Dev Log 003

(Please note: The following text was translated with AI assistance. For full accuracy, please refer to the original Chinese announcement.)

Hello everyone!

This is still a log from the early stages of development. Sharing these thoughts is purely a personal interest of mine!

The Process of Developing a Baseball Game

Back in high school, I got into a well-known Japanese baseball game series (the one with the Q-style, bobble-head characters), starting with the titles on handheld consoles. It was one of the few games that could keep me hooked for months on end; I'd even occasionally pick it up and play years later.

Because of that, I was deeply impressed by baseball-themed games, especially the player development system in that particular series. Whenever I was designing games, I often wanted to incorporate that kind of character progression. Most of those proposals were shot down, though.

Anyway, back to the main topic. After abandoning the multiple game plans I mentioned in previous logs, I chose a baseball theme for my new project. At the time, I thought to myself, "Making a simple auto-battle baseball system should be easy, right?"

After all, how hard could it be? It's just a bunch of text scrolling by, and you just have to set the stats correctly. In my initial, overly ambitious plan, I was even cocky enough to plan for a wide array of "skills," because that baseball game's variety of skills—even the gold-tier ones—made the experience so much richer. Of course, I wanted to do that.

Then, I started to actually write out the game's design document. "What are the reasonable rules for setting a starting lineup?" "How do I write balanced rules for pitching substitutions?" "A caught stealing could end the game prematurely!?" Suddenly, a flood of workflow problems I had never even considered appeared.

And as I detailed each system, the match flow itself was pushed further down the priority list. It seemed so simple in the outline phase. When I actually started planning it seriously, I just wanted to get in a time machine and strangle the me from two months ago...

Unfortunately, because I had already wasted so much time on repetitive planning, I didn't have the luxury of making another major pivot or starting a ninth project.

So, I had to grit my teeth and push forward. During the process, I genuinely thought, "How wonderful turn-based RPGs are." Your turn, my turn, and it's over when HP hits zero. As a beginner in actual game development, I had really picked a "simple" and great genre for myself, hadn't I!

Due to this winding process and the limits of my own development skills, this game ultimately became very simple. The player characters only have basic stats and none of the rich variety of skills seen in other baseball games. Naturally, the gameplay depth from stat-building is limited.

As a result, the game's main story and the recruitable character storylines became even more crucial. Since I never planned to have manual gameplay (like pitching or batting), you could say that if the story isn't fun, the turn-by-turn process of this game would become dull, even meaningless.

Back when I was hiding under the big umbrella of a company, I did write some scripts and design characters. To be frank, when the writing was good, I was happy to see players discussing how great the story was. But when it was bad and got criticized for being immature, it just stung a little; it wasn't a fatal blow to my salary. But now, with these two elements as the main selling points, and with me still working on the systems and not even having started the scriptwriting phase... all I can say is, it's honestly terrifying.

It was at this moment that I suddenly understood why my boss, back in my game industry days, always made decisions that baffled me. No one can predict the final shape of a game at the very beginning of its development (unless you're just cloning a finished project).

Imagination is always beautiful. Reality comes along and brutally beats down your fantasies when problems pop up one by one. So what do you do then? Start a new project?

I looked back at the skeletons of those seven other projects and shook my head. "The only thing left to do is to make this project 'good'," I thought to myself, encouraging myself to finish it within the scope of my abilities.

Today's log ends here. Thanks for reading