Listen to what the jury and other experts have to say and increase your chances to win Sweden’s largest game development competition!
Advice from game industry professionals
Advice from Tom Hall, Game Designer, KingsIsle Entertainment:
- “Make sure you don’t overscope. Finishing 100% of a small project is way better than finishing 30% of a huge project.”
- “Make sure your project focuses on doing one thing extremely well, rather than five things poorly.”
- “Always have a ‘10% Task’ to do—while you have a main gameplay style, have something you do 10% of the time to break up the monotony.”
- “Whenever you have a ‘this would be so cool’ idea, make sure it fits in with the game. You can ruin a good game with something that doesn’t fit. And make sure you don’t get so excited about the one-off idea that you don’t finish the main game! If it IS really novel, see if you can weave it into the normal gameplay, so you can enjoy it all the time instead of once.”
- “Don’t be obsessed about people touching “your” content. You are a team, making a game together. To get a game done, people are going to touch your content. And if you are the one touch someone else’s content, ask them for any information that would be helpful in working with it.”
- “If you are just doing the same game with different graphics or characters, why are you making it? Make something NEW.”
Advice from Charles Cox, Developer Educator, Microsoft XNA:
- “There are three key elements of a game: gameplay, gameplay and gameplay.”
- “You don’t need to match the big studios with your game – go for something simple and fun.”
Advice from previous jury members
The most common feedback points at the Game Developers’ Workshop (17/3-2007):
- “Improve your presentation of the game. Make sure there are menus and that the player knows what to do when the game launches”
- “Create one or a few simple levels instead of being too ambitious. Polish these levels extremely well (not necessary the graphics – focus on the gameplay)”
- “Find the most important feature in the game and work almost exclusively on it”
- “Characters in third-person games should have a drop shadow so you can locate their position when they are jumping”
Advice from Niklas Westberg, Technical Director at Massive:
- “Focus on the core of what makes your game fun. Invest your time in improving game mechanisms rather than adding new features.”
- “Don’t underestimate the impatience of your audience – make sure the game looks attractive from the first second it appears on screen and make sure the player gets what it’s about. Never expect the player to read your documentation or help texts, the game must explain to the player what to do.”
- “Don’t try to make it big, make it good instead. If it’s good, you can make it bigger later. Keep it simple.”
Advice from Patrick Liu, Producer, EA Digital Illusions:
- “Assume that the reader is a complete idiot when writing the concept documents, be extremely clear on the gameplay mechanics and don’t rely on just a fancy background story. You’re not writing for a Nobel prize, you are selling a game!”
Advice from Tobias Sjögren, CEO Peligroso:
- “Focus on the most important aspects of the gameplay instead of intro movies, design documents, stories, or providing a lot of content. The gameplay is the key to the success of your game. When you’ve got good gameplay you can start building the other stuff which of course then gets important.”
- “Make sure the main reasons to play the game are shown very clearly in presentations, the demo, the movie, etc.”
- “Try to figure out a name that accurately describes what kind of game it is.”
- “Try the controls on people not involved in the game development, to make sure they are intuitive and easy to understand and learn.”
- “Less is more when it comes to game demos – it is better to do a small great demo than a big crappy one…”
Advice from Tommy Palm, Head of Research and Development Jadestone:
- “Remember that the jury only has a few minutes per game so make sure your game is fun from the beginning.”
- “Pay attention to details as that is both where the devil lives and what the jury looks at.”
- “Innovate with setting, plot and game play not with the control scheme and camera angles. (Unless you figured out something revolutionary like 2006 Best Game Idea winner Sumo.)
- “Test your game on someone who does not know anything about your project. This is the way your game is most likely to meet an audience either it is publishers, jury members or end customers. Observe where your testers get stuck and change your game accordingly.”
- “Do not listen to old farts, do your thing and have fun while doing it.”
Advice from Patrick Bach, Producer EA Digital Illusions:
- “We, the jury, want to be entertained. What’s entertaining depends, so choose something.”
- “Last years contributions had a lot of varying quality. Most made the same mistake; stretching too thin. Focus on the most important aspect of your game.”
- “Some games impressed us so much we just had to name them, so this year SGA has the Jury Honour Nominations to highlight games that impress us in some way but aren’t fully polished games yet.”
- “Focus. Work on one or several smaller aspects. Be sure to describe your focus in the Concept Document to give us in the jury a better overview.”
- “Let your friends try your game. If they don’t like it, chances are we won’t either.”
- “Don’t forget that games are about having fun. The most important part is that you’re enjoying making your game.”
