Overcoming Motivation Pitfalls When Developing Games Independently

Identifying Common Motivation Pitfalls

When embarking on the journey of independently developing a game, it’s easy to lose motivation along the way. There are several common pitfalls that can derail your progress if you don’t actively work to avoid them.

Losing Sight of Your Vision

As an independent game developer, you likely started off with an ambitious idea or creative vision that excited and inspired you. However, as you dive into the weeds of development, it becomes all too easy to lose sight of that original vision.

The countless small tasks and decisions that go into building a game piece by piece have a way of obscuring the big picture. What was once a spark of inspiration fades into the background as you grind through endless lines of code, 3D assets, game mechanics, and other incremental progress.

Without conscious effort to reconnect with your original vision and purpose, you may find your motivation slowly drained away over time without even noticing.

Feeling Overwhelmed by Scope

Independent game development requires wearing many hats and learning skills across many disciplines – from coding and art to game design, sound, marketing, and business management. The massive scope of the endeavor is enough to intimidate even seasoned developers.

For first-timers, the learning curves and vast number of tasks can easily become overwhelming. Taking in the sheer scale of knowledge and work required brings feelings of anxiety, self-doubt, and paralysis.

When looking at such a colossal mountain to climb, suddenly even clearly-defined goals and vision no longer feel inspiring or motivating. In the face of so much uncertainty and struggle, desire gives way to doubt and wheels start to spin.

Doubting Your Skills

Imposter syndrome runs rampant among game developers. Even experienced coders, artists and designers struggle with feeling inadequate or like a fraud.

When trying to pick up many new skills at once or push into unfamiliar territory, it’s easy to lose confidence. Initial enthusiasm morphs into questions like “Do I really have what it takes?” and “What made me think I could do this?”.

Self-doubts often stem from the gap between your taste and current abilities – you know what good game development looks like, but your skills aren’t yet at that level. Rather than excitement at improving, this gap manifests as frustration and eroded motivation.

Losing Interest Over Time

Game development is a marathon with many hurdles, not a spring. In the beginning phases, excitement fuels late nights of furious building.

But as the reality of slow and incremental progress sets in, sustaining interest becomes an uphill battle. Tasks start to feel like tedious chores unworthy of time or energy investment.

The initial rush gives way to boredom since games by nature are meant to entertain. Working solo without accountability or community can exacerbate waning enthusiasm over long timeframes.

Staying Driven Through the Tough Times

Successfully developing an indie game often comes down to perseverance – the ability to stay driven through the inevitable tough times when motivation falters. How is it possible to sustain passion and momentum when besieged on all sides by reasons to quit?

Reconnect With Your Passion

During periods when motivation runs dry, consciously reconnect with the original passion that kicked off the journey. Review old concept sketches, design documents, trailers, and emails from the early honeymoon phase.

Read through old journal entries detailing exciting ideas, re-watch inspirational talks, or play re-energizing games. Reconnecting with your passion re-ignites that inner spark to power through moments of friction.

Focus on Smaller Milestones

When looking at the entire looming mountain ahead, motivation disappears. The climb seems impossible. Instead of getting overwhelmed by the big picture, narrowly focus energy on the next immediate milestone.

Give yourself credit for incremental wins while avoiding distraction by future obstacles still unseen. Celebrate small steps forward, no matter how trivial they seem in the grand scheme of things.

Seek Community and Collaboration

Creating games can feel isolating, especially when tackling every discipline independently. Seek out communities of fellow indie developers to exchange ideas, get help solving problems, find team members, or just commiserate.

Surrounding yourself with supportive people going through similar struggles helps recharge motivation batteries. Feelings of camaraderie rekindle momentum.

Take Breaks to Recharge

Sitting down to work while uninspired or emotionally drained rarely bears fruit. Motivation is a finite resource needing periodic recharge by taking time off.

Allow yourself to take guilt-free breaks from development for activities that spark joy and boost your mood. Put effort toward other hobbies, friends/family, health, or learning.

Taking mental breathers gives clarity to know which battles are worth fighting. Mini-sabbaticals prevent burnout so you can come back re-energized.

Best Practices for Sustaining Motivation

Avoiding common demotivation pitfalls is only half the battle. Proactively building resilience against these pitfalls equips you to go the distance. What daily habits and best practices help transform inspiration into a finished product?

Define Your Minimum Viable Product

Rather than fixate on the full scope of the perfect dream scenario, ruthlessly cut down features to define the simplest possible releasable product. This core essence represents the absolute minimum required to test your biggest assumptions.

By focusing all effort on reaching this MVP as soon as possible, you front-load the most dramatic learning, validation, and motivating rewards. Momentum skyrockets early on.

Schedule Regular Playtesting

Nothing sparks renewed motivation like watching fresh eyes light up while interacting with something you built. Allocate time every few weeks to put unfinished builds in players’ hands for feedback.

Observing reactions first-hand reinvigorates momentum by validating (or invalidating) design direction. Playtesting anchors developers in reality, not just their own biased visions.

Celebrate Small Wins

Take time to actively recognize and celebrate progress, even if seemingly insignificant. Making note of small but concrete advances serves to counter the illusion of stagnation during long slogs.

Intentionally highlight accomplishments like finishing a minor feature, fixing old bugs, upgrading tools, or having a breakthrough idea. Internalize evidence of forward movement to stay encouraged.

Maintain a Roadmap, Adjust as Needed

Plot major milestones out on a timeline to structure big goals into digestible chunks. As work progresses, continually re-assess and adjust granular next actions to align reality with the roadmap.

Balance optimism of scope with realism of progress. Maintaining an evolving plan for measurable growth prevents feeling lost while allowing flexibility to adapt.

Example Code for Tracking Progress

Here is some simple code for incrementally tracking progress by counting milestones met:

/* Simple progress tracking */  

int milestonesReached = 0;

void checkMilestone() {
  if (milestoneComplete) {
    milestonesReached++;
    console.log("Milestone reached!");  
  } 
}

Hooking this up to gameplay events, art asset completion, feature launches, or other signals allows tangible measurement of advancement beyond just effort and hours.

Overcoming Self-Doubt and Analysis Paralysis

Battling imposter syndrome and lack of confidence in one’s skills can severely hamper sustained motivation. Similarly, failing to act due to over-analysis induces frustration from lack of visible progress.

How can indie developers overcome these self-imposed barriers to reliably make forward movement?

Gather Feedback Early and Often

Rather than hiding work away out of fear of judgement, seek objective feedback as early in the process as possible. Early course correcting vastly reduces costly rework down the line.

Frequent external input punctures false assumptions, validates solid foundations to build upon, and uncovers blindspots before they derail progress.

Learn by Doing – Don’t Wait for Perfection

Perfectly executing a plan is less important than adjusting based on evidence. Release the need to cross every t and dot every i before allowing anyone to peek behind the curtain.

Through rapid iterations, you gain clarity. Ship half-baked experiments quickly to gather the data needed to determine next best actions. Repeat until momentum builds.

Compare Only to Your Past Self

Looking sideways at peers breeds jealousy and resentment which poison motivation from the inside. The only accurate benchmark measures how far you’ve come rather than how far is left to go.

Celebrate your own growth by qualitatively and quantitatively assessing improvement over time. Your trajectory is all that matters.

Staying Resilient Through Setbacks

Inevitably in game development, you will encounter major stumbling blocks that halt forward progress. Hits to motivation come in all shapes and sizes – deal-breaking game crashes, scope creeping out of control, running out of cash, losing team members, etc.

How do you build resilience to bounce back from these common demotivators?

View Failures as Lessons, Not Weaknesses

Rather than interpret failures personally as shortcomings or confirmation you should quit, intentionally reframe them through a growth mindset lens.

Setbacks contain the seeds of your greatest breakthroughs – feedback to self-correct course. Each failure brings you exponentially closer to success by illuminating what doesn’t work.

Focus On What You Can Control

In the face overwhelming challenges, redirect attention exclusively on small actions you have agency over in this moment. Outcomes are ultimately outside your control.

Self-motivation thrives when driven by intrinsic values rather external validation. Celebrate acting with authenticity rather than chasing what may be fleeting or impossible.

Be Patient and Keep Perspective

Have compassion for the natural ups and downs all ambitious endeavors encounter en route to fruition. Success is never linear – forward movement resembles a sine wave.

When motivation dips or adversity strikes, zoom out to recall why you started. These growing pains too shall pass. Maintain equilibrium whatever comes.

Tips for Making Progress Day by Day

Game development is ultimately about consistency – inching ahead little by little. Motivation often comes down to building sustainable systems facilitating regular forward momentum.

What habits encourage consistent progress in the absence of acute excitement?

Start Small – Commit to X Mins Per Day

On days where motivation lags, the friction of getting started appears insurmountable. Eliminate decision paralysis by pre-committing to an arbitrarily short time box.

Promise yourself “I’ll work on my game for just 30 mins” to lower the activation energy barrier. More often than not, you’ll get engrossed well beyond the original commitment.

Organize Tasks and Track Progress

Break larger goals down into tiny, concrete next actions capturing specific verbs. Track these incremental changes either via task list, progress bars, Kanban boards, or whatever format works for your brain.

Checking small yet unsatisfying tasks off a list provides little hits of dopamine while documenting a history of forward movement over time.

Reward Yourself After Difficult Tasks

Use the classic “carrot and stick” approach by linking completion of unpleasant or complex tasks with enjoyable rewards.

After pushing through a particularly stubborn challenge, deliberately celebrate in whatever self-indulgent way restores motivation fastest – video games, tasty treats, YouTube, etc.

The Motivation Game Loop

When designing engaging games, the mechanic of balancing costs for incremental rewards kicks the brain’s innate motivation system into high gear. The same dopamine loop can be hacked for productivity.

Here is some pseudo-code modeled after a standard gameplay loop:

// Basic gameplay loop   

while (motivated && makingProgress) {
  doWork();  
  collectRewards();   
}

This endless loop continues as long as intrinsic passion remains and extrinsic positive reinforcement comes fast enough to prevent boredom. The instant either dries up, the loop terminates along with motivation.

By consciously engineering an environment matching this template, developers can trick themselves into sustaining effort long after initial inspiration fades. Stack the deck so playing the game remains gratifying.