Finishing a Game

[guest509]

  Is it my imagination, or is finishing a roguelike a rare thing? 7DRL's are finished games, but the larger endeavors seem to be developed for forever.

  Even Adom didn't really finish in the early 2000's, it was said that it was 'no longer being developed.' Now those guys are back at it. Is Nethack 'finished' as a game? Crawl? ToME? Will any of those ever be finished, or will new people just take over and keep going?

  What if, say, Starcraft was in a permanent development cycle since the late 1990's. Thousands of units, dozens of races, tens of thousands of maps and what not. It'd be nuts. More than nuts. Crazy.

-Jo

[Darren Grey]

Consider any moddable game - the mods never stop.  The fact is roguelikes are free, so there's no imperative to say "it's done, buy it now, I'll patch some bugs and go work on the sequel".

Having said that I've been impressed with the free expansion packs for Dredmor.

[Krice]

Is it my imagination, or is finishing a roguelike a rare thing?

It's a known fact and it would be interesting if there was a scientific theory about why it is so. What makes roguelikes hard to create and finish?

[Darren Grey]

Just saw an unrelated quote on twitter: "Someone has to keep nudging programmers or they'd be optimising until the end of time"

Very relevant!  Continual optimisation, feature adding, etc, is exactly what defines the development of many roguelikes.  It is perhaps this programmer mindset that is at force in many games.

[Leaf]

Unless I am getting paid to finish something, I lose steam after all of the interesting stuff is done, and it's time to start making license plates.

[roocey]

Just saw an unrelated quote on twitter: "Someone has to keep nudging programmers or they'd be optimising until the end of time"

Very relevant!  Continual optimisation, feature adding, etc, is exactly what defines the development of many roguelikes.  It is perhaps this programmer mindset that is at force in many games.

I would say it is this for many of us. I'll finish up a really cool feature and then think of three more. Maybe you could avoid this phenomenon by establishing a set list of features, before you even begin coding, and be done when those are in. But I can't see myself doing that anytime soon.

[getter77]

Chunsoft wraps all their stuff up pretty deftly....part of it may well come down to the narrative approaches as well as platform of choice.

[UltimaRatioRegum]

I think this varies if one seeks profit (like most indie games), a living (dwarf fortress) or neither (most roguelike developers). For instance, I've been working on my game for nearly two years, and expect it to take over a decade, but I don't mind - I'm creating it purely for my own enjoyment, and I have no external pressures/deadlines to meet. If you want a profit, then for most games you MUST finish/release, and if it's your sole source of income, you obviously have to keep adding. Undertakings like dwarf fortress can't, as far as I can see, be 'finished', which in some strange way maybe makes it a fundamentally new kind of game. Others, like Nethack, I would say we have "closure" on - I think it's fair to call Nethack finished.

[guest509]

  I hear you. I have a 'god game' idea a friend and I work on off and on. Will it ever get to the point of being released? Does that matter?

  No. Life is a journey, not a destination. Said Aerosmith.

[roocey]

I think this varies if one seeks profit (like most indie games), a living (dwarf fortress) or neither (most roguelike developers). For instance, I've been working on my game for nearly two years, and expect it to take over a decade, but I don't mind - I'm creating it purely for my own enjoyment, and I have no external pressures/deadlines to meet. If you want a profit, then for most games you MUST finish/release, and if it's your sole source of income, you obviously have to keep adding. Undertakings like dwarf fortress can't, as far as I can see, be 'finished', which in some strange way maybe makes it a fundamentally new kind of game. Others, like Nethack, I would say we have "closure" on - I think it's fair to call Nethack finished.

I agree with Nethack being "finished". It has a definite end point and, as far as we know, all of the key features are in place. While it can be and is being expanded upon by (though not necessarily by the core dev team), the heart of the game is basically set in stone...because you dared to fight a cockatrice.

A trickier question would be if something like DCSS is really "done" or not. While the basic concept is fully implemented, the Stone Soup contributors are still regularly changing core mechanics and redesigning central parts of the game (e.g., the skill system).

[st33d]

I'm supposed to be programming the set-piece for the ending to the game right now.