A Question for the developers: Do you actually play your own games?

[Sölf]

Hello there, Era!

So, this question is probably more relevant for small indie studios or lone programmers, who are active in all areas of the development and not just, for example, music or art.

I myself have been working with various RPG Maker engines since 2000. Since then I have created various games and while I no longer have my oldest games, the ones I have am still playing even today on a fairly regular basis (at least if those are actual games and not just 5-10 minute concept design thingies). I do know of other people from the german RPG Maker scene that only play their games for testing purpose or maybe once when it's done, but beyond that they basically never touch their own games again.

So, what about the developers here on Era? Do you actually play your own games, more than once, even after they have been completed for a few months or even years? Or do you only play them maybe once and then never touch them again?

 

[CypherSignal]

Since I'm doing programming, and focusing on various systems or various odds-and-ends, during development, I'll almost always only look at a certain level or area of a game if it has a specific bug to investgate - otherwise I'm looking at the same 10-30 minutes over and over because that covers enough of the bases for everything I'm doing. I mention this because it means there are just some areas in the game I never see before release so that if I do want to play it, I'm still able to go in fresh and enjoy a lot of it, which may be different from someone who's doing writing or design work across the whole game.

Anyway, having worked on a lot of games, I've found I end up with wildly different relationships with each one. Some of them I can comfortably load up and play and drop 50+ hours into the retail version and have a great time (even while doing active development on the updates for it at work...!) but some of them leave me in a miserable or angry state for one reason or another and I can barely look at the game before turning it off. I could probably go back to most of them and have a decent time playing them, but I'm sure I'd end up with a relatively unique nostalgia, as I would be associated the games with the memories I have of the people I worked with on it, or some particularly hairy bug, or what, and the game becomes an instrument to reflect on those memories more than anything else.

 

[Gestault]

So one of very few published games I worked on was art for an older Blue's Clues title when they were introducing her baby brother for the first time. I was subcontracted through PlayFirst. The project needed to be a rush job its whole duration, so we were just trying to get something out there that was functional and hit (enough of) the official specs.

I've hesitantly re-played it a couple times over the years out of sheer curiosity to the result. A lot of what I put into it still had several passes that were out of my hands, so it wasn't even always clear what had been me and what was added in by leads. I showed it to some friends and did almost a full playthrough there out of sheer self-depricating fascination.

 

[AxeVince]

Have worked on two games that are out and I did play them, but not right at launch.
First one is SP, finished main story, second has both a campaign and multiplayer (played mostly the campaign).

It helped that I worked on only a small part of the game each time, even though I knew the main story of both and we had a lot of playsession on the second one.

The one I am currently working on is the same. I only work on system and outside of testing, don't play it much during the development period, so I am expecting to play it to completion when it is out.

I must admit though that I can be very angry with bugs I find when I have left the project before the end and they would have ended in my area of expertise ^^

 

[Naseer]

The studio I work at develops mainly multiplayer shooters. As such I do play our games months or years after release.

To be perfectly honest, after the first few months I tend to let the games rest until we do a content update, I then jump back into the game mostly to see how players react to the new stuff we've added.

Although we have daily mandatory playtests, seeing our games in the hands of gamers is quite a different experience.

 

[_Matsuko_]

I'm not separating profesional and personal life so, I don't play my own games, except at work.

 

[useyourloaf]

I've got some Android games I developed on the Play Store. Yeah, I still play a couple of them every now and then, and not just to check that they are still working on new OS updates. They rock!

 

[HandsomeCharles]

Sometimes. It can be very tiring to work on a game every day from 9-5 (If you're lucky) and then play that game in your spare time too. I have great respect for those developers who manage to do that.

In my own personal experience, I would play the games as they launched but then taper off fairly quickly. In one instance I was brought onto a project to work on updates, and I ended up playing that one for a fairly significant length of time afterwards. I love reading reviews and feedback though. Even if I'm not interested in playing the game myself, I certainly want to make sure that others are!

 

[D2M15]

After ship? Jesus, no. I cut out the middle man by setting up tailored Google searches for negative reactions to my content.

 

[TubaZef]

Not the ones I'm paid to do, don't think I've ever worked on a game that I actually enjoyed.

My personal projects yes, I'm making them exactly because they're games that I would like to play.

Edit: Not right after they're released though. When the project is finished you don't want to look at that thing for at least one year.