Essential 7 Rules for Successful Postmortem Indie Insights

Essential 7 Rules for Successful Postmortem Indie Insights

So, your Kickstarter flopped. Or maybe your game launched, and the sales figures are… less than inspiring. It stings, doesn’t it? But instead of wallowing, let’s turn this disappointment into your greatest learning opportunity. This is where the postmortem comes in.

Think of a postmortem as an autopsy for your project. You dissect what went wrong (and right!), identify the root causes, and extract invaluable lessons for future games. But postmortems can easily go off the rails. Blame games, defensiveness, and vague “we need to market better” conclusions are common pitfalls.

How do you avoid these traps and get real, actionable insights? The key is honesty, structure, and a willingness to embrace imperfection. These seven rules, viewed through the lens of a game development journal, will guide you.

Rule #1: Date and Context are King (and Queen)

Imagine flipping back to a journal entry from six months ago, detailing your excitement about a new feature. It failed miserably. Without context, you might dismiss the idea outright. But the journal entry reminds you of the reasoning behind it: a desire to address player feedback about the game’s difficulty curve. The feature failed, but the underlying problem remains.

Journal Entry Example:

Date: 2023-10-26

“Just implemented the ‘Dynamic Difficulty Adjuster’ feature. Feels clunky now, but I’m convinced it will smooth out the late-game grind. Players were complaining about the steep difficulty spike.”

Insight: The specific implementation was flawed, but the core problem of the difficulty spike needs addressing. Explore alternative solutions.

Rule #2: Focus on Systems, Not Individuals

Pointing fingers gets you nowhere. Your postmortem should analyze the processes, tools, and communication channels that led to the outcome. Not the people. Did your art pipeline bottleneck development? Was your marketing plan based on assumptions rather than data?

Pitfall: “The artist was too slow.”

Better: “The asset creation pipeline was inefficient. We need to improve communication between design and art, and explore tools for faster iteration.”

Rule #3: Be Brutally Honest (with Yourself)

This is the hardest rule. Did you ignore warning signs because you were too invested in your original vision? Did you cut corners on playtesting? Sugarcoating the truth helps no one. Your game development log should be a safe space for radical self-reflection.

Example: Reviewing your game development log may reveal a pattern of skipping user testing in favor of adding new features. Acknowledge it.

Rule #4: Quantify Where Possible

“We needed more marketing” is a useless conclusion. What kind of marketing? How much? What was the expected ROI? If you tracked key metrics in your game dev log, now is the time to analyze them.

Example: If you meticulously tracked your advertising spend and click-through rates in your journal, you can identify which campaigns were effective and which were a waste of money.

Rule #5: Identify Actionable Next Steps

A postmortem is worthless if it doesn’t lead to change. For each problem you identify, define concrete, measurable actions. “Improve communication” is vague. “Implement daily stand-up meetings with clear agendas” is actionable.

Example: “Reduce asset creation time by 20% by implementing a standardized asset library and using procedural generation tools.”

Rule #6: Prioritize Ruthlessly

You’ll likely uncover a laundry list of issues. Don’t try to fix everything at once. Focus on the areas that will have the biggest impact on your next project. What are the 20% of problems that caused 80% of the pain?

Example: If inconsistent art style was a major issue, prioritize standardizing your art pipeline before tackling minor design flaws.

Rule #7: Document Everything - In a Journal

This brings us back to the beginning. All these insights are fleeting unless you capture them systematically. A game development journal is your postmortem’s best friend. It provides the historical context, the detailed observations, and the objective data you need to conduct an effective analysis. It is where you track your progress, note the wins, log failures, and more.

By tracking your game development progress daily, you’re building an invaluable database for future postmortems. Instead of relying on memory, you have a detailed record of your decisions, your challenges, and your learnings. This makes the postmortem process more objective, more insightful, and ultimately, more valuable.

So, stop launching projects blind. Start capturing your development journey. If you want to organize your creative process effectively, and implement a game development log from day one, then check out our game development journal and start turning your challenges into opportunities.