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Hitting my limit
🕑 Added 2024-03-26 17:22:02 +0000 UTCHey all! Mark here
Back in late January I had a plan - to work on Mind Over Magnet, pretty much non stop, until the game was done.
This went really well for a while! I made a lot of the game. I overhauled the entire art style. I made two dev logs. I submitted the game to Steam. Gave it a name. Hired a composer and an artist (for marketing art). And settled in to a productive weekly schedule of creation, playtesting, and feedback.
If I kept going at this pace I would easily be done by around May or June!
The only thing I forgot... is that I can't keep this pace going forever. And so after two months of working on the game almost every week day (and a few weekends, if I'm being honest...), I've hit my limit and burnout has set in.
Now, I tried to resist it.
As I explained in my previous video: I wanted the game done by Steam Next Fest in June (or there abouts) so I could release soon after for maximum marketing wins. And I also just want to be done with the game - while I am still enjoying the process, I'm also excited for future projects and ideas which I feel like I can't start on until MOM is finished.
So I pushed on through. For a while.
But alas - you can't fix burnout with more work. It drags you down. It slows you down! And it makes all the work you do do... kinda bad. It also starts to impact your personal life: it's messed with my sleep schedule, eaten into my hobbies, and made me go slightly bonkers.
I guess this is why game devs don't like crunch, eh? Who would have thunk it!
So I'm going to press pause on development for a bit. Definitely not for as long as last time. But perhaps for this month. In the mean time, it'll be nice to reset my brain with some YouTube videos! I've got a few in mind...
Anyway. I think I'm writing this down to make it concrete. To stop myself from working more. To tell my brain, definitively, that I'm taking a break. If I told my Patrons I'm stopping... then I'm stopping. It's official! It's real!
Time to hit quit. Just for now. But for real.
Cheers
Mark
Comments
Matt Gambell
As someone who works a full-time game dev job, makes tutorial videos on the side and is ALSO working on a game on the side. I feel this. Knowing when to just not do any of that for a week or two to reset is critical. So, take the time you need and return when you're ready.
Alexandr Vakhitov
Take your time, man! Burnouts are not fun
Vinícius Pimentel Couto
Take as long as you need Mark, don't let a self-imposed deadline bear down on the rest you need.
