Comments on: How to Get More Donuts?

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:17:38 +0000

Ah yes I did read that free bit of the book before. Makes sense but I don’t think that holding down a full-time job gives you enough time do properly do what you are passionate about e.g. making a full-game in your spare time. Also just doing it for fun and assuming that you won’t make the big time (but if you do it’s a bonus) may sound “realistic” and reduce any pressure, but I prefer to have an attitude of success (combined with being determined) because it works for me personally. My $0.02.

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:56:42 +0000

Middle ground means think about profits AND fun, instead of one or the other. It’s doable.

By: Juuso

Juuso — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:02:35 +0000

Yeh, read the post. I believe I commented (or was about to).
By the way, check the first chapter online at gapingvoid.com.

Hmm, middle ground. I don’t see how that would be different from “forget the profits”?

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:49:25 +0000

No I haven’t read it. It sounds good, and I think I understand the philosophy anyway.

You know you are not in a middle ground if you feel unhappy doing the work for a long period of time. Being unhappy for a few days is normal in any project, you just have to push on (did you see my post about getting past the wall?)

By: Juuso

Juuso — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:05:50 +0000

Jake: have you read Ignore everybody?

It resonates with my situation. To some extent at least.

How do you find the middle ground? When do you know that you are not donutizing too much?

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:31:45 +0000

I like donuts. Lots of donuts gives you more choices in life. I would suggest not a) doing 100% what you want and never thinking about donuts, and not b) 100% focusing on donuts, but a nice middle ground. Find something you are passionate about that you can donutize. I KNOW that this works. I even saw a talk about passion vs donuts at Casual Connect in Amsterdam and posted about it on my blog because I thought it was an important message.

By: stewie

stewie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:43:24 +0000

I agree. “Donuts thinking” is just a limit that holds down your creativity and indirectly forces you to copy popular parts from other games into your project. And ones it is released it becomes one of many similar project on the market. Forget about donuts and you’ll be able to create something cool, fresh for the market.
See that paradox? Forget about donuts and they will come.

By: hermitC

hermitC — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:38:32 +0000

I have read “Ignore Everybody” recently. Seem to be good advices with solid rationales. The “keep your day job” chapter matches your donuts. Therefore the donut-voice in your head should not be a bad thing, especially when the income stream of a new game is hard to predict.

I won’t forget the donuts, they are too yummy! But I’m going to turn down the volume of the donut-voice so there’s more concentration on the real aspects of making games. Hope that works?!?