Variant3

Burning out rapidly on ideas

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They say that ideas are a dime a dozen. And I would say that I have personally proven that more times than I can count. I don't get more than two days into a new idea before I completly lose faith in it. Am I just working on uninteresting projects or is my inner critic stifling my work ethic? If anyone else is dealing with similar problems I would love to hear your experiences.

For what its worth I'm working in Twine, but I feel this problem is not exclusive to it.

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Can you give an example of an idea you lost faith in and what the reasoning was?

Sometimes I get an idea, but once I try working on it, I realize that it will take say more time than I thought it would so it's no longer worth the effort for me. Most often, I'll start an idea and I notice something interesting that I didn't plan to be interesting. I'll then just explore that part, leaving the original idea behind.

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I think a recurring creative issue is that you think of the cool stuff about an idea, imagining how great it would be to do X, Y and Z. When it comes to the process of making something, you have to spend time in the opposite of cool, figuring out how to fix things that are broken or improve things that aren't as good as you'd like. The vast majority of time spent on something creative involves you looking at the cracks and holes that need work, so it's important to remember the initial concept that you're aiming towards.

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The vast majority of time spent on something creative involves you looking at the cracks and holes that need work, so it's important to remember the initial concept that you're aiming towards.

 

True, but it can also be useful to ignore the daunting fact that you'll have to spend god knows how much time on this project and just focus on something that can be achieved today.

 

Whenever I feel like giving up I try to figure out if I've actually explored the possibilities of an idea and found them not worth pursuing, or if I'm just getting discouraged by the inevitable unexpected problems.

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Can you give an example of an idea you lost faith in and what the reasoning was?

 

 

I had gotten really excited about a project about the monotony of life and how it can drain you creativly. But the idea quickly got out of hand and I kind of lost the point of it. I feel like that project was too personal and therefore lost it's luster when I was no longer emotionally attached. Perhaps I should divorce my emotions from my work somewhat?

 

 

I think a recurring creative issue is that you think of the cool stuff about an idea, imagining how great it would be to do X, Y and Z. When it comes to the process of making something, you have to spend time in the opposite of cool, figuring out how to fix things that are broken or improve things that aren't as good as you'd like. The vast majority of time spent on something creative involves you looking at the cracks and holes that need work, so it's important to remember the initial concept that you're aiming towards.

 

You kind of hit the nail on the head on this. I'm probably spending too much time being dissatisfied with my work instead of focusing on generating new work.

 

Thanks for the initial replies. I usually just try to process any issues I have on my own, but this 'advice of other people' thing is seemingly helping.

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I had gotten really excited about a project about the monotony of life and how it can drain you creativly. But the idea quickly got out of hand and I kind of lost the point of it. I feel like that project was too personal and therefore lost it's luster when I was no longer emotionally attached. Perhaps I should divorce my emotions from my work somewhat?

A problem I've run into more than once when trying to make a expressive sad game for a jam is that trying to get in that headspace just makes me really depressed and feel less like working. I don't know how people get past that issue, but it's torpedoed a couple of projects for me.

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I get burned out/bored with some of my projects because I would get caught up in fiddling around with technical details and lose sight of the end goal. Not having any set deadlines or constraints really makes it hard to focus in on getting things done. I'm trying to make one game a week now based on the rules from here, which helps with several things. It forces me to lower my expectations of the end product, which keeps me from getting too bummed if the end result is not exactly what I envisioned. The time constraint also keeps me from getting too focused in on a single problem for too long. If I completely bomb during a week, it's totally fine too because I get to start over fresh with a new idea the next week.

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I'm trying to make one game a week now based on the rules from here, which helps with several things. It forces me to lower my expectations of the end product, which keeps me from getting too bummed if the end result is not exactly what I envisioned.

I'm definitly going to check this out. A game a week seems like it would be just the thing to get me to complete projects before burnout.

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I think it's only natural working in a creative medium that you get burned out on ideas, and even worse are those Ideas you really like but just can't get to work right.  Personally what I do is rather than treat each new things as a project, I just try to come up with an idea for some system, narrative, etc and try to come at it from all angles.  Generally what I do is get to this point, then let it simmer for a while and go to look at something else.  For me it helps to not see all these projects as something that needs to be completed, but rather just things that need to be researched.  I've got at least half a dozen half-baked game ideas, none of which will ever likely get made, but in that time I've learned a lot about advanced math functions, how to write plugins, more than I ever cared to know about Unity, and gotten a bunch of ideas to a point where I could integrate them into some future project, etc.  I started designing a mobile game around 4 years ago, and only in the last week have been able to integrate all the ideas into a somewhat cohesive whole.  Maybe it isn't the fastest way to do it, but every time I go back in I become excited about the idea again.

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This is a huge reason of why my games are so janky and thrown together. I make them in a night ideally, the longest I have ever worked on a game was two weeks.

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I just try to record my ideas in a notebook, that way you can forget about them and read them later, a lot of ideas won't hold up well upon reviewing. For me ideas typically only exists in two states, either it's living or dead. A living idea sprouts branches, just thinking about it gives me new ideas, there are many directions to take it. When I have a living idea I usually spend a lot of my free time obsessing over it, researching things and so on, if I find things in my research I write that down in my notebook. Dead ideas to me are just that, it doesn't matter how much energy I pour into them, they won't grow, they don't give me anything back. If it's dead I just bury it in my notebook with the rest of it. I always try to dig for the root of an idea, the root of a tree has the potential to feed on the water of the soil, and the branches will sprout if you feed it. The idea that dies is the broken branch of a much larger tree when I cant find the root. At this point, I'm just indulging myself with the metaphor. I'm so sorry. Go on with your business.

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