“Timesinks” are a nebulous thing. You’d think they’d be easy to avoid, just don’t do anything non-essential to development. Right?
Well, not really. Take this website, for instance.
We started working on it at around 5pm, and didn’t finish it, fully, until after midnight. A massive, horrifying timesink that came with strange problems that needed debugged and caused no progress for the project.
Why did we start?
We felt that now was the time to start a development blog, and thought it would be quick and easy to throw together. By the time we were several hours in, it was too late, we now had to finish what we were doing on it.
Could it have been avoided?
Probably not.
Why couldn’t it have been avoided?
Well, we’d eventually need a development blog to keep players up to date on the development of the game, and to muse or share ideas and thoughts (like this one).
So, ultimately, the question is less “Can I avoid Timesinks?” and more “When should I allocate time for this Timesink?”
-🦊 The Fox