The Shiny New Idea Syndrome

As I write this, there’s a piece of paper glued to my desk.

On it is a list of games that are 90+% finished … yet never released. With the urgent message, to myself, to finally finish them and publish them officially. Preferably at breakneck speed, so I can start with my next shiny new idea.

Some of these games are from the past 6 months, and I was just taking a break and figuring things out.

But some of them are 2, 3, 4 years old. I basically finished the game at the time, but didn’t want to wait on its actual release before starting my next project. And then I got excited about my next project—and never actually finished that old project.

This is the “Shiny New Idea”-syndrome which plagues almost every developer. After some weeks working on a project, it just loses its freshness, and you’ve probably already accumulated 5 new better ideas. So you’d rather drop your project and work on that shiny new idea instead. Leading to a trail of unfinished, half-baked projects.

Some people combat this with strict discipline: “I forbid myself from even thinking of starting a new project, or getting new ideas, until the current project is done!”

Others allow it to happen with the idea of: “Why work on something I’m not excited about? Why not follow the passion, the energy, to keep my heart in the project I’m making?”

In this article, I’ll explain why I chose a sort of middle road. But also why it is terribly, terribly important to choose something and stick to it. And hopefully give some tips for anyone struggling with this syndrome.

15 years of programming, nothing to show

I’ve been programming and making games for almost 15 years now.

Yet, if you look at my portfolio or game studio website, you won’t find any games older than a few years. And if you do, they’ll be bad, unfinished, and nothing worth playing.

Yes, those projects also taught me a lot and helped me grow my skills. But 10 years? 10 years of making stuff and having nothing to show for it? That’s rough.

On YouTube, many developers share their journey from start to finish. From having no knowledge to creating actual games. Within a minute I can tell if they’ll succeed:

“Are they creating and finishing many tiny projects? Great future for them! Otherwise, forget it, they’ll abandon the channel in 3-6 months.”

The people who finish a tiny project each week, or each month, race ahead in terms of skill and fanbase. What took me 5 or 10 years to reach, they’ll reach in a year (or 2).

Your body if work is only as large as your finished projects. There’s literally no value in never finishing and publishing a project. Nobody ever gets to play it, you won’t go out of your comfort zone to grow as a creator, you don’t get to add it to your portfolio, and you surely won’t earn income from it.

Real developers ship. That’s the other quote you hear a lot, and that’s because it’s true.

I find it tough to believe people calling themselves a “writer” if they’ve never so much as finished writing a single book. If you tell people you’re a “musician”, they’ll ask where they can listen to your music. If your answer is “nowhere, I haven’t finished an album yet”, they’ll not think of you as a musician again. It’s the same with game development.

But it’s hard!

Yes, it’s hard to get through those days fixing tiny bugs, rewriting your marketing text again, going through the motions of finishing something you’re not that excited about anymore. It does have a toll on your health, your motivation, your flow.

But that toll is lifted (and completely reversed) when you get to release that project. You get a clean slate, some rest in your head. People can actually play it. Some might leave feedback, or buy it, or share it, or whatever. (Depends on the size and aim of your game, of course.)

This gives huge positive energy going into your next project.

Even better, you’ve now experienced that you can finish something, and that it will make you feel better than jumping onto that shiny new idea.

And that’s the important part of this argument: you only get the big benefits from grinding through the last part of a project, if it doesn’t take too much from you. If it doesn’t take too long.

If you spend 3 months each year in this “I don’t want anymore, but I need to finish this” mindset, that’s just going to ruin your healthy and your life. Don’t do that.

That’s why I chose a middle ground.

The middle ground

Rule #1: I’ve decided to only make games that take, at most, a month to make. From begin to end. First idea and sketch, to finished and marketed release.

(This might change in the (far) future based on many factors: maybe I assemble a team around me, maybe I become less restless with age, maybe I have the money to make development longer, whatever.)

Rule #2: I’ve decided to allow pausing this schedule for certain special situations

A big game jam appears that piques my interest. Game jams are huge for finishing games, getting feedback, and getting your name out there.
I have a unique idea I can prototype in a day or an evening. Doing so will show me if it’s feasible and as fun as I thought. It removes the idea from my head and allows me to make better choices for my next project.
I feel my health declining and my life getting a bit disjointed. (Sleep schedule changed, restless, easily irritated, etcetera.)

Rule #3: If I reach a big roadblock in a game, I allow myself to create a different project instead for a few weeks. Most of the time, the roadblock just vanished after a few weeks off.

In that time, you were able to think of solutions and lost any irritation with the project. Seeing it with fresh eyes, it’s likely that you’re even excited to get back into that project. (The heart grows fonder with distance. Or something like that. Not too knowledgeable on English proverbs, as it’s not my native tongue.)

Rule #4: No zero days. There are always tiny things to do. These only take a minute or two. In fact, each project I’ve made ends up with a huge list of them. Even if you’re completely demotivated, you can always just scratch a few things off this list. Doing so a few days in a row will move the project much further, and you don’t even need that pesky “motivation”!

That’s my middle ground. Yes, it means there are sometimes 2-3 projects just “open” or “waiting to be finished”.

But it has allowed me to work non-stop, almost every day, for the better part of this year. (I also do work not related at all to games.) While, at the same time, always generating new ideas, quickly starting new projects, and leaving more than enough time for exercise and stuff.

And, when it comes to it, I’m fine with releasing a project 6 months too late, I just need to finish it. Without destroying my health and motivation.

The results

I’ve applied this mindset at the start of this year. The result? I’ve released these games:

Square Ogre
A Recipe For Disaster
I Wish You Good Hug
Totems of Tag
Carving Pumpkins & Dwarfing Dumplings
Windowsilk (Game Jam)

I’ve made 4 more games, most of them getting close to being finished. (And 2 older games I deemed “good enough” to finish now and publish.)

These are all big, finished games. I’ve even had serious interest from a few to republish these games on their platform. Itch.io seems to have noticed, as each new game I make gets some features in some lists. This year I’ve attracted more views and downloads than all previous years combined.

You can do a lot in a month if you stay motivated and have no “zero days”.

Before that, the results were a lot different. In all the time before that, I finished:

Mission Uncontrollable (Game Jam, can barely be called finished)
Art Hockey
Into My Arms
Tower of Freedom
Drunken Fireworks (an experiment, can barely be called finished)

That’s it. It’s way fewer games, they’re all smaller, or barely “finished” (and certainly not polished).

By now you know this isn’t because I’m just terribly slow. I made way more games in that period, they were just never finished and published!

And that’s the point: if you hadn’t read this article, if I hadn’t told you this, you wouldn’t know.

All those projects, all that progress, unseen by the rest of the world. Unplayable for everyone. Looking at my profile last year, you might think I only just started making games and was fooling around.

So that’s the conclusion.

I don’t think you should force yourself into some strict routine of finishing one project before entertaining any new idea. It just makes you unhappy and is unhealthy.
But I also don’t think you should endlessly prototype or hop to new projects. As my results show, it just leads to … nothing.
Take a middle ground. Make your projects shorter to reduce the grind. Allow taking breaks in-between, to solve issues and regain motivation.
Whenever you have a new idea, do write it down. So it gets out of your head and you don’t constantly worry about it. (Many of the shiny ideas most developers have are actually really good and you don’t want to lose them.)

The way I see it, there’s going to be a moment in the near future when I release a boatload of games in the same month or two. Keep an eye out for that :p

Until the next one,

Pandaqi