Kill Your Darling Game Idea
I promise you: it's not good enough
When I used to keep up on the BGG forums, a certain kind of post showed up a few times a year: someone had just made an account and wanted advice about their game idea.
They were usually fired up. The sort of fired up that happens when you’ve stayed up too late with infomercials. You know the pitch: build multiple streams of income, change your life, start now with our futures trading kit. The sparkle comes in hot, before the work has had time to cool it down.
I used to send them to Jamey Stegmaier’s post on the worthlessness of your idea. It is a good post, but it’s not harsh enough.
Daniel Newman delivers the real gut punch in his series on making games. I can sit his industry-tailored advice along side Put Your Dream to the Test where John Maxwell effectively asks: how serious are you? And you cash that answer out in the only currency that matters: time. Both men are pointing to the same thing.
That is where people falter. They haven’t learned there are no quick paths to success. They overvalue ideas. They think they can swoop in with the spark of a great product, and skip the sweat.
But breathing life into a game — and then making it great — is a marathon.
Daniel makes that plain. Dozens of playtests. Sometimes a hundred or more. Lots of breaking. Lots of fixing. Lots of trimming. Lots of sitting in the wreckage of a clever idea and finding out that it could not survive contact with players.
If all you have is one idea, it is not good enough. It’s not on the idea. It’s on you. Almost any idea can fly. You have not yet put in the reps to develop your craft.
If your BGG account is freshly minted, you’re not ready.
If you don’t know the difference between a modern game and the games your grandma played, you’re not ready.
If you’re not playing dozens of board games, you’re not ready.
If you’re thinking of taking it to Kickstarter, you’re not ready.
You have not counted the cost.
You’re. Not. Ready.
My advice is the same as that offered by Daniel and John: count the cost. Are you prepared to run the marathon? Because if you are not seeing it that way, you need to. Start by reading Daniel’s posts. Then ask yourself if you’re ready to put in the reps Daniel has. Because no one is going to make your game if you won’t.