[STAR READ]The Developers Attitude, Unless you are aware of this, the knowledge here is guaranteed to help Options

[mudducky]

What can prevent developers accomplish things in RPG Maker is their own attitude towards their own projects. Reading carefully through this tutorial/article will help point out attitudes that can be preventing developers from getting far with their games.

The purpose and aim of this article/tutorial is to provide enough information for the developers to have the right attitude when they develop a game.

If A Project Fails, Make It Succeed.

Since tutorials are usually judged by the first few paragraphs, we'll start with the two most important pointers.

All first projects, whether they are released publicly or are simply test projects, are bond to have some mistakes and failure in them somewhere. This is because at this stage the developer is still learning how the engine works and has not had enough experience to use the engine to the full effectiveness yet.

With so many mistakes reoccurring in first projects and practices, sometime the developer may feel like giving up or losing hope entirely. But instead, the developer would be better off realising they have mistakes and slowly progress improvement upon them.

If the first project is a complete failure, do not give up or lose hope. That is to be expected, instead keep practicing with the engine.

When developing any games, a good goal to have in mind is to be making the game enjoyable for players. That may seem obvious, but not everyone realises or thinks this when they go about creating their games. Staying focused on that mindset will lead new developer's to the right experience and directions overtime.

The rest of the article will be covering and giving insight on different attitudes the developer may have and help you pick the right ones.

The Developers Attitude

Since a developers attitude effects how they'll go about creating a game, the attitude of the developer is probably the most important step to creating a successful game. I hear you saying "hey, it's nothing to do with the game!". Ahh! But realise you as a developer, and all other developers, are the ones that are going to be producing those games. Your attitudes will affect the outcome of your game! A different attitude can effect the quality of what you produce, the knowledge you are willing to research into and the effort you put into your game. For instance if you aren't focused you are likely to become confused and be led to being lazy. If you are focused on getting pride from others the your going to lose all hope on your game when someone points out the flaws in it. If you are focused on enjoying the game you make, without competing, and making it fun for the player, then you are more likely to finish the game you produce and improve upon flaws and errors.

So let's look at wrong attitudes and explain why they are wrong.

Lazy Developers

They get nowhere with their games. When they make a bad game they then usually get negative feedback and in respond to this feedback saying "well... meh. I'm just lazy".

In the rare cases they are making good games, they usually never get completed since the developer is just too lazy.

So, how do you not be a lazy developer? Truthfully, there is no magical way to stop being lazy, you simply have to choose not to be lazy. Lazy developers must decide for themselves to stop being lazy if they really make to create a good game!

In some cases the developer may think they are lazy but in reality they are just confused and lost at what to do, they can't focus their project. If that's the case then it's likely the developer has yet to learn the basic engine curve and are trying to do far too many complex things with the engine before learning the basics. The solution would be to regain focus, then go back to the simple basics and work up from little steps at a time.

Otherwise lazy developers are only wasting their own time reading this tutorial, or any other tutorials. Since they will never make a good game until that lazy attitude is shaken off!

This also wastes the players time when they want to give the lazy developers good feedback, since the lazy developer's completely ignore it.

So, conclusion. You must decide and choose not to be lazy if you wish to complete a game. You will have to learn the basic engine curves and not decide to compete against complex games. Anyone can make a good game over time with experience, but being lazy or unfocused will prevent you making one until that attitude is gone.

Aimless Developers

They usually produce random nonsense. There games usually go around in a confusing circle that the player's can't make sense of. This is because the aimless developers don't have a clue in their own minds how the game should flow from beginning, middle, end and so the players stand no chance either.

The solution to stop being an aimless developer is to write out a plan for your games! Don't start with the game engine, start on paper with pen or a word document or a notepad. Plan the game out. Decide how much focus and depth you want on your story, and write a plot outline for the story. Make sure you know the entire story from start to finish, if you don't have the ending in mind then you can't foreshadow your story and make your story scenes more emotional and powerful. Once the story is sorted you have a lot to think about with gameplay. Make sure your characters will differ enough with their skills and each actor has advantages and disadvantages. Make sure the enemies they encounter will put their skills to use. It's no good having skills if they aren't going to be used, or if those skills become useless once more powerful skills are gained. It's no use just saying "screw this!" and plug it all together. That usually leads to unbalanced gameplay and button mashing, which is not enjoyable for players.

This includes dungeons, towns, your resources/graphics, your chosen music. Basically everything. If you have it all planned out it will make it a lot easier for you to create a game.

Then the player's can also enjoy the games more since you have a clear idea in your head how to present the entire game.

Honestly, a game using the default RTP or a game using a complex amount of scripts should both be able to become a success to some degree if you plan them out carefully.

If the developer refuses to plan, then they will go around in a confusing circles and reach dead-ends themselves!

They'll work aimlessly, and aimlessly work produces random nonsense. This can also lead you to laziness.

As said before, a good goal to have is make a game player's can enjoy. By deciding this, you'll lead yourself to good information and insights that will definitely help you learn the right ideas and produce creativity with your games. Just don't lose hope if you don't quite reach those goals at first!

Perfect Developers

Quite the opposite of an aimlessly developer. They try to do too much. They get so caught up in making their games become perfection, and as a result they never release it. Eventually they find the task so overwhelming they give up entirely. Why is this? This is because the perfect developer is competing too much at making the game perfect. No game is perfect and no game ever will be perfect.

By making the game too perfect the developer will find it hard to stay focused on their goal because it will seem this goal is too much for them to handle.

If you've had a lot of experience with RPG Maker for a while now and wish to make a perfect game, then sure try to make the game as good as you want. But don't be a perfectionist. Don’t even try to make a game outstanding on your first few games, whether you realise those publicly or not, until you learn the right principles to making good games.

Instead of being a perfectionist, beginners are better off reading the game manuals carefully.

Afterwards the quickest way to get a good understanding of events is to follow the "RPG Maker VX School" advice by Aindra here
http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showtopic=5704

Celianna has also made a great tutorial on picking up the variables
http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showtopic=29354

Just spend some time trying to learn the basic core of everything with the engine. When you don't understand a command in the database, use the F1 key to get pop-ups appearing.

This does not just apply to beginners, but anyone who has not yet learnt the basic core. Some advance users have skipped the cores and as a result still have not fully mastered variables yet!

Once you pick up the core, focus on a simple game. One that won't give you a massive headache. You want to try and pick up everything before create a more "epic", or rather, advance game.

The advance users should not spend hours a day focusing on the same map either, that is too perfect and will get you no-where. If you are spending hours on something simple like this, a management chart may help you. Yes quality is better then quantity, but you don't want to have so much quality your game takes years to finish!

It's important to break down what you need to do for the game into simple tasks so you never feel this project you are working on is overwhelming. Remember, most developer's working with tools such as RPG Maker are single-person teams.

Just be careful and limit yourself, not everything has to be fully perfect.

Pride/Foolish Developers.

Out of these, it does not matter which of these three a developer may be, they create the game along the same corrupted principles in their minds. What are those corrupted principles then? "If you give me negative feedback then you don't know anything.", "Only give me feedback if it can boost my ego" and "My game is perfect" is what I'm talking about here. On that note, remember what was said above. No game is ever going to be perfect.

Once the developer with the corrupted attitude reads some advice, they usually start to attack the player. No, not even the actual feedback they received but the actual player!

Why is this? It ultimately comes down to ego. Those developers have connected their self-pride too deeply to their work. And as a result feel if their work is critiques then they personally are being attacked, which is not the case.

You must remove the degree your work is with your self-pride. The two should stay separate to an extent, don't give yourself a high ego if you want to stand a chance improving your games!

It's fine to be connected to your work and become satisfied with what you do, but when someone tells you "this sucks" don't get alarmed and misinterpret what the person is saying. Don't go "WHAT!? You're saying I SUCK! How dare you, you must be a troll bitch!". Not only does that not help you at all, but I doubt you'll ever get useful feedback that can actually help you improve your game ever again.

The developer may be so high with their emotions and how prideful they are about their game, they may even misread what the player has said because they WANT to think the player is some sort of troll and there's nothing wrong with their game at all. Hopefully you see the stupidity in that attitude.

If the developers ego is high then that developer will automatically believe everything done will have to be perfect, who knows why think patterns are like this but that's a false belief developer's should get rid of as soon as they can. Those developer's need to realise that everyone makes mistakes all the time and it is a necessary part of the learning procedure. Not something to slap with or decide that player's thinks you're a complete imbecile.


What is the solution then? The solution is to stop reading our own work from our own pride, instead read it from a PLAYER'S PERSPECTIVE. By doing this we won't fall into out of the many pitfalls that can stop a developer proceeding far with their game.

Be statified with what you produce, have fun and enjoy it, but view it from player's eyes and not from pride.


Arrogant/Stubborn Developers.


These types are complete fools. The developer decides they know far more than anyone else so they don't have to listen to advice. This usually relates to pride and ego, but it shares differences from the type mentioned above.

These developers aren't open to new ideas or creativity at all, anything they do is perfect and that's the end of that.

When conflict arises and two sources give two different views on information, arrogant and stubborn developer become close minded and decide their views are always right, but it's important as a developer to stay open minded. Otherwise new ideas won't ever get experimented with. Some of those ideas could increase the game or give it more potential.

Developers should be open to the new ideas and try them out before dismissing them so quickly. If the developer knows those ideas are wrong, then that should be based on insight, knowledge and experience rather than "it's wrong because I said so".

It is fine to ignore advice sometimes, but make sure you aren't being arrogant and stubborn and you have logical reasons for demising it.

The solution to this is in your own capability of deciding to not be arrogant and stubborn and realise people do know better then yourself on some subjects, and that other ideas can sometimes work. Don't just ignore advice or fight back at it because you think you're right. Wisdom in those cases would be to ASK WHY the player or other source believes what they are saying and then LOOK AT IT FROM THEIR VIEW.



It's ridiculous having one of these four attitudes (Pride/Foolish/Arrogant/Stubborn) and it won't get any game far enough into development to become good either. Anyone with one of those four attitudes should change it as fast as possible.

Player's who are willing to give feedback to these developers will only waste their time, similar to a lazy developer. The developer will always conclude they know better and are right because their ego is too high. The developer doesn't realise the player is trying to help them improve the game, but rather thinks the player is attacking their "masterpiece" (which probably could do with a lot of improvement if many players agree!).

Some developers feel they can't possibly make a mistake and the game must be perfect, that's not true! Games do not have to be 100% perfect to be liked and we will all make mistakes. Develop the game you want to and practice to get better with mistakes, rather than feel attacked or angry if your game is not perfect.

Cut back on ego, start enjoying feedback (even negative feedback which is useful) and improve upon it. Don't take player comments as attacks towards you, open your eyes to view your game from the player's view point instead of deciding everything you thought of is perfect, since the player is only trying to help you improve your game by giving their view points and they are the player's after all! It's not up to developer's to decide the game is good, but rather the player's.

Fearful/Worried/Hopeless Developers

These are quite strange and rare from what I can see, but are worth mentioning here in-case anyone has them.

These developers rarely get the chance to complete their games. After all, without hope a developer will have nothing to motivate him/her to finish the game.

They fear the game will turn out to be a disaster and this creates a lack of hope within the developer which then prevents him/her ever getting a game out.

For those developers who do achieve as much as a thread/demo/first short project, when people post contrastive criticism and actually present it well, their threads usually start to rot away and sometimes the developer vanishes.

Why is this? The developer loses hope.

Let's make this point very clear. It is unlikely a first project will be a huge success from the get-go. Do not ever make the first few games fully perfect. Instead of losing hope or worrying, those developers should keep improving upon the game. Contrastive criticism should be taken to help do this, not lose hope.

Sure, perhaps the game is such a huge failure it really is doomed. In that case the developer simply lacks the right knowledge and experience FOR NOW. The developer CAN GAIN GOOD EXPERIENCE WITH EFFORT AND TIME. The solution is to research further into the subjects and then make a brand new game from scratch following better principles.

If you don't know how to tell a good story, research threads and topics on how to tell a good story. Practice with it. If you don't know how to make the battle system engaging with balance and strategy, then research into how to do this and experiment with it. Don't lose hope and give up as that's what will stop you getting better.

Losing hope or fearing doesn't cut it as a good excuse at all. If one person can make a good game, everyone with the right knowledge and experience can.

This can go back down to pride and ego. The developer feels their player's responces have attacked them, but instead of fighting back at it and being stubborn/foolish they react by getting upset and worried about further critisim, because they still taken it as a personal attack and not seperated it from their pride. The solution has been mentioned in the "Pride/Foolish Developers" section.

Whether it's out of fear, pride or something entirely different, it prevents the developer accomplishing a good game. This also prevents the developer enjoying their own work, so it's worth shaking that off right away.

Be Pleased With Your Games.

Being prideful and being pleased are different. RPG Maker is a hobby, so enjoy your hobby and be pleased with it.

As a developer, the best attitude to go about with your game is to develop it for fun and entertainment!

Take criticism well, then use it to your advantage, along with your own knowledge, to improve upon your games.


Become A Great Developer!

The final point I'd mention is how do you take feedback? Does it discourage you? Encourage you? To be truthful it should encourage you. Decide to take all feedback as encouragement on areas you can improve upon to make the game better and you will become a great developer.

So, now we've mentioned the bad let's mention the good and summarise this!

To become a great developer simply change your ego, get a goal with your project, break it down into simple steps, encourage yourself with your games, have fun making your game, get stratification with what you make rather than what others think, be opened minded and view player's advice from their views, ask why the player gave you the advice they did if you disagree with it don't dismiss anything immediately, make games for yourself as a hobby, think of the player while making the game, and finally, make sure you are making the game you want to make. Don’t make it perfect and don't compete against other games.

By doing this you will already have a higher chance of succeeding and definitely have become a great developer in the sense of what you produce and attitudes.

You'll also be more open and aware to advice given and be able to improve it!

Good luck with your games.

[amerk]

Anything dead for 3 months shouldn't be posted in, unless you are the OP and adding something significant.

I'm assuming you necroposted because you saw July 28 and thought it was recent, but it's actually from 2011. If the OP feels a need to have this revived, he/she can pm any of the global mods, Admins, or Directors.