’s more than computers, you must be social. Go to game conferences, make acquaintances and connections, and help other game developers online, join online forums, and discuss game development on different social networks and if possible promote your game there. That will help you reach more people and developers as possible and can be a great way to share and gain experience!

Do Make a Unique Game

Enough with bad clones and fan games, start making your own unique games. People want something different, new and fun. It is not wrong to be inspired from other games but it must be at least different from the game that you were inspired from. For example, you saw that cool new racing game once and you got an idea about it, you liked the gameplay and everything, but what if the race was underwater? What if I could make new awesome karts or cars with total different design? Now you are starting to get more clear idea about it and its time to sketch the idea on a paper!

Do Market Your Games

You made this cool new game with cool new idea that you are sure will be big success.  You got excited and published it to marketplaces and game hosts then you waited for downloads to rise (yup, keep waiting), but you got disappointment that barely couple people have downloaded the game and nearly no one has ever heard about it after the first announcement.  Now, think about it, do you really think that 0$ marketing will work? (Unless you got so lucky and it magically worked). Nonetheless try to make a budget for marketing, because that will help you reach more audience and vast number of interested gamers. Also you can add social plug-in to your game, like tweeting the player’s highs core, posting a Facebook post, sharing your progress in game. 

DONTs

Don’t Over-Use Free Assets

  One of the bad practices you could make is to count on free assets, and I’m not saying about those music soundtracks and sound effects you found online, no, it’s about those art assets that you got with different art style, environment and them, and that you – the “smart” developer - have decided to mash them up into one games. Like if you have a fruit salad without fruits, with some veggies, ketchup, and extra mayo (if that makes sense to you).  So please , next time , try to do hire an artist or join a team, in the worst scenario you can make your own art and hope for the best, at least you can make it fit your game’s environment and art style (unless you are a really bad artist).

Don’t Exaggerate In the Description

 Another bad habit by rookie game developers, they tend to exaggerate in the description. There’s a game that says: “With Beautiful HD Graphics” and what I saw was merely bad graphics and free assets (as usual). Don’t expect to pull up more people with these phrases, be realistic, and be REAL! Stop faking it!  This will lead for customers or player not to trust you; you will be not trust-worthy enough to play your game. Be careful with the words you use.

Don’t Neglect UI

  I always see some really awesome indie games with beautiful graphics, but I usually lose interest, why? Because they don’t care enough to make a good UI, just plain UI that don’t fit the game.  Try to fix your UI and design it too, the UI is also important to the game because it is used for navigation and what not.

Don’t Publish Unpolished Games

  One of the worst things you would do is to publish a lousy game, uncompleted game, or prototypes. I see developers publish bad products on Google play store and they expect people to play their games. Don’t you ever publish a game, unless your game is finished and polished to be decent enough for your customers.  Note that this only apply for mobile games and not for all games.

Don't Neglect Previous Games

Yes , when you create a new game , have you ever though what happened to the previous ones? Some developers might lose fans and players because they  neglect old games and focus on the new ones. I suggest that you should get back to previous games and try to fix bugs and update it regularly because new updates excites the player and makes him want to continue playing. 

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Edit Suggestions : Alex Johansson