Too Good to Fit | #83

By Armaan Athwal

Letting Go of Your Best Loved Ideas

As a game designer, I’ve had many ideas I really loved. I’d spend hours planning, blocking, building mechanics, and designing them out. Ideas that felt new and fresh. Ideas that were clever. Ideas that were elegant. And I couldn’t let them go.

But they just didn’t fit.

Not in the game’s world, not in the pacing, not in the flow I was building toward. It was like planting a cherry blossom in the middle of a desert. Beautiful on its own, but wrong for the context. Still, I kept trying to make it work. I tweaked it. I rewrote the progression around it. I tried to justify it with lore. I even lied to myself that players just “wouldn’t get it yet.”

Eventually I had to do what writers and designers call “killing your darlings.” I scrapped it. Not because it was bad, but because it didn’t belong.

It’s strange how easy it is to confuse attachment with value. We invest ourselves into an idea, and then mistake our effort for proof that it must be right. But some of the hardest-earned ideas are still the wrong ones.

This doesn’t just happen in design. It happens in life, too. You can hold onto beliefs or plans that once felt right about your career, relationships, your identity because they’re yours. You built them. You were proud of them. Maybe they even got you through a tough chapter. But at some point, you outgrow them. Or the world shifts. Or both.

It’s not about being wrong. It’s about knowing when to re-evaluate.

The game industry is full of discarded genius. There are mechanics that were brilliant in theory but unplayable in practice. Dialogue that was well-written but killed the pacing. Characters that devs adored but players never clicked with. A good team doesn’t cling to every idea. They test, they refine, and they cut what doesn’t serve the vision.

And that’s the part that sticks with me. Not every good idea belongs. Some are meant to teach you something, and then leave.

The goal isn’t to be right all the time. It’s to stay in motion. To notice when you’re forcing something. To recognize when your devotion to an idea is actually stalling your progress.

Quote of the Day

“Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.” - Henry David Thoreau