I keep blathering on about G4, as my next game. It’s the working title, obviously. I have a title in mind, but I’m not announcing anything until I am 100% sure this is the design that I’m going with. I thought I might as well explain why I’m calling it G4, when obviously I’ve made loads of games, not just three.
The thing is, a lot of the games I’ve made have been pretty amateurish hobby efforts, and have been about me learning to program, not how to design games. You can have the best game idea in the universe, but if you try and make it your first game, you are likely to ruin it through inexperience. I reckon it takes four or five games before you finally find your feet and can do a decent game idea justice.
I know people might think that if they do a course in games programming, or get a great degree, or go to a few game jams, or read a lot of books, that this counts for the first four or five games. It does not.
The experience you need, is the complete full game lifecycle. The picking of an idea, and a name, choosing the technology and coding the engine, the play balancing, artwork, marketing, selling, promotion, and the tech support.
Anyway…
I’ve only really made three really good games. Three games where I did justice to the idea. Some of the other games are good *ideas* but the presentation and implementation is lacking.
Those 3 games are:
Kudos 2
Democracy 2
Gratuitous Space Battles
I’m determined that G4 earns a place in the list.