Gamedev is often plagued by failures and disappointment, even when things feel like they’re going relatively well we can experience bouts of writer's block as our brains become tired of being beaten against the wall dealing with unlimited bugs and endless development. We get tired of spinning wheels in mud, endlessly fiddling with the same things day after day as we feel we are destined to go mad in our own little dimension of groundhog’s day.

I often try to figure out WHY my brain shuts off for long periods, why my brain won't let me work on the project, if I can do this I can hopefully finish the project and get my life on track. And for teh first time in a long time I have a novel idea to fix it, the last time I had this idea it was to do spring cleaning, to go in and fix things up so things were clean and orderly so i would feel more compelled to get work done, but that just sounds fucking tedious as shit and the last thing you want to do when you have writer’s block is to do tedious shit.

So I’ve come up with a new plan and a new goal, and it focuses on why I got into gamedev to begin with. A HUGE problem in gamedev is we develop blinders and we mindlessly keep making things because we’ve build all the other systems and now we have to finish them, even if they're not fun. So I’m just going to fire up my game for a little bit, and try to observe it as an outside observer and try to think “If I were making this game, what would I change about it?” As best I can while trying not to think of all my current plans and to-do lists.

The idea is to start “fresh” on a project that I've been working on for a long time. I’m not going to take things in a crazy direction, but maybe I come up with a few cool new modifiers or maybe I think of a  cool new quest system that’ll add a ton of fun to the early game and get me back into the project. It’s kinda like going out to a fancy place with someone you’ve been with for a long time to recapture a bit of the old flame.

The weird thing is I think things are going really well on seacrit, but burnout seems to happen no matter what. Sometimes I wish gamedev was just about gritting our teeth and digging a hole or filling out forms or customer service. You can deal with that, you can get through your day without much trouble and do your job and not feel as though you need some invisible resource of creative juices to allow you to function and dig yourself out of the massive hole you’ve buried yourself in. Life would be so much simpler and sustainable that way…

But it is what it is! I’ve had way longer periods of burnout, and there’s a lot going on in real life and things that need my attention so it’s not just writers block going on keeping me from getting things done. It’s been nice to recharge the batteries and this final push towards a fun demo feels like it could be any day now…