I can almost hear the readers saying “where has the LOVE speech came out of, when the February just passed?.”
Both the strengths and weaknesses of the entrepreneurs are to fall in love with their ideas. In order for an initiative to be successful, it is necessary for the founders to fall in love with this idea. They must live with it and even see it in their dreams. There must be passion, that idea should consistently keep their minds busy. However, they shouldn’t be blinded by this love.
“LOVE”, is also the mistake that the entrepreneurs frequently make. Since they overly fall in love with their ideas, they forget to analyze the data, do not take the feedback from users into account, and forget to ask whether their ideas solve a problem and whether there is such a need.
Being possessed by this love, is a behavior we often see in game developers. While developing the game, we expect the designer to imagine an entire new world. They have to design a totally fantastic world and this world also has to be fun. As for design, the first thing to come to mind is the visual design. However, when we develop a game, we need to talk about the game design, first. What kind of world will be designed, who will spend time in this world, how many hours a day will they play and what will they win every time they play? The answers to the questions such as how to gain experience, what are the short and long-lasting goals to be achieved, how the gifts to be achieved when these goals are attained will be satisfactorily resolved by designing this new world in a very analytical way.
You have to design your game mechanics so well that it must be playable even without any gaudy visuals. Game designers who fall in love with the fictitious mind might progress without including the players in the development process, without interpreting the users’ data, without deeply thinking and analyzing what kind of world they design; and eventually they are often disappointed.
Investors might make similar mistakes. They may decide whether to invest or not according to the visuals of a game development project they see. However, visuals are a subjective concept. A graphic design that I think is very nice may be repellent one for someone else. Or a design suitable for children may not appeal to those who are over 30 years old. Therefore, we say that investment should be made by the teams. The team is on the right track if it plans to capture the idea of game development, the targeted user base, the game mechanics that will provide entertainment, the loyalty features that makes players to login again and again, to capture what kind of similarities with rival games and to differentiate in which points, thus to make a difference.
Those brave people who fall in love with their ideas and hit the road, who test their ideas with data, who are open to feedback and test their own ideas with innumerable analyzes, and who do not hesitate to change their designs or give up on the project when necessary, become successful in this world.
I know a lot of developers who are not in love with their games. None of them has achieved any success. On the other hand, I also saw those who fell in love with their ideas but were closed to all the suggestions and developing their games sleeplessly. They haven’t succeeded, either. But they were so sure that they would have succeeded. On the day they met players, they realized that they had chosen the wrong platform, developed the game for high end computers thus, nobody in the target market was able to play the game or they forgot to monitor the rivals. There were already strong and popular games in the market which were very similar to their ideas.
Besides all this, love sometimes blinds our eyes so much that we even forget the finances. You might be designing a game, producing a TV show in the new media, or developing a mobile application. The most basic point to remember is that this product is being developed for a commercial purpose. Indeed, our subject is not just to develop, but also to deliver to the target users, thus, there will be marketing costs, too.
In conclusion, whether it is a game or another digital product, the mathematics of how to make enough money with the product you have developed, should have been studied throughly, otherwise you will have to find a different way to pay the salaries of the employees…
