Game dev musings: When to stop prototyping
Hello fellow co-conspirators!
Today it’ll be a short post as I’m ill. I spent most of the week bug fixing and so I have nothing new and flashy to show you. Here’s an interesting thing though, I’ve been bug fixing the prototype build, not the production one. Yeah, I know, the one that was meant to be finished and done for. Look, what happened was that I was doing some playtests with the old prototype build and I found that there were enough bugs that they were interfereing with the feedback i was getting.
Bugs are always expected in prototypes; the whole point is that they are not polished. However I felt this one had enough bugs that it was interfereing with the quality of feedback i was getting. Of course, in fixing these bugs, I didn’t get to move forward on the project per se. I pondered what to do quite a bit: fix bugs and get better feedback, or move forward with current project. In the end, I don’t think there’s a simple answer; it really depends on what stage you are of the project. Right now there are a few gameplay elements I’m still not super happy with, and I do want to continue playtesting, so I decided to fix the bugs (not all of them, but some of the more egregious ones) and move this week’s tasks to next week. So expect more updates then.
I am curious to hear more thoughts on this dilema. What do you think, polish prototypes or push project forward?
Happy conspiring!