2 weeks. 1 game. About this project.

My name is Martin and I’m the developer and project leader of AirlineSim (as the name suggests, a business simulation game about airlines). Next January, this project will be 10 years old and I will have spent around 40% of my life with it since I started it in my late teen years.

So what is this? About the project.

For online games there is nothing like a “finished state”. They are more like a living organism that evolves over time but is never really done in the sense of a car rolling off the assembly line. If you spent a large chunk of your life with a single project like this the feeling of “having finished something” tends to get lost. You work every day and you complete many small tasks, but in the big picture you feel like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill. 

Since timing permits (see below), I decided to give a try to an idea I’ve had for several weeks now: Pick some basic concepts I always wanted to see in a business simulation game, boil them down to their essential components and put them all in a simple game. Finish this game within a strictly defined timeframe - two weeks in this case - without thinking about future expansions. The game has to be playable after these two weeks but may naturally lack many bells and whistles. 

Personally, I want to see how far I can get within two weeks on a new project under the premise of delivering something that’s “finished”. The opposite of a 10-year project without a deadline.

Why now? About the timing.

A few weeks from now the team of AirlineSim and I will decide on the roadmap of the game for the next 10 to 12 months and until then, everything kind of goes into hibernation. That’s because we have some pretty large changes in mind for our next major milestone and every development work invested in the game right now might prove to be obsolete within a few week’s time.

Just before April 2nd I will have to make the final preparations for the roadmap meeting, right after that date all focus will be back on AirlineSim and other long-term projects. This leaves me with a small time window and the rare opportunity to use it for other things than AirlineSim. 

What will it look like? About the game.

I have a pretty clear picture of what the game should look like after the two weeks are up. I have no clue whether I can finish everything on the list within my self-set deadline though. Therefore I will not release the full concept until everything is over to keep expectations low and a backdoor for last-minute changes open.

All I can tell you right now is that it will be a business-simulation game (what else) and that it will center on the circulation of goods and money within a more or less closed economic cycle.

What happens after the two weeks? About future plans.

The point is to have the fundamental mechanics of the game implemented within two weeks. If it works, think about building on top of it. If it doesn’t, throw it away and forget about it. To actually be able to make this decision, the game has to be playable and open to a broader audience than just me or my circle of friends.

The two-week constraint exists to prevent the project from eating up more time than it’s allowed to and thereby keeping me focused on the absolute essentials of the game. That doesn’t mean that development will stop per se after the initial project is completed. But after these two weeks other projects will require my attention again and I will only continue putting energy into the outcome of the 2WP if it proves to be worth it. Simple as that.