Welcome to SpeedRunGames.
My name is Christian Teister and I am an independent games developer living in Hamburg, Germany. Currently I am the only person behind SpeedRunGames. That’s why it is even more important to have a strong development philosophy. So, here it comes.

Mission Statement:

  1. It’s all about fun! Games that just keep the player occupied waste life-time. Make the game fun – make it worth playing!
  2. Work within your limits. The goal is not solving problems, but completing a great game. Don’t waste money or manpower on problems that can be resolved with a small smart loophole. Always look out for loopholes!
  3. Have a strong vision and defend it. Stay focused. Keep the design clear. Drop all ideas, which do not fit into and support the vision of the game. Even if the ideas are really good ones, be ruthless.
  4. Important Things First! Always focus on the feature that is most important to your game. Don´t waste energy on unnecessary details, but still keep track of your decisions and reasons. Make decisions at the least responsible moment.
  5. Let ideas rest! Never rely on your first feeling. A few days later think about your ideas with the benefit of hindsight. Many good ideas aren’t as great as you may have thought.
  6. Designing means thinking and not coding. Don´t work all the time on the game in front of a computer. Step back at least one hour per day and explore ideas using only your mind. Write down explored ideas to free your mind.
  7. Remove bad ideas quickly! If you have a bad feeling about something: Fix it as early as possible. Don´t live with broken windows. Don´t hesitate throwing bad ideas or solutions away. Investing energy in a bad idea will never turn it into a good one. This would only be a waste of time.
  8. High standard for quality assurance! Test early, regularly and involve with many different people. Study their emotions; tell them to think loud and keep track of their thoughts. Check whether new ideas are worth investing energy. To test early means reducing the costs of dropping ideas/features. Testing is also a great source of motivation.
  9. Keep balance between frustration and happiness! That’s the key to a great game-experience. Use techniques like upgrades, stats, social status, story, visualization of progress and praise – whatever makes the player bear more frustration. But also ensure that the player gets frustrated once in a while – failing means that the player has to rethink his strategy, which will add depth to the game.
  10. Tell stories with the environment. Questions are more interesting than answers. Still, keep the story simple.
  11. Use some kind of version-control and create multiple backups.
  12. Optimize and automate yourself regularly! Ensure that you never make mistakes twice. Use Python and regular expressions to support yourself. Use tools that help you and always have a look for better tools.
  13. Learn from others. Copy, modify, but never think you could get better without practice. Don´t reinvent the wheel, but code on your own as well. Keep your mind open. Get inspirations from others. Ask experts for their help and their opinion. It helps!
  14. Be proud of what you have achieved!