Why Perfectionism is Hindering Your Game Development Progress
In game development, perfectionism can often feel like a necessary trait. As developers, we want our games to be the best they can possibly be, but perfectionism can quickly become a hindrance, preventing us from completing our projects. Instead of striving for perfection, it’s far more beneficial to focus on finishing your game. In this article, we’ll explore how perfectionism holds you back and why completing your game is the key to your growth as a developer.
The Problem with Perfectionism in Game Development
Perfectionism might seem like a positive trait—it drives you to improve and refine—but in reality, it often leads to unnecessary delays and frustration. When you’re constantly tweaking and revising, it’s easy to fall into a loop of never being satisfied with your work. The issue is, perfectionism prevents progress.
In game development, it’s important to know when “good enough” is actually enough. If you get bogged down in minor details, you risk missing the bigger picture. You could spend countless hours making small adjustments that don’t add significant value to the overall experience. This constant pursuit of perfection will drain your energy, hinder your creativity, and, ultimately, prevent you from completing your game.
The Costs of Perfectionism
1. Delays and Burnout
Perfectionism often leads to endless tweaks. Instead of finishing a project and moving on, you’re caught up in refining every little element, leading to delays. Over time, this cycle can burn you out. The more you focus on small, insignificant details, the less motivated you’ll feel to finish, and the further away your game’s completion becomes.
It’s easy to spend too much time on fine-tuning mechanics, graphics, or music. But these small changes won’t always have a major impact on the overall quality of your game. The real value comes from finishing and releasing it, not from endless polishing.
2. Perfectionism Stalls Creativity
When you’re too focused on making every element perfect, it can stifle your creativity. You might second-guess your ideas, doubt your choices, and constantly rework things that could have been done faster and better with a more flexible approach. This mental block prevents you from exploring new ideas, finishing your game, and moving forward.
GameMaker allows you to experiment and prototype quickly, but perfectionism makes you overly cautious about making mistakes. Embrace the idea that making mistakes is part of the learning process, and don’t let the fear of imperfection stop you from progressing.
3. Missed Opportunities for Feedback
The most valuable feedback comes after your game is playable and accessible to others. If you’re stuck in perfectionism, you might delay releasing your game to get that feedback. However, early player input is crucial for improving your game. Waiting for everything to be perfect before showing it off could mean missing out on insights that could help make your game even better.
Releasing an incomplete or less-than-perfect game gives you a foundation to build on. This allows you to gather feedback from players and adjust your game in meaningful ways. If you’re fixated on perfection, you risk never receiving that feedback, which can leave you stuck in an endless cycle of development.
Why Finishing Your Game Matters More Than Perfecting It
1. Gain Experience and Confidence
The real growth happens when you finish a project, not when you endlessly perfect it. Every completed game, even if it’s not flawless, teaches you something. You’ll gain experience with deadlines, feature implementation, and bug fixing. Each game you finish gives you the confidence to tackle bigger and more ambitious projects in the future.
By prioritizing game development completion over perfectionism, you also create a portfolio of completed work that reflects your abilities and progress.
2. The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule is a useful principle in game development. It states that 80% of a game’s value comes from just 20% of its features. Instead of spending your time perfecting minor details that don’t have much impact on the overall experience, focus on the core features that make the game fun and playable. Once you’ve nailed those, it’s time to finish up and move on to the next project.
The key to success is knowing which features will have the most impact on gameplay. Get those right, and the rest can fall into place without endless tweaking. Make sure you’ve set a vision for your game, and it can help eliminate the noise of what’s truly important to your project.
3. Move On to New Projects
Each project you finish, no matter how small or imperfect, brings you closer to becoming a better developer. By completing games, you build your skills and experience. If you keep chasing perfection on a single game, you risk missing out on creating more games and growing as a developer.
Finishing projects instead of getting stuck in perfectionism allows you to practice your craft, learn from each game, and improve for the next one.
How to Overcome Perfectionism and Finish Your Game
1. Set Clear Milestones
Define your goals and break your project into manageable chunks. Set milestones that represent concrete progress, and focus on meeting them, not on achieving perfection. This will help you move forward instead of getting stuck on the small stuff.
2. Embrace the “Good Enough” Mentality
Understand that no game is ever going to be “perfect.” At some point, you have to accept that the game is as good as it’s going to get for now, and it’s time to finish. If you keep waiting for things to be perfect, you’ll never release anything.
3. Get Feedback Early
Don’t wait until your game is “perfect” to share it. Release early, gather feedback, and adjust as you go. This iterative process allows you to make changes based on real player input, which is often more valuable than striving for a perfection that may never come.
4. Learn from Mistakes
Mistakes are an inevitable part of the development process, and they should be viewed as learning opportunities, not failures. If you make mistakes, learn from them, fix them, and keep moving forward. Perfectionism can cause you to freeze up and avoid mistakes, but they’re crucial to improving.
Wrap Up: Let Go of Perfectionism and Finish Your Game
Perfectionism may feel like a virtue, but it’s often a major roadblock in game development. Instead of chasing an unattainable ideal, focus on completing your game. By finishing your projects, you’ll gain valuable experience, learn from mistakes, and build a portfolio that reflects your growth as a developer. The key to success is knowing when to stop refining and start wrapping up—game development completion is what truly matters.
Remember, it’s more important to finish your game than it is to make it perfect. Let go of perfectionism and move forward with pride in your work.
For more essential tips on game development, check out our other posts on best practices.