The snowball effect can boost your productivity – and mood

Disclaimer: This DevLog is intended to help anyone, who is in a similar situation we are in at the moment. Everyone has to make their own decisions. This merely is our own honest view and opinion, based on our experience. We would love to hear from you, what you think about it all. We wish you all the success and fun you deserve with the development and release of your game! eXplore Studio

If you are not familiar with the concept of the snowball effect, ‘it is a process that starts from an initial state of small significance and builds upon itself. The common analogy is with the rolling of a snowball down a snow-covered hillside. As it rolls, the ball will pick up more snow, gaining more mass and surface area, and picking up even more snow and momentum as it rolls along.’* As it happens, this concept can be easily applied to any working environment and will definitely help boost your productivity – and mood.

When you have a substantial task ahead of you, whether it is related to designing a new feature for your indie game, animating it, or coding it for example, questions arise and stress level increases: ‘How am I going to tackle it?’ ‘Where do I even begin?’ You feel overwhelmed even before making a start. So, what if you were approaching your work in a different manner? What if, instead of focusing only on the final product, you were breaking it down into smaller pieces, a series of steps easier to achieve, a succession of mini tasks, which, when tied up all together, would bring your final product to life. For instance, if your goal is to create a face for one of your main characters, you may want to split it out into a number of smaller, specific, and detailed parts: shape, eyes, nose, mouth and lips, cheeks, ears and hair, texture, pigmentation…etc… Your starting point will then be the most effortless pieces of work you can complete in a minimum of time, the ‘quick wins’. And you will build on these immediate results, the snowball effect. This way, each time you are completing a task, you are progressing towards the final product. A sense of achievement becomes visible at a great rate, boosting your productivity and therefore, your mood.

So, fellow game developers, if you are not doing it yet, how about giving it a try? Just see how it works for you breaking down your work into a number of smaller, specific, and detailed chunks. Look for the ‘quick wins’ first and build on them. Then step back, consider your achievements and how they make you feel…

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_effect