I recently read a quote from Gabe Newel in Game Informer on “When it’s Done” (Game Informer, issue 187, pg. 70). He said “I think most games in the industry, across the board would benefit from an extra six months of refinement”. At first when I read this I thought “yeah, that would be nice”. And then I thought “wait a minute, that would be wasted time! adding a little polish here or there won’t make a difference in the end”. And then finally I thought “Ah, well, depending on where you spent the refinement, it could be a good thing, a very good thing”. If you spent your refinement time fixing legitimate issues, then it would help your game immensly. However, if you spent it on slightly better AI, improving those textures just a bit, adding a little more bloom or depth of field here or there, then you’ve wasted your time… if those were not “legitimate issues”.

So what are “legitimate issues”? “Issues” are what people complain about when playing your game. “Legitimate” is weather or not they are pertinent to the vision of the game. I’m assuming your game is already fun because you built it around a fun prototype and created a distinct experience for your player (if you didn’t do that, then you had better do it now). The only thing left since it’s fun at it’s core is to remove the “unfun”. Remove all the dirt and impurities to provide your player with pure gold. You don’t want anything to detract from the fun in your game. To get an idea of what these things are, go and read any review for just about any game. Read what the reviewer complained about in the game. Most of the time these complaints are legitimate, sometimes they are a matter of taste or preference. Deciding weather or not they are legitimate is up to the visionary for the game. Some common examples of legitimate issues that can taint an otherwise fun game are:

  • “Poor camera controls”
  • “Confusing Menus”
  • “Text that is difficult to read”
  • “Poor or missing tutorials”
  • “Confusing, complicated, or non standard control schemes”
  • “Muddy textures”
  • “Choppy animation”
  • “Bad save game system”
  • “Bugs in the game”

When I first sent out Caster for review by some of my friends, I got back a nice list of feedback. Most of it I had noticed before, but had considered to be minor issues. However, hearing it from my reviewers told me that it was significant enough that they would notice it and make mention of it. Things like “the font looks too aliased”, “the UI textures seem low res”, “I can’t use an inverted mouse configuration or remap keys”, etc. These became legitimate issues to me because even if I didn’t really care about them, the other people playing the game did! When I sent the game out again with these issues fixed, I got a lot less feedback. I guess it’s like being a car mechanic. You know you did a good job because you hear less noise.

At any rate there you go, Your game is done when all the legitimate issues have been resolved. Once all these are resolved, you’re good to ship! Notice, this is a very attainable goal! It is NOT adding new features, it is NOT making slight modifications to this or that. It is resolving real concerns that make a difference to the player’s experience.