When you lose that edgy feeling...

[Dualnames]

What do you do, when you lose that feeling that tickles you when you start working on a game?

What do you do, when all the fun seems to be lost in your project?

What happens when you keep improving your game but it never reaches good enough for you?

I'm drawing a complete blank here. From one point, I don't want to have this work lay to waste (mostly for people working on their parts), but secondly, I feel like I 'll never be able to release it, and it will end up as a huge joke..

EDIT: It takes one thought to charge up again!(Back on track)

[Igor Hardy]

I'm still working to finish my first full game (well there was also a very silly one years ago) so this might be a bit different from someone who worked on many, but I'm driven by the desire to finish it no matter what. The game's style is crazy enough to allow me to compromise the quality in some aspects and still move forward.

The only moments when the fun seems to be lost come when life kicks in and says "why are you wasting your time with this, you should be doing entirely different things", but usually I manage to ignore it.

[Jim Reed]

When I get that feeling, I either go sleep on it, or go do something completly different to charge up my 'batteries'.

Offcourse, if that "completly different" thing is some mind numbing and tedious work, I kinda get the feeling that making a game is really a creative job as opposed to the tedious job I'm working at the time.

Or you can go drinking 'till dawn =D

Btw, don't care what other people say. How can they appriciate the amount of love and sweat you poured into this itsy-bitsy =D game you're making?

Cheer up!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I typically get REALLY interested in another idea and start working on it, then come back to the older stuff when I feel motivated.  I made Limey Lizard initially as a test to make a game I could finish in a set time to restore some of my waning confidence from a few of my lingering projects.

[Matti]

The good thing is that I have two major projects and when I temporarily lose interest in one (which often happens) then I switch to the other. Sometimes I get tired of both and then I either take a break from AGS or experiment around and try something new (like my current little project TESLA).

I usually come back to my projects with certain definite issues I want to accomplish and afterwards I'm happy about the progress I made. Then I eagerly anticipate the finished product which is a reason for not losing interest in a long run, but just temporarily. And these pauses help me getting new ideas and energy, so they aren't necessarily a waste of time (regarding the game).

[TerranRich]

EDIT: It takes one thought to charge up again!(Back on track)

What thought was that? I'm starting to get that feeling too, and need to get back on track. What helped you, Dual?

[ThreeOhFour]

I agree with ProgZ's method.

[abstauber]

My strategy is: Don't start side projects

When a game becomes "work", escaping to new projects is indeed very temping. But in my opinion, that only moves the real problems away.

Fortunately creating an adventure includes so many things, that there's something fun to do. It's also helping, if your not working chronologically. So if you're stuck, just start a different chapter

[Ghost]

Side projects are useful. I should know... A side project can bring some new ideas, it can be a dump for ideas you couldn`t fit into a main project, and it is a fresh start that really can get them creative juices back into flow.

If I feel a long project (cough*DITA*cough) losing the adrenalin, I mostly try to shift focus but stay in the project. If I feel the dialogues getting too repetitive or dull, I insert a week of "do a few animations you always wanted to have", and if I feel the puzzles are getting tiresome, I toss smaller steps into a complicated one... and so on, and so on. There are many ways to make yourself feel more energetic about a game. Dig out your documentation and insert a new little quirk to a character. Or REVERSE two characters and see if this would make a more interesting bit of plot.

So to extend on absauber`s method, my strategy is: Never THROW AWAY a side project, or even better, never throw away anything. It`s totally okay to have three dozen backup folders with enough subfolders to make a decent Escher painting.

[TheJBurger]

I know this is going to sound horrible, but sometimes it's better to let a sinking ship die than try dozens of times to salvage it--the sinking ship being your AGS love child.

I'm not suggesting you stop working on your game, but in one of my cases, it turned out to be the best thing for me. In the period before 2006, I was enslaved to finishing my then 3-4 year long project (sad, I know) until I finally realized I had been revamping it so many times that it was never going to reach the standard of quality I wanted. This could have been prevented by not being so ambitious, but I think most people are overambitious on their first tries anyway.

So, after working for so many years on my old game project, I dropped it and decided to concentrate my energy on finishing a small and hopefully different adventure game. About 4-6 months later, the result was "La Croix Pan" and I was pretty happy with it.

Also, side-projects do help, as long as they don't get out of hand. OROW is an excellent way to get your mind off your current troubles and get some creative juices flowing in an alternative way.

[Dave Gilbert]

When you're jazzed and excited about working on a project, it's easy to get motivated.  Hours zip by in a heartbeat.  It's a rush.  Heck, it's fun.  But once you lose that motivation and excitement, it becomes work.  And work always sucks.

You can give up and wait for motivation to come back, but you run the risk of losing the project forever.  Just sit down and start working on it.  Yeah, it might be a slog but you'll be surprised how often you suddenly perk up and get interested again in what you are doing.  And if you don't, then at least you can say you made a bit of progress that day.

I wouldn't get in the habit of ditching projects, especially one you invested so much time and effort in.  If you bail on one project, you'll think it's OK to bail on another.  So don't start now.

[Stacy Davidson]

I make a movie.  That's usually such a horrible, gut-wrenching experience that I come back to games really excited to be doing anything BUT making movies.  I've always found it works to jump back and forth between two very different creative outlets.  Rob Zombie uses music and movies, he claims he escapes from one to the other.  Like, he churns out some catchy disco/metal tunes that sounds just like his first twelve albums, and then he jumps over to horribly massacre the craft of film.

Maybe that's a bad example.

Anyway, I agree with Dave too, finishing your work is paramount.  Anyone can start a project, but a real designer/director *has* to finish the work, no matter how tough it gets.  You just have to.  Otherwise, it's just a hobby.

-s

[OneDollar]

Just sit down and start working on it.

Agreed. When I lose motivation for a game I usually find the hardest thing to do is to start working on it. Weeks go by, and you just can't face loading it up and doing some more. Then if I force myself to just 'do a little bit' I find myself putting in several hours.

I also think it's important to recognise what your project is from the start, and how people are going to react to it. If it's some hugely epic and impressive game full of loads of new ideas, then yes it's going to take time. If its another generic adventure game then there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to know that from the start otherwise you'll start seeing all the clichés and get demotivated.

Remember (or play, if you've made some of it) the best bit of the game and think how great it is and how it's going to blow every one away. Show demos to friends, or tell them your ideas. If you can get someone else excited about your game then it will help to get you excited as well. If you know you've got an audience, you've got people you're going to disappoint if you scrap the game. Draw up a roadmap of the project showing what you need to do to finish it, then check off all the things you've already done. If it looks big and scary, pick something small and quick and just do that.

Of course this all applies if you've already invested a large amount of time into the project and completed a significant amount. If you've lost the buzz after one room, then perhaps the idea isn't all that great...

[Erenoth]

Whenever I get that feeling, Ill just say i havent started on any games yet but i do plan to, ive printed out anything i could find about creating and i keep it on my desk for whenever i have time, but back on subject, im concentrating on writing a novel, and whenever i hit that feeling like, Oh gawd i hate this novel im never going to finish it its never going to be good. I just buckle down get a cup of coffee and force myself to just write keep on story and let whatever comes out. Im always suprised at the moments where i felt the worst and hated writing the most is when i was able to write the best parts of my novel, I often stop and read through it checking for errors and what not and the most engrossing parts of my novel where written when i just felt like crap and never wanted to continue it.

I also put together a few web pages and the days when it hit me the hardest seem to be when i did some of my best work on them.

Ive noticed the same thing for video production ive made a few movies and the bad days seem to put out the best of my editing, I do have one of my videos online i think its somwhere on myspace, entitled Women in black, i tried Youtube but it gave me shit all the way.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=10877302&searchid=44c662a5-9cf3-4c60-8a61-e2fa582fc85c

well there it is lol, Editing that video was hell for me but i think it turned out really good

[miguel]

Everytime I create a new NPC I have to make them walking chracters! I hate myself for it!
I've now reached 698 sprites with 86 views and it's just overwhelming for me as I'm piled with work in my life!
Plus a baby and two teenagers! Arghhh!
Still I keep coming for it and do some backgrounds or sprites between debating religion at the forums

[Stupot]

Sometimes, as much as I love adventures, and as much as I'd love to design my own one, I just have to admit to myself that I probably haven't quite got the passion* needed to get stuck into the task.  I still intend to finish the game I've started making, because I think it will be good.  But progress is slow, and it always will be, because if I'm honest, it's never going to be my main priority.

(*Not to mention the skills)

[Ethan D]

I've learned that waiting for motivation to come back doesn't work.  What I do now is once I lose that feeling I wait for a day, if I don't get interested again all by myself then I go to starbucks and work.  Usually I get back into the project pretty quickly, but if I don't I keep working anyway.

[Wesray]

Forcing myself to sit down and start working on it seems to help best. Ahem... for my thesis that is.

Seeing as working on my game still makes me giddy and I didn't lose my motivation yet, I can only guess that I'll follow the same strategy as above. Due to my low art skills and the big number of required graphics I decided to go with a good-enough-strategy for my backgrounds and sprites. The strengths of my game should lie in other aspects than the graphics anyways. So hopefully I'll be able to avoid getting caught in the neverending polishing-loop.

[Dualnames]

Weird thing is I do this when I lose that edygy feeling.. I wait for a PM. Really. It works. At least it has, the last two times I got one. It may seem weird, but I get motivated by the slightest non-important word of a 10000 million page document. (if that makes any sense).

[tzachs]

Hmmm, usually when I lose motivation, I just post a message about it in the forum and ask people what to do when I lose motivation... 

Seriously now, I see two reasons for losing motivation during a project:
1. You have just got to that "phase" of having to do boring and tedious work (did somebody say walk-cycles?). In this case I totally agree with what been said about just sitting down and doing some work. Even if the work you do is a little thing, you still move the project forwards...
2. You did a large amount of work, and looking back at what you've done so far you seem to think it's not up to the standards you set out for yourself. This is, for me at least, a much harder issue to deal with. The first thing I do in this case, is putting the project away for some time (say, two weeks or so). After a small time apart from the project I can regain some objectivity that I may have lost while working very closely on the project (like when you are dating the same girl for a large amount of time-

Spoiler

you might find her less attractive...

[close]

). If at this point I still think the project is not up to my initial standards, I try to analyze it and see if there is a certain part of the game that is worse than the others, maybe it's the animations, or a certain cut-scene, or something weird in the plot... If there is a specific thing, then either redo it if you think you can live up to your standards, or get help if you feel you are not capable. If there is no specific thing, and you simply think the project as a whole is not good enough, there is only one thing left to do: lower your standards (for this specific project) and finish it. You don't have to publish it if you don't want the humiliation but at least finish it for your own sake, because if you don't, it can lead to a chain of events of leaving out unfinished projects, which will eventually bring the world to its end.