I have a really lousy track record, but it's getting better.

With the ironic fact that I now have two simultaneous projects behind deadline put aside for the moment, I wanted to talk about the steps needed to keep up with development of a project and how to see things through.

I have now completed two big roleplaying games (50+ pages) solo (barring, of course, playtesters and external feedback), and a couple more projects of similar size that were homebrew supplements for someone else's work.

I've also started and failed to complete at least that many projects, but let's not be pessimistic.

What helps get games through the development process?

Accountability, organization, and will are what I credit as the top three things.

Accountability

The first and foremost thing you need is accountability to yourself and to your audience. This isn't something that you can just work on over-day, and it's something that I often struggled on.

There are a number of sites where you can look at tips for writers, or you can use something like Trello that has less direct feedback. I've mentioned before that I've been using Habitica, which does a good job for me of combining the daily organizer and the long-term tasks that I have to complete as a designer.

The important thing is to hold yourself accountable and stick with deadlines. There's a difference between accountability and guilt, however, and you need to recognize your limits.

But if you don't set goals, you will fail.

One thing I used to do, back when I worked mainly on small projects, was tell myself that I would publish one thing a year by the time my birthday rolled around.

That is something that was a very feasible goal when my main output was 24-72 hour games, but as I got more and more complex my goals needed to evolve.

With my first big game, Street Rats (semi-doomed to obscurity, thank goodness), I found that one of the things that kept me going was wanting to publish the game more or less around the time I was graduating from college, and also keeping up with regular play-testing.

Early and frequent playtesting is a great way to stay up on a project. It's not a great indicator (Hammercalled had about four months of rewriting going on between its first playtest and its current state during which point I was barely playtesting if at all), but if you enjoy your game enough to make it part of your own regular gaming sessions you are both engaging in authentic behavior ("eating your own dog-food" as it's known in software development) and also making it a regular activity that people enjoy (even if I still have twinges of regret when people bring up what I now consider a failed project of youthful overconfidence).

You should also publicize your progress. even if just in a simple tweet or something like that. I probably go a little too far on this with thousand-plus word overviews of what I'm doing, but those long writes are actually part of my working process so I'll give myself a pass (I need to reflect on what I'm doing to deliver quality, something I learned the hard way).

Organization

Part of the problem with work processes is that you need to be organized to get stuff done. I have the advantage of being a former game reviewer, so I've seen dozens upon dozens of games and seen how they do things well and poorly (even if just by my own opinion).

I also know more or less what a game needs, though there are some things that I only first observed after being a designer (I once forgot to include death mechanics in a game that had–or was supposed to have–very fast, lethal combat).

The general ability to break things into tasks is important, because that's how you'll get stuff done. This is what project managers and leads exist to do, and as an indie you really need to do it yourself.

This can be relatively easy. Pick your three favorite games, peruse their tables of contents, then smash together the things that you need for your game based on these. Alternatively, just ask people what they want to see in your game.

Then make a list and start tackling that list.

Personally organizing your life is important too, since you need to have a system to handle the work-load. Unless you're somehow having someone hire you to make a game, it's not your day-job, and even just saying that you'll work a 40-hour week and going to the coffee shop so you don't get distracted won't help.

The creative process requires a fair amount of investment, and it's not something you can do on demand. You need to orient yourself to be creative when you need to be creative, which I've found requires a lot of practice.

The only way you really do this is by being hard on yourself. If you really don't want to write anything, write a hundred words. Do this whenever you need to write, and force the habit to develop.

Will

You need to figure out what you're about.

I've often done little side projects during a major project because I just don't have the will to continue. I've got a couple little unreleased doodles, but velotha's flock was literally started as a two-page poem proof of concept and turned into a game from there.

You're not always going to like writing and designing, but you will feel like working on something or writing about something. When that's something you have to do, do it. It'll yield better fruit than painful agony over something that you need to do to cross a checklist.

You also need inspiration.

My muse tends to be quiet moments of self-reflection. Showers used to be that, but I've been cutting back on them to give myself more time, so I now will spend time reading a book or doing some very light exercises and not really focusing too hard on what I'm doing.

When I get an idea, I act.

This isn't to say that you'll always get ideas and always want to do stuff. I've actually never met a mechanic I didn't want to design (though I have made many designs not worthy of seeing day), but I can tell you that there are parts of my settings (NPCs–ugh) that I just don't want to write ever, and I won't be inspired for them.

So I force myself to work on them, but only after also working on things I've enjoyed.

Doing this prevents burn-out and encourages a healthy mixture of productivity between things you like and are naturally good at and things that you don't have an affinity for and will require development.

Following Through

I just wanted to close by saying that I've been practicing this method, usually failing, for years. From programming in my college days to committing more fully to writing and tabletop game development, you need to remember that great practice is not necessarily a guarantee of success.

One of the things that doomed Street Rats is that when I published it I wasn't mature enough to handle failure, and it flopped. I probably made $60 for well over a hundred hours of work, many of which were unpleasant because I was fixing mistakes I made because I didn't know my limits.

As I move on to the next step in my design life after a couple years of reflecting and trying to work on stuff, I'm increasingly evaluating what I need to do to hit the level of productivity that my starry-eyed self convinced of a bright future did.