I’m going to stop estimating it. I’m always wrong, as you’ll have noticed, and however much I forewarn you about that, I hate having to change the ETA again and again. It feels like I’m artificially creating a constant stream of bad news for you guys, about a project that’s going incredibly well, is fun to do, and that I’m making quickly and efficiently.

This is even dumber than it sounds. The single biggest advantage of being completely indie is that you have no external influences dictating how and when the game gets made. Even you guys aren’t particularly pressuring me: whenever I do announce a delay, the comments are calm and wise: Fair enough / Take your time / Do it right.

But I don’t believe you. I work in fear of an imaginary community in my head, one that’s always on the verge of losing patience with me and interest in the game.

I took a week off work recently to work on Gunpoint full time, working 6am to midnight most days, and getting a crazy amount done. But the first time something took longer than I’d scheduled for, I panicked.

It soured everything. I felt stressed, disillusioned about the virtue of what I was adding, and it got harder to focus. I started to get that feeling I sometimes had when I started on Gunpoint: “What if it turns out I’m just not smart enough to do this?”

The ETA was actually damaging the game, and that was the last straw for ETAs.

Estimating how long something will take to code is like estimating how long it’ll take to crack a combination padlock. If it’s the first code I try? No time at all. If it’s none of the first 999? It’s going to take a while. You don’t know how long unless you know which attempt will succeed, and if you knew that the problem would already be solved.

My only objectives are to make an exciting game, and make it efficiently – using testing feedback to focus on what it really needs, and re-evaluating what I’m working on, how long it’s taking, and whether it’s the best use of that time. I got that part down fairly early on, and it’s part of what makes Gunpoint fun to work on: I can see it rapidly getting better in both my own playtests and other people’s feedback. I’m just going to stop adding arbitrary pressures to that cycle.

Thanks to everyone who’s been so cool about it so far. I’ll still be blogging a lot about the process and progress here, and if you like, I can just e-mail you when it’s out.