Comments on: How Torturing Yourself Can Help Get More Development Done

By: Juuso

Juuso — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:47:36 +0000

Shadhex: November 10th. Good luck with it!

By: shadhex

shadhex — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:46:48 +0000

I imposed a deadline limit on my game for November 10th. Whatever happen, we absolutely need to finish our game by that date. After that, I’m calling in sick for a week to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2….or whatever they are calling it now :)

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:17:35 +0000

@Juuso: Glad to help

@Roman: I guess the important thing is to make sure that during the working day (8-10 regular hours) you are as productive as possible, so no games, forums, procrastinating, and then set aside some time for cool stuff in the evening. However, when I’ve been working on something I really love, I often want to carry on working on it. For example the other night I turned off Shadow Complex on my 360, to go and plan the map screen for my current game, this was at 12:30am.

By: Roman Budzowski

Roman Budzowski — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:21:19 +0000

I thought that this strategy is good. I banned all “nice” stuff until I achieve some goals and it turned out to not work. Why? I was just too tired of working and without good relaxation I couldn’t focus on coding. So I started to play again, mostly evenings, and work regular hours.

By: Juuso

Juuso — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:18:20 +0000

@Jake: Yeh, I know I know. I’m just not totally sure if others know ;)

You’ve always given excellent feedback. With Dead Wake – you brought a hurricane to me, and it was all helpful. What you said yesterday (jokingly), indeed contained a seed of truth in it, and that helped me to reach to be even more open.

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:54:31 +0000

@Juuso: Just to be clear, my comment was just a friendly joke that I made because I could see a pattern. I do the same on my blog; sometimes write about what I do but shouldn’t, and what I do that works, plus what I see others do that they shouldn’t, and what others do that does work. Basically blogging about your own journey is always useful to other people if you are willing to observe yourself carefully and be (constructively) self-critical – just as I see you do a lot, so well done :)

By: Juuso

Juuso — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:09:56 +0000

@Oliver: yeh, I don’t play games… I just “research” them.

In fact…. when I was doing my thesis at the university, I almost started writing “communities/social aspects in online games”… which would be equal of “I play Battle For Middle Earth all day & night long :D”. Too bad couldn’t find a good (economic) angle on that… so I ended up doing my thesis about digital distribution channels. (Well, I did play BFME all days anyway :P)

By: Juuso

Juuso — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:07:39 +0000

@Jake: Heh, no shame in doing that! (And yeh, there's a bit of element of truth of course) I (hopefully usually) say when I'm being a bad example or if have messed up things/or I'm m wrong (never happened of course)/act as an warning example or simply got nothing done (this blog post actually came to my mind as an example). I keep the doors pretty open here... ... and keep on writing about stuff I've done, or I'm doing or I don't do or what others did, or others are doing or others not doing. :) Juuso P.S. I don't read blogs for getting "daily fix" (I spend that time writing mine... ;) - I've just spotted that there's many people who visit this site instantly after getting Twitter notification about a new blog post... (I've done loads of "getting my daily forum/blog/whatnot fix" in the past - it's minimal nowadays - close to zero. Honestly :)) P.P.S. I'm a casual hardcore gamer - but admit I have played a bit more in the last few weeks. Steam is saying I've played Zombie Panic "5.7 hrs past 2 weeks" (it's the only game I play) - I thought I might as well drop playing altogether until my game's next milestone is finished ;)

By: Sargon

Sargon — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:32:42 +0000

Hmm, I think the problem might be solved naturally for gamedevelopers.
When you develope games you become more judgmental of games, so its more difficult to find a game that satisfies you.
For instance, its much more difficult for a 3D game to impress my visually than it used to be.

By: Scurvy Lobster

Scurvy Lobster — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:16:18 +0000

My (hobby) game development is at a complete halt due to the cool minis that came with the recently released Space Hulk board game. They “need” to be painted and it takes a load of time.

I promise that I will continue development soon. I really do :)