Dead Ends and Going Back

As you work on a game design you identify problems, formulate solutions, test, and repeat. Sometimes the solution is right and you move forward, other times the solution is wrong and you try something else.

However, sometimes several successful iterations can hit a dead end. In these situations trying to fix a problem and move forward can be impossible. You can waste a lot of time and energy trying, but the only solution is to go back and take a different path.

Sometimes you’ll have to go back several iterations and this can feel like all of those versions were a waste of time. But any thought put into a design is not wasted. You either learn something that works or you learn something that doesn’t.

Things that you incorporated while on that dead end path could still become useful on your new path. Lessons learned can still apply and things that didn’t work before may have a new chance to work.

I recently went down a dead end path with Plutocracy. I’ve written before about my idea to add player pawns to give players a more definite sense of who they are in the game. While this solution did exactly what it was intended to do, a side effect was that it changed the feel of the game.

Player interaction was almost entirely lost. Economic manipulation was no longer a thing. Combat was never entered intentionally. Even though the core of the game is about not being tied to a single empire, players usually chose one empire and just worked with that one. Each exploring out in a different direction and gathering points until the game ended.

I was very tempted to move forward and fix the problem. I started working on grand design changes that would essentially make a different game. Then I stopped. I realized my solution wasn’t really what I wanted this game to be. So I’m backing up a few steps to before players had pawns on the board. I’m incorporating some of the things I learned along that path and trying to fix the original problem of player incentives in a different way.

Game design isn’t a linear path that you travel down from idea to completion. It is an endlessly splitting labyrinth with many dead ends and many possible exits. Don’t be afraid to back up and try a different path.