I believe many of us are constantly asking advice from others, it happens that some of this advice doesn't apply to every situation. Then there is the inevitable Horse$#1t of advice, that just never stood a chance. So what game development type of advice have you received, that turned out to be completely wrong, it must be advice you tried to follow. Keep it friendly and with no names. 

Bad:

"Publish all the games you make"- This was by far the worst piece of advice I have ever followed. Read it in a article where a developer mentioned that they published their first game they ever made and it made more money than the rest of their games. What I didn't know at the time, was that was the developers first finished game; not first attempt at a game ever.

Foolishly I uploaded every attempt, ruining my own developer reputation before it could ever takeoff. It never recovered and I publish under a different name these days.

Good:

"Why not consider hiring? If this is something you want to say "all content created by me" but if you're just needing better sound, hire some one!" This is the short version of it but it was the advice that send me down the right path. For years I had this "Engines are bad, do everything yourself" mentality. Then this advice about sound, something I didn't consider important at the time, made me hire my first team member.

It was a small step in the right direction that allowed me to break past my own stubbornness. It still took five years after that for my first taste of success.

So any experiences you are willing to share?

Nice post.  

The best advice I've ever received was to stop being a perfectionist.

The worst advice I've received was from a long time friend who I brought on with my company under marketing... The idea my friend had was to buy fake followers, likes, traffic, reviews, and whatever else we could to give the "illusion" of a trendy and popular app. Long story short, we're no longer in business together, and sadly our friendship went down the tubes as well. I refused to do any of this garbage as part of the marketing strategy used for the app, especially unethical activities.

(Opps - I noticed it was a "Game Design" question, so I guess I don't have anything that really stands out on the "bad" side)

27 minutes ago, Rutin said:

(Opps - I noticed it was a "Game Design" question, so I guess I don't have anything that really stands out on the "bad" side)

It counts as game design, at least in this topic. Marketing is a large part of designing a game and this is clearly a design choice.

When I think of all the bad marketing advice it makes me cringe. It also always seems to be the people close to developers that give the worst marketing advice, everyone just looks at a few apps and think they know how it works. 

The whole spirit of this topic is theory vs practice. Because a concept or idea often crumbles when it suddenly faces real life situations. A deceitful marketing strategy not making it past the developer's ideals, not to mention if discover will have dire consequences, is very much within the topic.

28 minutes ago, Scouting Ninja said:

It counts as game design, at least in this topic. Marketing is a large part of designing a game and this is clearly a design choice.

When I think of all the bad marketing advice it makes me cringe. It also always seems to be the people close to developers that give the worst marketing advice, everyone just looks at a few apps and think they know how it works. 

 

The whole spirit of this topic is theory vs practice. Because a concept or idea often crumbles when it suddenly faces real life situations. A deceitful marketing strategy not making it past the developer's ideals, not to mention if discover will have dire consequences, is very much within the topic.

The sad thing is that he runs a marketing firm.  There were other questionable ideas I had received regarding the visual design from him, but thankfully I have someone on my team now who actually knows what they're doing.

Lesson learned was not to work in business with close friends because it's not worth burning a friendship if things go sour.

On 8/20/2018 at 5:38 PM, Scouting Ninja said:

It counts as game design, at least in this topic.

I changed the topic title from "design" to "development."

In a certain computing magazine, years ago, they had a tutorial series and one entry offered the worst possible advice ever...

"Just copy'n'paste code from online tutorials because if it doesn't work then you haven't lost anything.  People who spend years learning computing at university and read books are idiots who are wasting their time..."

...and the wording was pretty much to that effect.  I had learned the folly of this golden nugget years before where you do lose something; time and the opportunity for knowledge that that serves you beyond your current task.  When one rides on the coat-tails of others without a proper understanding of their work, you are doomed to give up at every hurdle and look for another option, a quick fix.  But if you have made the effort to learn a language properly then if that cut'n'paste code doesn't work, chances are you will know how to fix it so that it does work.  Also, you might not be wasting your time looking for such tutorials in the first place...

So to all the budding game developers out there;  Programming is the "martial art" necessary for making games. With practice and study, your journey will much easier...

Best advice? Ah, easy!  There was this article about the beauty of the Quake 3 engine code, and the lesson was "Just because they don't see the code behind a game - even if it works - doesn't mean you should write awful code. Have pride in your work and keep it tidy". 

Looking at John Carmack's code for Wolf3D, Doom and the Quakes, and it confirms a gut-feeling I've always had; programming is not just the domain of mathematicians and computer scientists - it is an art similar to writing a damn good book; a computer programmer is also an author.  I took to spending separate sessions for code maintenance and, as a consequence, began to experience far fewer errors and less debugging time.  When I run out of code to maintain on my current project I then return to previous projects and tidy them.

So if anyone is wondering when they will advance to that level of being good programmer, then its when you become the author of a bestseller! 

3 minutes ago, Anri said:

"Just copy'n'paste code from online tutorials because if it doesn't work then you haven't lost anything.  People who spend years learning computing at university and read books are idiots who are wasting their time..."

Wow, this is what we used to call "script kiddies" when I was starting out. There are people to this day that are still trying to be "programmers" by copying and pasting code and have no clue what is going on, then they go to forums looking for help on why it doesn't work with the other code they mixed. Some things never change!  

There is something to be said about having the ability to just think of what you want to do in code and accomplish it without even looking for resources. It's a great feeling! The amount of time these people spend being "script kiddies" trying to patch up random snippets of code could've been better served actually learning to code. What horrid advice to be posted in a magazine.

Thanks for sharing @Anri

8 minutes ago, Rutin said:

Wow, this is what we used to call "script kiddies" when I was starting out. There are people to this day that are still trying to be "programmers" by copying and pasting code and have no clue what is going on, then they go to forums looking for help on why it doesn't work with the other code they mixed. Some things never change!  

There is something to be said about having the ability to just think of what you want to do in code and accomplish it without even looking for resources. It's a great feeling! The amount of time these people spend being "script kiddies" trying to patch up random snippets of code could've been better served actually learning to code. What horrid advice to be posted in a magazine.

Thanks for sharing @Anri

You're welcome, Rutin. 

Funny you mention that, because the ones who disagree and think its great advice have always been web programmers using HTML and Javascript!  I don't think less of them though, because it obviously works for them in their field.  But for making a game - using XNA and C# - it was just damn reckless when a game demands a lot more than just tags and a little functionality.  And then saying someone is an idiot for studying and practing their craft was beyond belief!  It would be like going up to Gordon Ramsey and ridiculing him for not using frozen food and a microwave...

23 minutes ago, Anri said:

Funny you mention that, because the ones who disagree and think its great advice have always been web programmers using HTML and Javascript!

This is why I get a lot of business coming into my IT company. We redo and fix up countless scripts that look like they've been patched together using snippets from various sources. I used to know a few Javascript "coders" that copy and pasted as the norm when doing projects for others... I guess that is how they did things on a regular basis. When I get projects we code everything from the ground up, and only "re-use" working code we've made.

I honestly believe that it's extremely important to get proper advice when starting out because that's when you're building your core foundation. 

30 minutes ago, Rutin said:

We redo and fix up countless scripts that look like they've been patched together using snippets from various sources.

That must be a nightmare!  o_O