Fail hard, fail fast – making the most of it

Most cultures see failure as a negative thing – we grow up to be ashamed and scared of it, and avoid it at any cost. As a developer, publisher or player in the games industry, failing can mean rising against the odds and learning from the experience. We are phoenixes.

Even when out of sight, our minds go to motivated reasoning mode, finding excuses to explain the failure and make it ‘not our fault’. That’s a common coping mechanism, a way for us to dismiss the negative and focus on the positive. However, that is not always the best approach, on either a personal or a professional level. The saying ‘Fail Hard, Fail Fast’ aims to encourage game developers to embrace failure, learn from it and become better people and professionals from the experience.

Jack Ma, from 阿里巴巴集团 , once said “ It doesn't matter if I failed. At least I passed the concept on to others. Even if I don't succeed, someone will succeed. [And] if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength."?

“Failure to me doesn't mean not trying or not succeeding. To me it means either not learning from an experience, or not trying at all and regretting it later”, expands Martine Spaans , from Tamalaki .

Jacki Vause ?? GDC/PocketGamerConnects San Francisco , from Dimoso , adds “Failure to me is giving up. In my eyes, you should never give up. Persistence, when tasks or times are tough, doesn't mean repeating the same approach - it means looking consistently to other approaches for a challenge. If you give up without trying everything you can, then that is a failure. Sometimes you do have to give up because you can't force a situation, but that decision should be taken in the full knowledge that you have tried your utmost.”

So, the games industry embraces failures, but how do we detect them in time? And how do we cope with the losses?

We all heard the saying ‘Kill your darlings’ at some point. It is the art of calling it quits on a project, no matter how attached we are to it. But how can we know the best timing to act upon it? These are a few tools that can help you make the right decision:

1. First of all, make sure you and your team have the right skills to tackle the project at hand. Innovating is important, but having the right skills for the challenge ahead helps you secure a better chance of completing the tasks. The best ideas in the world mean nothing if you can’t execute them properly.
2. Be smart about the projects you choose, especially if you’re limited in resources; choosing the largest projects ever might not help your chances of success. That doesn’t mean thinking small - not at all - it just means you need to assess the assignments critically and realistically and act accordingly. If you decide to take upon a Herculean task, be aware of the challenges ahead and try to find solutions early.??
3. Test your ideas as soon as possible, even in early concept phases, and to a large enough group of people. Go beyond friends and family, and expand the test group as much as you can. That will not only allow you to check how your community reacts to your idea, but it will also help you build a community in the first place. I know many are afraid of having their ideas stolen but it is harder to steal an idea than we believe, and developing it to fruition is even harder. So put fear aside and test your concept right from the start.?

A good example of early testing is what the 2Awesome Studio did with the AK-xolotl game, by taking the early concept to TikTok and other social media platforms, interacting with the community and creating a game the audience was excited about. Does it mean they are now rich and famous? No, but it meant they got their Kickstarter campaign funded in four hours and didn’t have to struggle as much to do what they love as a career. It was a step in the right direction.

Another good example is Rovio Entertainment ’s famous Angry Birds story, where they tested over 50 games before landing on Angry Birds. Had they developed all 50 games, they would probably have been bankrupt before success could reach them, so test ahead.

Don’t be ashamed to get negative feedback. That’s part of the game.

“Failure in game development isn't anything that you should be ashamed of. Usually, even in failed projects, teams make a ton of great stuff, but it’s just something that didn't work out correctly, and that is what allows one to see where one can improve”, says Jussi Autio , from Resistance Games . “But on successes, usually most major things worked out fine and the difference is a lack of failure in some fields. As such, it's more difficult to learn from successes as nothing looks straight in your face.”

This takes us to another tool to deal with failures: take them as lessons to be applied in the next project. For that, don’t just give up without deeper analysis. Check everything you have at hand, study every piece of data and analyse every piece of feedback. Find the aspects that impeded the project to move further forward and use that as fuel for future endeavours. Once this is done, they cease being failures anymore, but all experiences - negative or positive - are valid.

It is a balance: be self-critical for learning purposes, but be kind to yourself. Beating yourself up for mistakes made will not change the outcome, so remember we are all learning every day and mistakes are part of life.

Autio ads: “Failure can feel like the end of the world. And sometimes money-wise it can be such for the company. But the team or individuals should use that as a learning experience. To reflect and to analyse. And that in turn will make you a better developer which everyone will appreciate.”

Also, remember that no matter how bad the current experience seems to be, it is just a stone in your path. You can and will do better next time, just use this pitfall as a tool to push yourself forward in the next step.

We know that having tools to cope with failure and/or seeing it in an educational light doesn’t soften the bitter feeling of having a project you nurtured not succeeding, but that feeling will surely change once you put your heart into a new endeavour and fight for it again.

“My advice for dealing with failure would be to evaluate, and then let go. When you know what went wrong, you've learned something. That's a valuable experience for the future. You have now turned failure into a meaningful learning experience. Dragging negative feelings about failure with you does not serve you, so just try to let that go.” says Spaans.

Remember this, pushing forward or taking a step back, the goal remains reachable even if it seems impossible at times. And remember you have partners like us at 4Players, happy to support you when you need this help.