“The Pain of Game Development” aka “The Battle Against the Clock”

This is a rant about game development. Also known as "the battle against the clock."

In the beginning of this hockey game project, I set myself a goal. The game must be playable in a reasonable amount of time.

You need to be able to take the game to your favorite bar, sit at a corner table, drink two beers, and manage to finish the game before the last bus home. The rules must be so simple that you can handle them even if you chug those two beers in a single gulp. On the other hand, the rules need to be just "crunchy" enough to offer a suitable intellectual challenge.

All of this affects the playtime like a rubber band. You tweak the rules, sometimes losing to the clock, sometimes beating it.

"This rule needs to be changed so the game doesn\'t stretch into a five-hour ordeal\"

"This rule needs to be changed so the player doesn\'t feel like they\'re just at the mercy of the dice and the gods of luck." "Yeah, but that adds 15 minutes to the playtime."

"True, but if we simplify this rule, the game gets half an hour shorter."

"Hey dudes, I came up with a great additional rule for receiving a pass."

"Wow, but that adds half an hour to the playtime. Maybe it should be put into the Advanced Rules section."

"Hey, the penalty rule is too slow. I figured out a better one. We can cut the playtime by at least fifteen minutes…"

And so on and so forth.

All of this is surely familiar to anyone who has been developing homebrew games as a passion project.

When I got more people involved in developing the game, nothing really changed that much. Now that Markus, Tuure, and Mikko are on board playtesting and coming up with wild new twists to the rules, that rubber band stretches just like before—only now the back-and-forth swings are much bigger.

Do I have a point? Not really. I just wanted to share the pain you have to endure to stop the rules from turning into a 1,000-pound gorilla, just to keep the playtime in check.

…maybe we'll save the ice melting mid-game, or a meteorite crashing through the arena roof, for the Advanced Rules then…