Features versus content

Another trap that fledgling game developers fall into is reducing the scope of their ideas in ways that still prove the project impossible. For example, they'll say: "I don't want to set my sights too high, so I'm going to make a game like Gran Turismo, except with fewer cars," or "I want to make Diablo with smaller levels," or "I'm going to build World of Warcraft with fewer classes and about half the items."

To understand why this approach is so dangerous is to understand a little more about how games are put together. The two issues here are features and content. All things being equal, a game with 50 levels has more content than a game with five levels. The 50-level game has ten times more content, but both games have the same feature: levels. A role-playing game with 12 character classes has more content than a game with three character classes, but they both have the same feature: character classes.

So, while you may recognize that it's more work to build additional content for a game, try to peer behind the curtain and recognize the number of features that go into a game. Every feature that your game supports takes more work, and sometimes it's easier to build 20 different enemies for a game than to actually build the enemies feature.