What are the best strategies for deciding when to pivot during game prototyping?

1 Define your goals and criteria

Before you start prototyping, you should have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, and how you will measure your progress and success. You should define your goals and criteria for your prototype, such as the target audience, the core gameplay loop, the desired feedback, the scope, and the budget. Having these parameters will help you evaluate your prototype objectively, and identify the gaps and issues that need to be addressed.

2 Test early and often

One of the main purposes of prototyping is to test your assumptions and hypotheses, and get feedback from your target users and stakeholders. You should test your prototype as early and as often as possible, using various methods such as playtesting, surveys, interviews, analytics, and usability testing. Testing will help you validate or invalidate your ideas, and discover what works and what doesn't. You should also document and analyze your test results, and use them to inform your next steps.

4 Know when to stop or pivot

Knowing when to stop or pivot during prototyping is one of the most challenging aspects. You should have a clear exit strategy and indicators that signal when it's time to move on. These indicators could include reaching predefined milestones or deadlines, validating or invalidating core hypotheses, receiving consistent and conclusive feedback from users and stakeholders, encountering an unsolvable technical or design problem, or discovering a better alternative. When you decide to stop or pivot, you should communicate your decision and rationale to your team and stakeholders, document the prototype, and learn from your experience.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?