How to focus instead of constantly dreaming up ideas?

Hello Wulfen and welcome to the boards.

Your problem sounds familiar. I'm als more of a dreamer who likes to linger in the brainstorm phase than someone who gets his act to gether and finishes things. I do have "finished" a few designs, though. Here are some things that helped me:

Make prototyping easy for yourself. After the brainstorm phase, prototyping is the next step. I don't like prototyping a lot, yet it is something that has to be done to be able to finish a game. I learned how to use various graphic tools on the computer, so that I can easily make and print out tiles and custom cards. I got myself all kinds of prototyping material such as colored paper, dice, cardboard, card sleeves, spray adhesive and various wooden bits. There's nothing more frustrating than coming up with an idea and not having the appropriate bits to put a prototype together, so make sure you have all the material you might need before you get an idea for a game.

Write down the ideas. I found it helpful to write down the game ideas I have. It's a nice idea to start a journal here. Putting it into words makes an idea more concrete and makes it easier to weed out the bad ideas from the good. Let the ideas marinate for a while. After a time it's easier to see which ideas will actually work, and which ideas won't.

Team up with someone. Work on the game with a friend. You can keep eachother motivated and nag eachother to actually get the thing going. This has worked great for me in the past, to get my first design "done". If you are the "thinker" it's a good idea to team up with a "do-er".

Keep it simple. I noticed that often the first design of a lot of novice designers is very ambitious. They want to make the next Puerto Rico, Civilization or World in Flames on their first try. It's much easier to start off with simple, one mechanic games and see how that works, rather than taking the plunge into the deep right away. It's also much easier prototyping and playtesting a game using a set of standard cards, than a game with all kinds of custom made bits.

I hope this advice will help you some. Good luck!

One thing that cracked this problem for me was to simply start getting up extremely early in the morning to work on whatever project I'd chosen. I found I'd work very hard on the project because, if I didn't, then I got out of bed at 4:00am or 5:00am for nothing!

'Course, some people can't function in the morning, so this might not work for them. But I think if you make some serious effort to set aside a period of time each day for your project, you'll find yourself doing something constructive in that time.

Good luck!

-- Matt

Wulfen

I am in the same boat as you.

I've come up with about 3 playable game designs, and as soon as ive got them to the point where i could start manufacturing, prototyping, and possibly selling i come up with another idea that i will obsess over. I lose interest in what i am working on, not because i dont like it, just because the new idea is more shiny and new.

hopefully i'll dig all those old boards, pieces, and cards out of the closet someday and actually finish what i've started.

I decided to tell my network of friends that I was planning on making a game and I intended to see it through. I have now brought "outsiders" into the mix which will mean I'm nothing more than a talker if I don't see it through. I was ready anyway: however, this is my "peer pressure" that will make me focus and hopefully realize one dream instead of accomplishing nothing with many dreams.

HR Puff

Justin,

I thought you were 13 the other day. did you have a Birthday or is the hormonal changes making you already forget your age? :)

HR Puff

First off I would never force a design. There may be times when putting a game to the side is best choice. As with most creative projects, you cannot force creativity. But of course you can always go back to designing a game that you still have sitting on the shelf.

But with that said, I do have a list that I try to stick to when designing a new game.

Create Rules Rough Draft
Make a rough draft (or a couple of rough drafts) to get the basic rules and ideas down. During this phase I consider goals, mechanic and theme. I also try to think about how these 3 things work togther as part of my design process.

Create a Rough Prototype
Make a playable prototype. No it does not have to be that one great prototype, just something that will allow me (and friends) to give it those first few test drives. During this phase I think about how the various components of the game support the goals, mehcanics and theme. This often gives me insight into potential problems and I go back and modify the rough draft of the rules.

Seek out competitions/GDW submission
Once you have an idea and some basic rules down. Go find a contest or request a submission into the BGDF GDW. I always seem to get past the hump of my design/protyping when I have a deadline. Once i put myself into this type of situation I head to the next item on my list of todos.

Create Polished Rules Document
At this point if the game survived the random prototype testing, I will sit down with various notes i jotted down during the playtest sessions and attempt to create a polished rules document.

Create usable prototype
I now go through the process of making a decent prototype[s] that can be used by additional playtesting sessions. The major reason for creating a better prototype, blind playtesting.

More playtest and blind playtesting
Start the never edning playtest/blind playtesting sessions. For a while just play the game. Hopefully no major changes are needed, if changes are needed, make them.

I guess what I am getting at, structure seems to help me get things done. I think if I do not have a structured schedule/list of what I am trying to accomplish, I drift. Drifting is bad, not to mention RL tends to interrupt the schedule, often!

Until you begin to finish projects, you'll never realize that the greatest satisfaction is finishing a long, labor-intensive project. Sure, the initial tingle of excitement is great, but setting down a finished product beats it by many orders of magnitude.

Like the others here, I suggest starting off with a project that your current endurance level can complete. After you've got a jolt of completion energy, you'll be able to spend longer on the next one, and the next after that. But finishing that first project will feel the hardest.

Persistance is everything. Creativity, unrealized, counts for nothing at all. I hate to say it, but really, if you never finish an idea, you may as well never have had it in the first place. Don't stop a project when your enthusiasm for one particular phase of it flags. Tough it out, to go to the next phase of development. You'll get a fresh boost of excitement at every stage, just like you got in the intitial "brainstorm" phase. If the boost isn't enough to carry you through, though, grit your teeth and forge on.

You'll thank yourself.

Troy, we get it. You have a yahoo group, 10 game ideas, a great team, and want people to email you. Please don't paste the exact same paragraph in every single thread you can find, or, if you must, add it to your signature so that it just appears at the bottom of your posts, and is separate from the actual substance of your post. Anyone interested in joining your wargame group will easily be able to find it from your recent forum post on the subject.

Thanks,

Jeff

HR Puff

Having someone else hold you accountable for what you do is probably the best motivating factor out there. I knew when I started aggressively testing my first game and making my intentions known to people other than the voices in my head, that I needed to demonstrate "progress" on the game. I needed to be able to tell people what was new on the game front, what the next steps were, and so on. People would ask questions and I needed an answer. It wasn't okay for me to just let it the idea/game die after lots of people were aware of what was going on. If you have nothing new to tell people, you'll feel like an idiot.

I can think of only one other thing that is a better motivator than "accountability/peer pressure." Start taking orders on a game that hasn't been manufactured yet and tell those that put in an order that the game will be available for Christmas. I guarantee you that you'll then do everything in your power to finish the project.

"The only thing that comes to dreamers, is dreams." - Tevin Campbell

Chip