The Snowball

Producing a game is like building a giant snowball, rolling it down a long mountain, and trying to hit a target at the bottom of the mountain with it.

The pre-production phase is fairly easy—you're just making a fairly small snowball, so it's easy to push it toward the target and to control its direction. During the production phase, you jog alongside the snowball as it rolls and grows, and it isn't hard to nudge it now and again if it rolls off course. The post-production phase is the one where trouble can really happen. The snowball is really big and heavy. You're tired from all that jogging to keep up with the snowball, and now you're breathing hard, your legs feel like logs, the ball is going faster than ever, and it's really hard to affect the ball's direction. Any missteps or planning errors you made in the earlier phases are harder to correct in the crucial post-production phase.