Trusting Gut Instinct in Game Development

Lately the word ‘gut’ has raised its head in connection with many occasions on social media and work, so I decided to add my input to how ‘gut’ should be perceived and used as a tool. 💡

Nowadays instead of pure ‘gut’, I’m treating it as a combination of:
– experience as a gamer,
– experience as a game developer, plus
– know-how, insights, existing data such as market data, player research findings, competitive data, etc. 🎯

Given above, in short, it is more than a best guess – one could say it is in many cases even more data-informed than one would thought about it. So, if someone is questioning your gut and saying not to trust to it, I believe in many cases it showcases immature thinking, as gut should have certainly a higher prio than that.❗️

Why gut plays a big role in our decisions? For example at early stage of development, there are some good data, but then there are more data that needs to be taken as grain of salt. Like any early testing data for creatives for defining art direction, measuring CTR, or design/product decisions, without having an actual game there to add engagement measurement into the mix, you might even get false positives as you wouldn’t know does your results correlate with engagement. This means you should also, with the results in mind, base your decisions still also on your gut as trusting only on test data can get you to wrong road. ⚠️

I find it funny that even this should be pretty simple thing to realize, there are still e.g., investors and developers trusting more on early testing than they should. Like it is the only thing to trust into. It can complement things but when aiming to trust it fully, usually no-one does it on a level where you conduct so many tests that you actually might have something there on a more solid basis. Efforts on this front should be used more wisely, plus everyone should realize how much gut is in the play – and why that is okay. It kinda tells a lot about immaturity on this side of things that so many doesn’t see the bigger picture and still lean only on something that can screw your road ahead. 🤔

I also think you can educate and complement your gut, which should be done. How? Playing games, keeping eyes open on macro level, studying your competitors, conducting tests (and realizing that they might be biased if you don’t really go over certain thresholds), etc. 💪

Hope this is useful. How you all treat gut in decision-making?💡