I realised recently that there are kinds of games that I enjoy making and there are kinds of games I enjoy playing.
For instance, I enjoy making platformers. it’s immediately gratifying to move a character around a 2D space and designing this space to cater for the movement and other mechanics available to the player.
But I don’t really like playing them in my free time. Believe me, I’ve tried. I don’t have too much nostalgia tied to them either as my gaming really kicked off with 3D platformers and Pokemon.
Similarly, I really enjoy the satisfaction of creating puzzles, but solving puzzles? Unless it’s from the New York Times I tend not to gel with them.
The games I do enjoy playing however, things like RPGs, rogue-likes and sim/management games I don’t really enjoy making. There is a huge amount of legwork required to getting something fun up and running.
Maybe I have ADHD.
When I am creating something (be it music, pixel art, a 3D scene or a game) I absolutely need to have a “rich core”. A catchy hook, an interesting mechanic or a cool facial expression in a pixel art character. While I enjoy coding all sorts of fancy systems and behaviours, I get burnt out quite quickly if what I am building isn’t immediately giving me feedback. Perhaps the key is to reshape my thinking into building something fun, and building on top of it rather than going the opposite way.
Maybe some day I will sit down and create some huge sprawling game with lots of interconnecting systems, but it could possibly be a cry for help and perhaps it’s time to send in the doctor.