An unequal balance

As I set about the task of finding a new home I wonder at the similarities between this task and planning to make a video game.

Location location location, a common mantra, but what are all the component choices we make when searching for a new home?

It is the same in the kitchen when setting about to make a large meal. You first have to decide what to serve, or where to live, or even what kind of game you want to make.

Then you try to visualize all the recipe items.

• Nearness to shopping, schools, bus routes
• Price
• Size and amenities
• target audience
• control schema
• technology
• time frame
• investment
• allergies

Regardless of what we have at the start or what we think we need for the future, we realize that planning can only take you so far before you are forced into doing.

Expectations come before experience, and it is this unequal balance which creates stress.

Best practices can mitigate the gap between expectation and reality.

In life outside of game development, nearly everyone has an opinion that they believe to have equal weight. This is the root cause of teenage angst, and it creeps into our work lives in meetings and the little choices we make.

A course of action then would be to both reduce the level of expectation and the level of planning.

However, without proper planning you will fall into many obvious pitfalls.

Perhaps planning for the worst as well as planning for the best would be a sensible course of action.