Hello everyone, this is the first post I'm making on an actual account but I've been lurking the forums for quite a while. I've seen plenty of good advice and just as much bad advice for what not to do, but I wanted to take action and finally step up to the plate to admit.
We didn't have any concise direction as for how we were even going to put these things together. It was all just a jumbled mess of ideas that sounds nice but didn't mean shit as we didn't have any proof that we were up to the challenge. So, we learned our lesson and tried to scale down our scope and make things more realistic. We changed engines for our programming which slowed us down a little bit, had to get used to the transition from Java to C# but it wasn't too bad. We also assigned roles to each other, I would handle some of the side aspects of the game like minigames, some design ideas, as well as the PR when we launch; He would take care of the back end stuff like databases and some of the core game mechanics.
We had to rollback the proposed release date several times as we felt that there wasn't enough substance to our work. We shot for June 10th as our first release date but pushed back to early August from an undershot of how much financing would be necessary. Late July came by and we chatted again with the artist that we talked to originally, this time he was more on board with our ideas and setup a deadline for us to fit: create a prototype of the game by the 25th and I'll make up my mind for whether or not I'll work on it. Sounds fair. We make the deadline but before we even submit it, we decided not to send the prototype and get the artists answer. This time, we simply weren't satisfied with what we had in the game. Sure the concept works and you can play the game in it's prototype state, but there's no incentive for the player to try to achieve the core focus of the game. We explained the difficulties we're facing and the artist understood. Now, we pushed back the release date even further and are coming up with a plan in order to get everything to where we need it to be before we start doing the art and other aspects of the game.
You might think that this is all good and that we've been doing this at a consistent pace but I'm going to spare you the bullshit and just say that this has not been flowing smoothly. For one, me and my partner feel that we're too lazy and procrastinate too much when it comes to developing whatever's on the agenda for that day. We've also been very uncoordinated in terms of how we should handle things since this entire project is new territory for us. We haven't got a damn clue for how we are supposed to establish ourselves and have all the other pieces fall into place. I've also been very demotivated as I feel I'm not contributing enough to the main idea or anything that I pitch in ends up getting scrapped because it's too boring or it's out of place. Compared to what my partner has done, it's like I'm an ant and he's a mountain. Of course, he's got more reason to really go after this as he's been handling the brunt of the financing and he's more at risk. I really feel like an a**hole for having him deal with this all since he must feel like he's at the sea floor in terms of all the pressure he's dealing with.
I'm TERRIFIED of where to go and what to do.
To explain, me and a great friend of mine came up with the idea to create a mobile game that would be an excellent fit for people interested in taking care of virtual creatures, kind of like the NeoPets craze in the early 2000s. We looked at the markets and saw that the competition that was currently about on the Google Play store and the App Store either were so-so in quality or weren't going for what we had in mind. We've been brainstorming possible ideas for what sorts of features we should go for and what sort of looks should we try to match and once we finally felt confident to look for an artist to petition our idea to, we were hit with rejection. Why?
We didn't have any concise direction as for how we were even going to put these things together. It was all just a jumbled mess of ideas that sounds nice but didn't mean shit as we didn't have any proof that we were up to the challenge. So, we learned our lesson and tried to scale down our scope and make things more realistic. We changed engines for our programming which slowed us down a little bit, had to get used to the transition from Java to C# but it wasn't too bad. We also assigned roles to each other, I would handle some of the side aspects of the game like minigames, some design ideas, as well as the PR when we launch; He would take care of the back end stuff like databases and some of the core game mechanics.
We had to rollback the proposed release date several times as we felt that there wasn't enough substance to our work. We shot for June 10th as our first release date but pushed back to early August from an undershot of how much financing would be necessary. Late July came by and we chatted again with the artist that we talked to originally, this time he was more on board with our ideas and setup a deadline for us to fit: create a prototype of the game by the 25th and I'll make up my mind for whether or not I'll work on it. Sounds fair. We make the deadline but before we even submit it, we decided not to send the prototype and get the artists answer. This time, we simply weren't satisfied with what we had in the game. Sure the concept works and you can play the game in it's prototype state, but there's no incentive for the player to try to achieve the core focus of the game. We explained the difficulties we're facing and the artist understood. Now, we pushed back the release date even further and are coming up with a plan in order to get everything to where we need it to be before we start doing the art and other aspects of the game.
You might think that this is all good and that we've been doing this at a consistent pace but I'm going to spare you the bullshit and just say that this has not been flowing smoothly. For one, me and my partner feel that we're too lazy and procrastinate too much when it comes to developing whatever's on the agenda for that day. We've also been very uncoordinated in terms of how we should handle things since this entire project is new territory for us. We haven't got a damn clue for how we are supposed to establish ourselves and have all the other pieces fall into place. I've also been very demotivated as I feel I'm not contributing enough to the main idea or anything that I pitch in ends up getting scrapped because it's too boring or it's out of place. Compared to what my partner has done, it's like I'm an ant and he's a mountain. Of course, he's got more reason to really go after this as he's been handling the brunt of the financing and he's more at risk. I really feel like an a**hole for having him deal with this all since he must feel like he's at the sea floor in terms of all the pressure he's dealing with.
So why tell all of this? What do you want?
The reason I tell all of this is in hopes that someone can smack some sense into me and just steer me into a more guided direction rather than decide things on a whim. I don't want a step for step process or for someone to hold my hand, I'll admit that I'm just a dumb 18 year old trying to bite off more than he can chew. My priorities are all over the place and I don't chip in more than I should. Thank god that I don't wake up at 4PM and try to count the hours of "work" that I do, but whatever I do, it's not enough to ensure that I will reach whatever deadline that we've got currently.
What changes can I make to my mindset in order to continuously propel myself forward and reach those goals?
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