The merits and pitfalls of planning

PLANNING. With coffee.

Do you plan the games you make?

I'd like my answer to that question to be "yes" but, actually, it goes more like this:

"I plan the games I don't make."


I should try to explain that a little. Both of the games I have released - Wall-E and PMQs - went through very little in the way of planning. This is strange because I am an incessant planner of things. I planned this blogpost. My favourite stage in essay writing is the planning stage. I am weird like that; I like to see how all the pieces will fit together before I make the pieces.


So why is it that the games I have most comprehensively planned are the ones I never get round to making? Why are there two great games planned out - to the minutest detail - in my notepad and yet no one can play them? Surely, if a game is all planned out, development is easy and hassle free?

No. Because making a game is all about drive, enthusiasm, motivation. It's as much about that as it is about skill with a graphics tablet, or time management. And over-planning can kill motivation.

My motivation to make games is dependent on excitement and discovery. If I over-plan, if I iron out every loose end, every plot hole, every tweak in the game mechanics there is nothing left for me to discover. I feel like I have made the game already.

"But", you say, "during development there are always hurdles to overcome, tweaks to be made that you can never foresee. Those surely should keep you motivated."

"But", I say back (forgive me), "how long before that happens?" How long do you have to work through your plan, ticking boxes, before an 'interesting snag' is thrown up? And, anyway, if you've over-planned and think you've done enough problem solving already, why would you want to start the development and run into a load more? You've already encountered a load of problems, experimented with the parameters, come up with solutions; you feel like you've made the game already.

Conversely, under-planning can end up being even more frustrating for a project. You may have fun right away, building all those pieces, producing rapid prototypes, having a build finished on day one, but if you don't have a good idea beforehand about how those pieces fit together you will end up building them wrong. Your story will end up disjointed and incoherent, your game mechanics will end up unbalanced.

By the time the project is in its medium stages, fitting the pieces together - joining the dots - won't just be a problem; you may not be able to find the right pieces in the first place. Inevitably, this state of affairs leads to starting the project again from scratch. The prospect of doing this is not always motivational - believe me, I should know. Under-planning, and thus a project never getting finished can be even more frustrating than over-planning, and the project never getting started. Neither is desirable and neither is fun.

The bottom line: one shouldn't have all the fun planning, nor should one assume planning isn't fun and forego it.