What kicks you in your AGass ?

[Oliwerko]

Hiya all.

Sometimes, I experience an unpleasant feeling. I am not motivated to work on my game. I am doing anything else, and I just can't kick myself to work on it. I want to work on it, but I just can't from unknown reason. It's hard to explain. I want to ask you what do you do when you experience something like this (if ever).

What do you do to motivate yourself?

Thx in advance

[Buckethead]

I haven't made many games (yet) so I can't really awnser this but I have made several maps for UT.

So here is what I do to keep the motivation up:

- First I make a good planning of what I want to do. This is really handy if you get stuck on something you can just leave it for later and go on with something else.

- If I'm bored of the project but still feel like working on it I usually go do something fun like watch tv, play a game etc. But while I'm doing that I try to think of new things/ideas for my game (map).

- This may sound a little stupid but I often have a note bloc next to my bed. I find that the best ideas come up when you are trying to get some sleep.

The main thing is just to have alot of ideas for you game. If there are some good ones between them you are bound to get excited to try them out.

[MrColossal]

When this question pops up people usually write "go for a walk, listen to classical music [for some reason it's always classical], read a book, watch a movie, etc" So the answer is always "Do something else"

However let's examine why you've lost motivation and not exactly how to get it back. When I lost motivation on Time Out it wasn't because I hadn't taken enough walks while reading a book on classical music in the movies, it was because I was stuck in the story. I had come to a part that I never really wrote fully and hoped that by the time I got there I'd have figured it out. The time came, I hadn't figured it out, I stalled, out of ideas. Then I started doubting the entire project "This is basically a series of cutscenes with 6 puzzles scattered in between!" Then I started trying to think of a way to really cram some good puzzles into the ending of Time Out and stalled on trying to cram puzzles into it.

I lost motivation on Spellbound because 1.) the month was over and MAGS games are month long dev cycles. 2.) I didn't fully write out 2 puzzles and got stuck trying to come up with something.

I lost motivation on a comic I was drawing years ago because I decided to just come up with the story on the fly as I drew pages. I had a beginning and an end and I just made up the middle. The middle began to suck and I got stuck trying to think of a way to bring it all together and make it cool again. Also, I was bored drawing the beginning of the comic. All the exposition and getting to know characters, shit man I just wanted to draw the fight scene and the main character breaking the sound barrier in his modified experimental plane! I decided the only way to do that would be to start over and thus, I canceled the comic. 8 pages of comics tossed because, eh.

My newest game: I have gone through high and low productivity periods. Some weeks I crank out backgrounds and I'm so productive it's like I'm getting paid to do it. Some weeks I just can't look at it and work on my new comic instead. How I overcome this when I realize that it's gotten silly and I haven't worked on my game in a while is I work on a later part in the game. Usually that means paint a new background from a part of the game I'm not ready to implement yet. I stop thinking about the game in it's current state and start thinking about the exciting future possibilities of the game. I get excited [hopefully] and keep working. I also just THINK about the game. Think about the exciting parts that will hopefully wow people. I think about parts I haven't fully fleshed out yet and how to make them awesome.

So I guess my 2 take-a-ways from this post would be:

For me the biggest killer to a project is not having planned the whole thing out. "And then somehow he makes it to the little village" is a killer statement in a story outline for me. I need to know how he made it to the village so I'm not sitting there looking at the backgrounds I have and trying to shoe-horn in a puzzle into current art without having to draw more. That won't make anyone happy!

The second biggest is just growing bored with the project. It happens very easily for me because I can be sitting here working on my game when I get an idea for a new game and my brain won't let me stop thinking about it. Now I'm all excited about this new game and want to make that, not finish painting this stupid forest background with it's 300 trees and a flowing river, shit that's boring! So teleport production ahead a weeks and work on the final act of the game. It's a fresh new area you haven't thought of in a while because you've been stuck in the beginning for weeks just trying to get these trees to look good!

[Emerald]

I agree with you, Mista, but I also... don't.

You're right in that 'doing something else' isn't always going to solve all your writer's block problems.
But I don't know if 'planning out everything' is that great a solution either.

I'm quite the opposite to you, really. I need that mystery of "how is he going to get to the village?"
Knowing everything that happens just ruins it for me. I write for myself, really, and writing into detailed outlines is like noting down exactly what happens in a movie that you've already seen. As opposed to noting down what happens in a movie as you're watching it for the first time.


The biggest thing that kills a project for me is after I plan out the whole thing, or most of it it, I get bored. I enjoy the creative process so much, that when it's over, I just want to start it over again and not actually write the story I've come up with. I try to avoid thinking about what's going to happen later, and how it's going to end, but it's like Stephen King says - stories are already there, you just have to dig them up properly. My problem is that once I get excited, I can't help but shovel the crap out of it, and the whole thing ends up crumbling...

[nihilyst]

I usually suffer from blocks and lacking motivation here at my parent's. I don't have internet in my own flat, and -- guess what -- I'm way more productive and motivated there.

My advice: Turn off your internet connection for a few days. Take walks. Make meals. Get fat. That really helps me.

I'm also the "I'm more productive, if I don't know how my story will go on" type of person. But while that might work in literature (and even there it can ruin the consistency of the story), it's hard in game-making. I do encounter the same problems there.

[InCreator]

I second nihilyst. During summer, when I'm at my country house or simply when my machine is broken, all I do is keep thinking about what all kind of cool stuff I would create if I'd only get to my PC. Every object I see, I imagine if I could model it, every news bit I hear, I think if it would make a good story, and so on.

Sadly, returning to a PC ends with hardcore gaming for few nights and long brain blockage again.

[Oliwerko]

I second nihilyst. During summer, when I'm at my country house or simply when my machine is broken, all I do is keep thinking about what all kind of cool stuff I would create if I'd only get to my PC. Every object I see, I imagine if I could model it, every news bit I hear, I think if it would make a good story, and so on.

Sadly, returning to a PC ends with hardcore gaming for few nights and long brain blockage again.

This is exactly my case. Actually, I am motivated when I am bored. It's weird. I remember that this summer I've had absolutely nothing to do, and I was working like hell on the game. Then, I have bought a new PC, so new games I wanted to try out, new video software, etc etc. The "AGS" folder on my drive has some sad old dates now.

[TheJBurger]

However let's examine why you've lost motivation and not exactly how to get it back. When I lost motivation on Time Out it wasn't because I hadn't taken enough walks while reading a book on classical music in the movies, it was because I was stuck in the story. I had come to a part that I never really wrote fully and hoped that by the time I got there I'd have figured it out. The time came, I hadn't figured it out, I stalled, out of ideas. Then I started doubting the entire project "This is basically a series of cutscenes with 6 puzzles scattered in between!" Then I started trying to think of a way to really cram some good puzzles into the ending of Time Out and stalled on trying to cram puzzles into it.

You just summed up my entire experience of trying to create my first full-length game in AGS (an experience I do not want to revisit!).

Currently, I really have to agree with the planning out statement. I got to a part in my new game where I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do, but now that I was there, I really had no clue how to do it or what route to take, so then I was stuck doing nothing as I hoped my brain came up with something soon.
When that happened, I just went on to another part in the game where I knew what I wanted to do and how to do it, and I worked on that instead.

[R4L]

I suffer from blocks as well. I have at least 20 uncompleted projects.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Every month or two a thread almost identical to this pops up, with someone wondering how people maintain productivity in the face of long development times, etc.  My answer is always the same:

I return to the games that inspired me to want to design games in the first place to get myself motivated again.  If there are a few games that really sparked your interest, return to them and try to recapture what it was about them that made you like them so much -- and then try and implement some of those concepts into your own design.

[Danruto]

Doing arbitrary compliance checks on EA Games software at the age of 26 makes me want to leap from the highest building and head butt the pavement. Recently I found AGS and being an utter n00b at scripting accomplishing even the smallest victories make me feel like Rocky.

My advice find an example of human life you DON'T want to turn into and every time you feel unmotivated and just say to yourself "Every second I sit here doing nothing constructive I turn bit by bit into that person". Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but it's worked for me in my laziest moments.

[2ma2]

As long as you are experimenting, game creation is joyous wonder. But when routine strikes and the development is an endless supply of tasks needing to be done - you know exactly how to do it and there's no creative challenge - interest wither and the project dies. I made games as long as I tried to abuse the system as much as possible. Just making a generic stereotype adventure game for the third time was simply.. worth nothing. I long to make games again, but the sheer workload scares me. I try to abuse the system once again, but fail.

Very subjective views on the matter, but perhaps someone will recognize my dilemma.