Features versus content

Another trap fledgling game developers fall into is reducing the scope of their ideas in ways that still prove the project impossible. For example, they'll say, "I don't want to set my sights too high, so I'm going to make a game such as Gran Turismo, except with fewer cars," or "I want to make Diablo III with smaller levels," or "I'm going to build World of Warcraft with fewer classes and about half the items".

To understand why this approach is so dangerous we'll have to understand a little more about how games are put together. The two issues here are features and content. All things being equal, a game with 50 levels has more content than a game with 5 levels. The 50-level game has ten times more content, but both games have the same feature: levels. A role-playing game with twelve character classes has more content than a game with three character classes, but they both have the same feature: character classes.

So, while you may recognize that it's more work to...