First Quality, then Efficiency

In game development, quality is measured by the gap between what players expect and what they experience. If players approach your game with high expectations and discover that it surpasses them, they will be delighted. Just as importantly, if they come in with modest expectations and the game still surprises them, they will walk away equally delighted. In both cases, quality is about exceeding expectations.

Efficiency, by contrast, is about the path we take to reach that level of quality. It’s finding the shortest, smartest, and least wasteful route to achieving the standard we’ve set for the game or any of its parts. Efficiency impacts scope and quality, which in turn shape how players experience the game. But here’s the truth: players don’t know—or care—how efficient we were in development. They only care about the final experience in their hands.

The challenge, then, is not to optimize for efficiency first but to prioritize quality. Delighting players must be the primary goal. That means embedding quality into our processes, our decision-making, and our daily work. Only once we’re confident that we’ve reached the level of quality our players expect should we turn our focus to efficiency—eliminating waste, streamlining workflows, and refining how we build.

In short: quality comes first; efficiency follows. Get this order wrong, and you risk making a polished process that produces an unremarkable game. Get it right, and you’ll build games that both delight players and sustain the teams who create them.

Let’s go make a great game!