JTTS Postmortem On Motivation

It been a long time since I have talked about JTTS, and now after a year since suspending development I think it is time to write a Postmortem and reflect on what I learn while developing this game.  I think this will be a good exercise, so here we go! 

Motivation During Development: 

Making games is hard. I think everyone knows this, it requires a lot of talent and dedication to sit down and make something. However, it is even more difficult to stay motivated to finish a project after you have been working on it for about two years. Especially when the key to your inspiration is primarily something relevant to your life at that moment.  I don't think I made it a secret in my blog post that JTTS was a game made for my then girlfriend and I to play together. The motivation I had for making and finishing the game was that relationship we had. Of course, being the game’s only developer, the game was a product of my artistic vision and ambition. But my motivation to keep working was somewhere else. When that relationship ended, so did my will to work on the game. 

I remember telling myself after I stopped development was "The next game I make is going to be a game that I want to play." So, what did I learn from JTTS? While as artists and developers it is ok to look for inspiration from different parts of your life, when you are working on something as big as a game, you need to make sure that this part of your life is going to part of you for the long foreseeable. Games are a lot like tattoos. Do not get someone's name tattooed on your body, it might be very embarrassing later down the line.