Project Issues

As the project winds to a close, I’m going to take a look back at the issues I had during the design and production.

• I was unsure of what style of game I wanted to make;

This first one has haunted me throughout the entire project. Right from the start, although I knew that I wanted to create a JRPG, I didn’t know anything else about it. What was it going to look like? What was I going to use? These were things I really needed to know, and I didn’t really have much of an idea of any of it.

• I was unsure of what my story was going to be;

This one has also been a total pain to contend with for the entire project. Normally, I’m quite good at coming up with story ideas, but right when I needed them, my mind went blank. It took me several weeks to come up with something, by which time I needed to be in production. That threw off my original plan more than anything else.

• I wasn’t sure what gameplay elements I wanted to use;

This one feeds off of the story issues, as without the story, how could I plan for what features I wanted to add? Often, the story and the gameplay go hand-in-hand, so without one, the other tends to suffer. This took way too much time to sort out, which cost me in the long run.

• I couldn’t visit real-world locations;

This one killed off my original project plan. Due to time and money constraints, I couldn’t visit any of the historical locations that I wanted to visit in order to draw inspiration from them. This led to the original plan being scrapped, as it hinged on this part of pre-production.

• I couldn’t work consistently;

Now I know everyone has good days and bad days, but during the project (for mostly personal reasons), I had way too many bad days. This had a massive knock-on effect on my work and concentration. I just didn’t feel motivated enough to do anything, but at the same time, I wanted to do the project. It was a bit of a catch-22, and it drove me insane! Towards the end of the project, the personal issues that were causing me hassle were resolved, but by then, the damage had been done.

• I was completely disorganised;

For over half of the project, I was in complete disarray. I kept drifting around from one thing to the next, with very limited direction. After a while, I managed to get my act together, but it did cause some damage to my production schedule.