Where do great games come from?

Everyone wants to make great video games. We play great games and feel inspired and imagine the amazing things games could be. Imaginary video games are pretty awesome, they’re fun and revolutionary and just the best! In reality though making great games is tough, and most games we make come out… alright. They work, they’re a bit of fun, maybe they make you feel something or give you a new perspective. This is well and good, but it's not grand enough! We want to make great games! At minimum we want our games to be good enough for people to sink a few hours into and get considerable enjoyment from. After all it takes a lot of time and energy and frustration to make a game, so we seek the satisfaction of other people enjoying our game. How do you make sure the game you've spent so much time and effort on is good?

I’ve been making games for most of my life and have played lots of great, good, and alright games. In the past six years especially I’ve gotten serious about my gamedev career. I’ve worked on several indie projects, I tinker in game engines, and I hear lots of game developers' stories. Over time, and especially in the wave of post-covid games, I’ve seen lots of games with big budgets flop and seen much simpler, easy to make games thrive. I’ve never been one to assume that effort = quality, but it still got me thinking about why some games are great and others, despite lots of time, effort, and money invested turn out mid.

To clarify, when I’m talking about a good or great game, I’m not talking about financial success or popularity. There are obviously loads of people concerned about money. Great games are often somewhat popular or financially successful, but I’ve also played great games that were neither because they were for a niche audience or just hadn’t found their reach. Their unpopularity didn’t make them any worse to play. Hell, some of my favorite games of all time are mobile games made back in the early 2010’s back when there was an RPG boom on the iOS app store. Nobody talks about those old school RPGs any more but they’re still great games for me. What I mean when I say a great game is one that’s very meaningful or enjoyable. Meaning and enjoyment are of course subjective but good and great games tend to be very meaningful or enjoyable to most of the people that play them.

There are lots of great games out there (which I am thankful for), and they're all unique. Are there really any similarities between great games? Seeing many successes, failures, and mediocres, I’ve noticed some patterns to great games’ success, and ways that people chasing greatness stumble.

Great Game Indicator #1: Familiarity

Great games don't come out of thin air. Great games are made by people who have deep familiarity with the concept of their game. Zeekers made Lethal Company after honing a style of comedic horror over nearly a dozen games. Maddy made Celeste’s physics after a decade with tile-based platformers. LocalThunk made Balatro after growing up playing all kinds of card games, and playing thousands of games of an invented card game ‘Big Cheat’ with his friends. Disco Elysium developers had mostly never made a game before, but some of them had spent over 20 years creating the world of elysium, running TTRPG sessions in it, before deciding to make a video game of it. And the developers of Dwarf Fortress? They made several simulation games before it and have been working on that shit for 20 years. If you’re gonna make something great, it’s not going to be completely new to you. It’s going to be an extension of something you're very familiar with.

Great Game Indicator #2: Playtesting

Game developers have a fantastical view of the games they make. Players see a game for what it is at the moment, but game developers see a project in motion brimming with dreams and potential. Developers have a very twisted perspective about their game because they're a) super good at playing their game (they made it) and b) are projecting their unfinished fantasies onto the game. It’s thus very important to have other people play it as much as feasible. Developers of cottage-building game Tiny Glade did lots of playtesting and created an extremely enjoyable game as a result. I also recall some game designer saying that if employees start staying overtime to play the game, that's how you know it has some sauce (if you know who said this lmk). Some playtesting is critical, lots of playtesting is great, and playtesting from a diverse set of people is best. Loads of playtesting isn’t required to make a great game, but I’ve seen enough developers hide their babies for too long that playtesting deserves a mention.

Great Game Indicator #3: Pressure

Every game needs pressure or else it will never come out. Games without pressure fester, and applying pressure forces developers to make necessary, game-defining decisions. Deadlines create pressure, stakeholders create pressure, and importantly pressure can come from developers themselves. Industry veteran Laura Fryer says “if there's no real pain internally, no brutal honest fights over the work, you should worry more”*. Sakurai, director of Kirby and Super Smash Bros, advocates for putting pressure on oneself to create better work. Everyone who isn’t rich feels financial pressure, and this is especially true of indie developers who forsake their stable jobs to pursue game development. Nearly every indie success story I’ve heard involved a considerable amount of financial pressure, which translates into deadlines and often crunch too. I’m not here to advocate for crunch, I am of the opinion that living healthily is more important than making great art. Overwhelming pressure that leads to crunch is not good for games - a manageable, healthy amount of pressure is good. One clarifying comparison of not enough vs maybe too much pressure comes from Balatro developer LocalThunk. Balatro was a game under loads of pressure as it approached release, not just because LocalThunk left his job but because of the immense popularity and expectation Balatro built from demos. The pressure had a toll on his health. Years before making balatro, however, LocalThunk worked on a game project for himself during university. It had no pressure or expectations, a haphazard two years of development, and never got released. But it was loads of fun to work on. Games can be lots of fun to work on, but if they’re to stand on their own and see the light of day, they need some pressure.

What doesn’t matter: Developer Experience

It's reasonable to think that experienced developers know how to make good games, but that’s not totally true. A good artist can make professional 3d models and a good designer can tune a complicated system to be fun, but those things alone cannot make a great game. The recent wave of game studios featuring ex-insertbiggamecompanyhere devs producing high production value flops can attest to that. Meanwhile indie games like Balatro, Stardew Valley, and Disco Elysium were made by people with little dev experience. Personally I think that people with little development experience should be valued because they bring fresh perspectives. Disco Elysium, one of the best RPGs to come out in the last decade, was made by a core team of 12 or so, and only one of them had ever touched a game engine before!

What doesn’t matter: Investment #s

Concord. Other games too, but like… Concord.

Game Red Flag #1: Bad Production

This is one very personal to me because I’ve worked on a lot of games with bad production and I’ve vowed to never work on a poorly produced game ever again (unless it pays hella bank 🤑). None of the poorly produced games I’ve worked on came out in any fun or playable state. Bad production looks like no schedule, disorganized tasks, meaningless deadlines, not enough communication between team members, aimless meetings, the whole gamut. Even with skilled developers and a good game idea, it is so hard to make anything if you're disorganized. It’s alright to meander in preproduction but if there isn’t a clear line drawn when production starts, game development becomes like one of those stuck-in-molasses nightmares. Great games with long development periods may appear to meander but interally they're always organized.

Game Red Flag #2: Chasing the Market too Hard

Ah, the ever shifting market. You need that market money to live! Gotta chase the profitable trends. Unless your game takes less than a few months to develop like an asset flip, I don't think you should chase trends. There are a couple mistakes I’ve noticed with market chasing. First, trying to find market fit before making a game at all. It’s too hard to know what market fit will be like until you actually make something and see people’s reactions, so just trust your gut and put something out there. Second, designing your game specifically around grabbing market. This has been egregious with recent live service flops - I think a lot of them were designed primarily around being the next/a competitor to/a twist on some existing live service game. A repeat of the ‘WoW killer’ MMO phenomenon. When your game’s most significant contribution is being like an existing successful thing but a little different, (especially when the successful thing is infinitely replayable), your game stands on flimsy ground. Imitating great games can be a good learning exercise, but it doesn't produce new great games. If you want to read more about woes of chasing the market, check out the push to talk newsletter.

There you have it, some of the patterns I’ve noticed about what produces great games vs ones that are just alright. It’s not a clear recipe for making a good or great game but I hope you learned some things to seek or avoid, and how to manage your expectations. Like Laura Fryer says about the xbox one's developers after launch - if you’re living in a bubble about your project and it doesn’t meet people's expectations, it can be devastating. I don't want game developers to be devastated, I want to see them make great games. If you want to make a great game, I’d say the best thing you can do is lean into what you’re familiar with. Or if you want to make a great game about something you’re not very familiar with, be patient and spend time learning, experiencing. It can take years of learning and multiple projects before you can get to the heart of a great game. And once you get into production, please PLEASE stay organized! If I have to work with one more careless developer im going to Lose It™️. All said, if you choose to create a game about something you care for deeply and you don’t trip along the way, your game will surely be great.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or comments, email me or message on discord - andrewdunne.gamedev@gmail.com | @oatvercast (discord).