This is some of the greatest motivation. Yes, I agree I will repeat to myself and others whom endeavor to make games: You're not an "aspiring game dev". You ARE a game dev!!!
I am so glad I clicked on this video. I just started game dev and I am struggling so hard. I'm just making simple clones of arcade games and I was about to give up and just move on to another game... but you're so right. If I just skip around, I'm never going to learn the hard stuff that I'm avoiding.
So the big problem I see with the first point is this exact description. I agree, everyone makes a huge game at first, but not in the way it’s described here. No one does that (well I guess you did but man, what a bad idea haha). Most people are super reasonable about their idea. But they don’t realize the scope. Simple turn based RPG. Easy. Until you think about all the ui and integrated systems. The problem is it is so hard to break your project into all the smallest parts until you have experience doing that. It isn’t that they are trying to make something huge, it’s that they arent considering every single factor of their project into the scope in their head
I noticed if your a person that does art, like make things in Blender, a lot of coders assume when deciding to make something, that I have the same skill set as them, and they keep saying making things or model is to hard and say just download assets.
Man, I struggle with project jumping. I get into a part I don't know how to do, then I'll start on a new project. I know I'm good enough, it's just hard sometimes, and I feel like I could go somewhere if I were to try and get better at every aspect of game development. I mean, I suck at art, and sometimes you have to find ways to get around your inabilities, and sometimes that is the hardest thing to do. I liked this video. It shows that, maybe if I try really hard, I'll find my way, and I'll actually finish a project, even if it isn't the best. Thank you.
11:20 As someone who went to (--a rather crappy..) school on game dev, the harsh reality is that you still need to go down the tutorial rabbit-hole because there's SO MUCH that you don't know, and school did NOT and does not cover all you need to know to make a game. Did going to a game dev education give me a leg-up? absolutely, and during that time I worked with some of my fellow students and we made couple of small games, a few of which could possibly be put on public marketplaces.. but do I still need to look up lots of tutorials explaining stuff I do not know? absolutely. Game dev is a continuous learning experience. You never stop learning how to develop better games.
This is great to know! I know a couple people that went to school for it and still never ended up making games, so I figured it probably wasn't as cut and dry as they make it seem
small addendum to "you tried to start too big" You need to taste victory if you want to succeed, thats whats important about finishing a game and shipping it. if you dont taste victory then you will not thirst for it, or know you can get it.
I'm always looking for vids like this to watch out for possible hickups and possible failings I might fall into so I think vids like this are just as important as tutorials because we don't always look out for these things
I’m glad you mentioned coworkers. I want to start a game studio with a buddy of mine but I’m worried we might butt heads and have different ideas. He has also never made a game before while I have made almost an entire game from scratch that I’ll be releasing soon. We are both busy but it’s tough relying on other people when I feel in the back of my head that I can do it alone and I feel like I’d be the most driven out of everyone I’d work with.
Good video. Your comment about the "honey moon" phase is true. I've seen a lot of people start projects with a lot of motivation and energy and then slowly the enthusiasm wears off and they stop work on their project. IMO that's because the early phase of the project involves fun stuff like coming up with ideas and making cool concept art. But once things gets serious and it's time to solve problems and actually make the game, it becomes laborious and everything feels like work. So they lose interest and drop the project and start a fresh new project. I worked on my game found around 2-3 years and I too felt tired and was tempted to start afresh. But I pressed on until I finished my game.
i just recently started trying to break out of my own self-isolation. i have many years of experience under my belt with game dev itself, but i haven’t been as focused on the community side of it. some things i’ve started trying are: subscribing/following other devs (whose content i enjoy) with a slightly bigger audience that me, creating a discord server, uploading demo reels/prototype recordings on youtube, and researching other ways devs are getting their name out there.
YES! These are all excellent points...#2 is so important imo and this happened to me as well. Right out of college...we all graduated as designers...and rather than delegating production roles to each person...all the chefs vied for control of the kitchen so to speak. It only took one person to completely implode our company. He would derail meetings with extremely long, rambling dialog or just straight up argue and become combative with people, mostly me and another member who ended up giving up our equity for rights to our original idea. They ended up closing the company last year because their leader was so awful. He got them all scammed lol
Thank you so much! Not just for game design field, but your video motivates me in a lot more ways! appreciate it man! One thing that I find out here most is being kind to myself after all! ❤🔥❤🔥
I’ve taken art out of the equation and just been buying assets while I learn how to use the engine. Once I have a firm grasp on the fundamentals I will worry about custom artwork.
The point 8 is the story of my last 10 years, I kept working on the same big project (because a small project is uninspiring) and improving it over and over again, adding features and complexity. Now I've reached a balance, the big project will still have lot of features but now I also have other 3 projects focused on each main feature. I jump from one project to another daily and focus on making small steps.
I always loved making board games as a kid and was fortunate enough to go to college to learn game dev. But now I'm just about 8 years out of college and have yet to release my first commercial game. I have a huge problem with starting/abandoning projects myself, but this definitely helped to keep me motivated and on track to finally finishing something.
This is all such gold. Thank you. I want to make a giant open world RPG. That's what got me started. 6 months later.. i have some trees lol. What I needed to realize was that putting that to the side so i could work on small games for a bit wont make my dream project not happen, it'll make it happen faster. because when i do get back to it, i'll know what I'm doing. But I think those big dream projects are important. It's what draws us into game dev to start with.
Some of those hit home pretty accuratly. Especially isolation and beeig afraid to share the things is the number one for me. Imposter syndrome and not liking the project comes next as well. Totally agree with you! Great video!
Great video. I do have one critique though (As both an Indie and AAA Game Dev). When it comes to step number #8 (768 seconds in), I would alter this a bit to suggest to not fail to plan. In my experience, not going in with a plan of what you, the person making the game, want to even do is often what leads to the other steps you've listed. This is why, in my opinion, its best to start your game on paper/in writing as a GDD (Game Development Document) before you start to draw, paint, animate, code, etc. Doing this will help mitigate the follies of Step#8 (and likely a lot of the other steps as well).
Best advice ever: Make games that you want to play and that you're passionate about. Regardless of how small or niche you think it might be, it WILL find an audience.
Thank you... so much, you won a new member in your community for sure, best motivation video I've ended upon, and the funny thing is, you kind of popped up out of nowhere, and I'm grateful for it.
Yes. Shout out to number 8. Took me 4 tries before I finally committed to the language, rendering engine, and technologies for my project. At least I had the good sense to restart early on in the project, cause lord knows I'm too far into attempt 4 to start over now.
I really enjoyed listening to this, its given me some food for thought on my early journey into game dev. Your words feel authentic and that you are speaking from a place of wanting to help others and inspire.
Omg!! Was in the middle of commenting when ⚠️ LIGHTHOOF SPOTTED ⚠️ So happy to be a part of this community with you! That said I very much agree with your slightly hot take about going it alone. Collaboration often creates more challenges than learning the skill yourself. And learning is so intrinsically rewarding!
This thing of ALWAYS starting small is bad too because many times it forces people to just not like what they are doing and give it up. The most important thing for real is to do what you love. Want to make a BIG OPEN WORLD game, yeah that is hard, but maybe instead of starting from zero, you could start by making a big mod in Skyrim or Fallout for example, the game Forgotten City was born from that, a mod from Skyrim. Pavonis that are working on a big game started working on Overhauls for XCOM. Even one of the best games from Stream, Enderal is a mod of Skyrim. You can use that as your school and go on. Starting small is good, but for many people, it just makes them go away because they just don't want to work on something they don't love.
I mean, to be entirely honest, if as an indie dev you're incapable of loving a project that is small enough to be within your grasp that's something you need to learn to get past as well. Small projects can still be innovative and exciting, and as a solo indie dev you will NEVER make Skyrim 2.0 from the ground-up. It is, practically speaking, impossible to do that as one person. If you want to make AAA size games you need to work in AAA. If you want to be Indie, you need to get over aspirations like that quickly and learn to love projects you can actually create.
I do agree that a lot of great game devs started in big mod communities and that's totally valid. I guess I was talking more about their first seperate game project
I've really been struggling to consider myself a game dev. I'm officially one year into my journey (as of this week) and don't really have much to show for it. I follow a course, made their game. Then recreated Pong. Then started recreating Space Invaders but dropped the project to focus on life stuff as I was unemployed and should be working towards things that'll help me get a job quickly. Then I did GMTK Jam, made a trash game where you "hunt" monsters but it was basically just horrible hide n seek, I struggle to even consider it a game tbh, it was made to just help me relearn Unity quickly. Then i started making a roguelike which I had been wanting to make for almost a year. Made pretty good progress on a weapon and bullet hell system but then the Unity drama slapped me in the face for 2 months straight until i finally decided to drop my project and learn Godot. Then i finally found a job and that meant i had to change my sleep schedule which sucks as I'm someone struggles to concentrate in which night time made it significantly easier for me to focus. Now 3 months later, I think I've adjusted and found a workflow that kinda works (not as well as my old one though) so throughout these 3 months, I've been trying to make a much simpler game than the roguelike I originally had planned... a short but sweet JRPG and Undertale inspired game (not a clone). However, writing story and characters is a lot harder than i thought and so ive been trying to do that for 3 months, with most of my progress being made this past week (like i said before, new workflow took a bit to adjust to). So yeah... that's where I'm at... I'm proud that I still love game dev and haven't given up, disappointed at how much I procrastinate the only thing I genuinely want to do, it doesn't make sense. My first year anniversary of game dev and it hurts to consider myself a game dev :D Regardless, If there's one thing I know... It's that I'm NEVER gonna stop trying to make video games! I CAN FAIL FOR ANOTHER 19 YEARS AND IT WON'T BE ENOUGH TO STOP ME AGHAHGAHGAHGH This is truly what I want to do with my life... I don't believe in purpose, but I do believe that this is what I want. If I can ever get paid to do this for a living, I may actually just start levitating.
i think that's the right mindset, but be careful not to put too much pressure on yourself, after a while it might make you scared of what you want. Try to be kind to yourself, if you had a bad day or are too tired, you'll make minimal progress or skip entirely. And that's ok, as you said, you'll still keep at it and just slow down or make pquses, but never give up :)
I'm glad you're sticking to it! It's so hard because no matter what you try and do it seems like there's always new opposition- but mindset really is what will make the difference
These are so true for app development too. I learned a lot of these the hard way when I got into app development. I’d like to get into game dev at some point and will definitely try to avoid them but we’ll see lol.
My approach to avoid remaking my game assets is to not create polished 3d model or level 100% but start from blocking, and put in the game and leaving it there until I make all other stuff in the current stage, next phase I will refine everything little bit not to the polish state, and keep doing this way. By doing this, I can keep make small changes during the development stage and no rework required.
Great video, I'm happy this video was recommended to me. I love to listen to genuine people discussing gamedev and its hardships.. I've been trying to make a game since 2017. I keep starting and I keep giving up and I don't know if my brain is wired the wrong way, because I can't blame ADHD for everything but... some of these points, where spot on.
you saved me from one dangeroud mistake from doing. I had this basic story and plot written for my game. Today I was reworking on story because I had this new game mechanic in mind and had another cool idea to fit in narratively. I even started working on new improved story. Now if I think about it. My previous story is flawless. I will simply refine it when it's needed but I have no need to add new mechanic or anything like that.
you inspire me a lot to keep walking the walk. and its amazing that you know what effect you have on people and the magnitude of it. it truly is enormous. Love your content and cant wait to play your game.
My biggest setback is that I am only good at programming and game design itself. I'm a terrible artist and I'm also awful at level design. So I spend weeks programming something, get to the art and level design part, then lose my motivation and stop the project permanently. I feel as a solo dev, if you aren't gifted in art at minimum, you can't finish a game. And artists are so expensive to hire. Edit: I can do pixel art quite well, but I don't like 2d games and don't want to make 2d games.
@@3gnomesgames909 you know what? your video motivated me. I am going to learn procedurial generation so I do not have to do level design. That would fix one of my issues. Thank you bro.
kingdom of loathing, Minecraft, Getting over it, Thomas was alone. It didn't stop these from making successful games, so can you! Keep making games, no matter if it's hand drawn or lots of assets!!
@PixelBlight tge style I am good at is minecraft, but it's really limiting and I don't want to be compared/sued for being similar in look and survival. Getting over it is bought assets and being an indie and using bought assets means I lose colustoners over being an asset flip even if my game is not an asset flip. I will figure something out one day I'm sure. I'm still learning procedural generation which makes level design easier on me.
Seeing this from Brazil man, needless to say it was a great video, thank for really saying those things, some things you say, people just doesn't have courage to assume, that's the point, and.. yes, we are gamedevs I guess, we make games, we are gamedev's at some point, just simple has that, thank you, I'm here until you have 1 million subscribers, you deserve it. Wish you the best.
For number 6, Gme design schools aren't much better than tutorial hopping. You are better off taking the classes you need for what you want (Want to be programmer, take programming degree), than to go for a game design program and learn a little of everything. You would be better off using the money you would use for a game dev degree to support yourself and just tutorial hop 8 hours a day and getting the humbe bundle documents every couple weeks when they release a new learn ___
My first project is a bit of an MMO.... So watching these videos, gives me pause for reflection. However, I've been a C++ Engineer doing every aspect of product development for more than forty years. So I'm guessing that the pieces people would normally find to be hard to do in MMOs, will be the pieces I already know how to write. Ie: backend systems, servers, SQL Databases etc.... From this effort I expect to end up with two Unreal Marketplace products to help other developers get their MMOs off of the ground. I guess I'll find out. At the worst, I'm learning a lot, and will be able leverage everything for other games.
This advice applies to ALL disciplines, not just game development ;) I know because I've been through exactly all of these struggles in my industry (tech) and started to see rapid growth once I started knocking down each of these barriers.
Thankyou for this video, I was finding a lot of other videos on this subject were ether disheartening or made me question myself in a bad way. Also I was worried about what I was being advised on because yes these people have made games but they haven't had any success. so how right are they?
Pirate software one said, don’t compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself to you, last month, last year. How far have you come? I am paraphrasing, but yeah
On your point regarding imposter syndrome: I don't know if this is counter-intuitive, but I actually find lowering my expectations on myself helps to relieve pressure. If I tell myself I'm a game dev and/or other people call me a game dev, _that's_ when the imposter syndrome starts to rear its ugly head because, for me, being given such a label comes with huge expectations and presumptions about myself. If I'm a "game dev", especially if other people see me as such, I start to worry that I'm not going to live up to the expectations set for me _as_ a game dev: I need to make games, they need to be good and they need to be successful by some metric (profitability, critical acclaim, widespread notoriety, etc.) because that's what separates a real game dev from a wannabe or a hobbiest. Until you succeed at something, you're not that thing; you're just _aspiring_ to be. It, like all things in life, is something to be earned. As such, openly calling myself a "game dev", even though I've barely been able to scrape my way through Blender making an ugly doughnut makes me feel like an immediate failure. It makes me feel like I've got an enormous mountain ahead of me to climb to finally get to the point that I can comfortably accept the title of "game dev" in earnest, all while weighed down by the lofty presumption of what it means to actually _be_ a game dev, without feeling like I didn't earn it. Because that's the root cause of imposter syndrome: the feeling that you didn't earn it; that you don't have the right to call yourself that. But deluding yourself into believing the mere act of trying is enough to call yourself that isn't the affirmation you think it is; it just inflates your ego and forces you to cower behind that presumption until such time that you feel like you don't need to anymore. The problem is that, eventually, you get really comfortable hiding behind your ego and it can very often lead you into places that result in your inflated sense-of-self getting out of hand, making you pompous, self-righteous and narcissistic. Even worse, it can cause you to stagnate as a developer because you start to feel like you don't need to worry about whether your games are good or not; you're _already_ a game dev, so you don't need to try any harder than you already do and anyone telling you your work is substandard or pointing out where you could improve is just plain wrong (even if they're objectively correct). _Actually_ dispelling imposter syndrome comes from accepting that you're _not_ what you think you are - yet. But you're _on your way._ And, so long as you persevere and you're willing to accept mistakes and failure as part of the process, you _can_ get there one day. You _will_ earn it. That's what keeps me going, personally. It's that sense that, yeah, I know I'm not a proper game dev. I'm just a guy messing around in Blender or something. But, with time, that may change. Until then though, I don't need to worry about holding myself to unreasonable expectations (and, thus, incurring imposter syndrome) because I'm just a guy, not a game dev, so I can work my way through the process without the pressure or the fear of failure. It makes learning feel less strenuous, failure feel less painful, criticism feel less scathing, and, most especially, makes praise feel like a real achievement - "Someone told me they like my work. Someone said I'm good at this. This is actually working. This is actually becoming real. Maybe I _do_ have what it takes." It's a feeling I will relish if and when the day comes. Accepting what I'm not (yet) is incredibly liberating and gives me a clear goal to strive toward: that I want to _earn the right_ to call myself a game dev, with confidence.
Really nice video, growth in skills does make me constantly come back to old work but after months I have found what I am happy with :) (also thanks for featuring me :) )
Hello there 3 gnomes. I must say i quite enjoy your video. its always good to gain perspective on the road ahead, even if it hasn't been started. i just have a question though now, specifically regarding the first pitfall, that being that if i am to attempt some kind of intense project based learning, how hard should it be to make the game before it becomes too much. this of course would not be without structure and breaking up the game into certain parts. Thank you fore reading, i apologize for the words you have read, but i appreciate your patience.
The problem is more that by the time you've been working on your game long enough to get better, the earlier stuff you made will hold back your project
12:49 This is a good thing... Its a tool for improvement on yourself and your game... Its only ever bad if your doing it to procrastinate doing something with a higher priority :( or you've gone insane and decided to completely throw away that system, art, sound, game engine, language, in order to remake it from scratch, just because you hate where your game is at that point in time :/
BUT I want to make an Open World RPG! is what I always hear from new game devs. Or just make lots of money. I do enjoy making games that are fun and if they profit great! if not I did learn a lot from the journey.
I had really cool idea of a rogue-lite game, I ended up not going forward with it because I haven't played that many such games and I do not like it either.
I'm struggling between too big of a project and working on something I'm not interested in. I love love love RPG's. But they make for such a big first project.
Is it a good idea to upgrade a small game to be big and impressive? I have ambitions for this game I'm making, to make it a massive open-world rpg, but grown like a sequoia or redwood out of a tiny demo outlining only the basic mechanics -- and my initial game after the demo will be a single village area and perhaps a wood around it, with nothing else, but my plans are to grow it slowly based on the needs of multiple adventure-quests one after the other, very slowly writing a sort of saga. My question is whether or not it's a good idea to do this, to upgrade my game to these proportions?
I don't think starting with the MMO design is actually a problem. I'm all for people dreaming big and going full force. Along the way, it should be clear that you can extract parts of that MMO into its own game and iteratively build up to it, the only way people learn how to do that, along with many other skills and lessons, is by going for it. We also don't need more shovelware. No reason for people to ship small games no one is gonna play just for the ego clout of "I shipped a game".
Me too! I've made every possible mistake along the way and learned a ton during the process. I think the most valuable advice I could give to newcomers is: ''Every shortcut you take will cost you way more time and make your life miserable''. You use a game editor to avoid learning proper coding techniques and end up fighting against the limited possibilities, wasting hours to bypass artificial restrictions that would have been otherwise trivial on a ''real'' engine. You choose to rely on the asset store to save time on learning making 2d or 3d stuff and end up burning a gazillion of hours trying to make all this mess fit together... It applies to everything. There is no shortcut, unless you are willing to sacrifice most of what made your project unique in the first place.
I have been completed 2 tutorials on is platformer and other is space shooter (both 2d) And I can't do anything on my own I fell stuck and empty in my head. There was one video I watched that said something like " if you want to learn you gotta do the tutorial 7 times" So I don't know maybe I will give it a try to ake the same tutorial 7 times and then I will know at leat some programming. That being said I think the 1 thing and the biggest that Game Devs fail is becouse lack of programming skills. (And I hope I will not give up)
@@3gnomesgames909 everything what you said is very true. I hope many people will find your video and hopefully will help them open their eyes and change their idea or perspective in the right direction. 😉👌
Well as someone who went to school specifically to understand coding and game design for 8+ years with 2 degrees and high honors... I don't understand code. I have yet to get it to click in my mind and I clearly am missing something to make it, which has hindered me from moving forward with game design and it is painful. The tutorials I find are nice, but its still annoying to watch 1-2 hour vids to figure something out that should only take a couple of minutes. I don't know why I'm saying this, maybe its just because I don't know how to learn form failure as discussed.
From the absolute basics: Do you understand algorithms? They are a sequence of steps to acquire an expected result. Most of programming is understanding how to explain to a computer how to do something. The problem with most tutorials i see online is that they just give you the solution for a problem step by step, but they don't teach you how to reach to this conclusion. If you are referring to programming languages, you can learn most of them in a few days by reading their documentation and getting acquainted with how they do things (Lists in Python may behave differently from lists in C# for instance).
By "algorithms" I don't mean math formulas or complex calculations. I mean "This function receives this value. If this value equals this, do that. If not, do that other thing").
@@_JPkun If you are taking about breaking down larger problems into smaller problems, then no, I do not understand algorithms well. Kind of hard for me to explain something to a computer that I can't figure out how to understand myself. I have tried a few languages and engines, but I can't seem to get any to click with my head, especially Python.
@@_JPkun I do at least understand basic if/then scenarios, just not anything more complex like while or for for example. Don't really know how to place the pieces together, or really know if the pieces are for the right puzzle.
@@Surkk2960 Ok, I ask this because understanding how to break down problems into parts as tiny as possible is the fundamentals of programming. Programming languages are like having the ability to explain to a French guy how to make a sandwich, then to a Japanese guy and so on, they are not the defining factor of a good programmer.
Eh, depends what you think failure is. Did you even set goals of success? Some Japanese studios set goals of "must sell 10 million copies." Then they only sell 6 million and explain "game is a failure."
#1: Avoid RPG's and 3D Fighters #2: Don't expect to make a multimillion project as your first one 3: Even if your concept is HOT, HOT GARBAGE, FINISH IT ANYWAY.
What really is an MMO? If you think about it, instead of focusing on the world of warcrafts, why not go instead for club penguins and more lite versions of the genre, i mean, Maplestory has been around for 20 years or something like that. Saying that, i don't think I'd ever do an MMO myself, i'm more of a roguelike (Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne and the like) enjoyer and survival-craft-adventure thing (picture Terraria or Valheim).
This is some of the greatest motivation. Yes, I agree I will repeat to myself and others whom endeavor to make games: You're not an "aspiring game dev". You ARE a game dev!!!
For full-time gamedevs, the struggle for sustainable development is the only reason they compare themselves to one another.
I am so glad I clicked on this video. I just started game dev and I am struggling so hard. I'm just making simple clones of arcade games and I was about to give up and just move on to another game... but you're so right. If I just skip around, I'm never going to learn the hard stuff that I'm avoiding.
I'm so glad it helped! And good luck on your journey!
How’s the progress ?
So the big problem I see with the first point is this exact description. I agree, everyone makes a huge game at first, but not in the way it’s described here. No one does that (well I guess you did but man, what a bad idea haha). Most people are super reasonable about their idea. But they don’t realize the scope. Simple turn based RPG. Easy. Until you think about all the ui and integrated systems. The problem is it is so hard to break your project into all the smallest parts until you have experience doing that. It isn’t that they are trying to make something huge, it’s that they arent considering every single factor of their project into the scope in their head
There are a number of indie game devs on UA-cam who talk about starting too big for their first game. Definitely happens plenty.
I noticed if your a person that does art, like make things in Blender, a lot of coders assume when deciding to make something, that I have the same skill set as them, and they keep saying making things or model is to hard and say just download assets.
Man, I struggle with project jumping. I get into a part I don't know how to do, then I'll start on a new project. I know I'm good enough, it's just hard sometimes, and I feel like I could go somewhere if I were to try and get better at every aspect of game development. I mean, I suck at art, and sometimes you have to find ways to get around your inabilities, and sometimes that is the hardest thing to do. I liked this video. It shows that, maybe if I try really hard, I'll find my way, and I'll actually finish a project, even if it isn't the best. Thank you.
11:20 As someone who went to (--a rather crappy..) school on game dev, the harsh reality is that you still need to go down the tutorial rabbit-hole because there's SO MUCH that you don't know, and school did NOT and does not cover all you need to know to make a game.
Did going to a game dev education give me a leg-up? absolutely, and during that time I worked with some of my fellow students and we made couple of small games, a few of which could possibly be put on public marketplaces.. but do I still need to look up lots of tutorials explaining stuff I do not know? absolutely. Game dev is a continuous learning experience. You never stop learning how to develop better games.
This is great to know! I know a couple people that went to school for it and still never ended up making games, so I figured it probably wasn't as cut and dry as they make it seem
I'm a car painter and in late 30s. Going for a career switch. Fear and hunger inspired me. Gonna make some f'd up shit.
Can't wait to see it
small addendum to "you tried to start too big"
You need to taste victory if you want to succeed, thats whats important about finishing a game and shipping it. if you dont taste victory then you will not thirst for it, or know you can get it.
That's a great way to look at it, yes!
I'm always looking for vids like this to watch out for possible hickups and possible failings I might fall into so I think vids like this are just as important as tutorials because we don't always look out for these things
I’m glad you mentioned coworkers. I want to start a game studio with a buddy of mine but I’m worried we might butt heads and have different ideas. He has also never made a game before while I have made almost an entire game from scratch that I’ll be releasing soon. We are both busy but it’s tough relying on other people when I feel in the back of my head that I can do it alone and I feel like I’d be the most driven out of everyone I’d work with.
Good video. Your comment about the "honey moon" phase is true. I've seen a lot of people start projects with a lot of motivation and energy and then slowly the enthusiasm wears off and they stop work on their project. IMO that's because the early phase of the project involves fun stuff like coming up with ideas and making cool concept art. But once things gets serious and it's time to solve problems and actually make the game, it becomes laborious and everything feels like work. So they lose interest and drop the project and start a fresh new project. I worked on my game found around 2-3 years and I too felt tired and was tempted to start afresh. But I pressed on until I finished my game.
i just recently started trying to break out of my own self-isolation. i have many years of experience under my belt with game dev itself, but i haven’t been as focused on the community side of it. some things i’ve started trying are: subscribing/following other devs (whose content i enjoy) with a slightly bigger audience that me, creating a discord server, uploading demo reels/prototype recordings on youtube, and researching other ways devs are getting their name out there.
YES! These are all excellent points...#2 is so important imo and this happened to me as well. Right out of college...we all graduated as designers...and rather than delegating production roles to each person...all the chefs vied for control of the kitchen so to speak. It only took one person to completely implode our company. He would derail meetings with extremely long, rambling dialog or just straight up argue and become combative with people, mostly me and another member who ended up giving up our equity for rights to our original idea. They ended up closing the company last year because their leader was so awful. He got them all scammed lol
Thank you so much!
Not just for game design field, but your video motivates me in a lot more ways! appreciate it man!
One thing that I find out here most is being kind to myself after all! ❤🔥❤🔥
I’ve taken art out of the equation and just been buying assets while I learn how to use the engine. Once I have a firm grasp on the fundamentals I will worry about custom artwork.
The point 8 is the story of my last 10 years, I kept working on the same big project (because a small project is uninspiring) and improving it over and over again, adding features and complexity. Now I've reached a balance, the big project will still have lot of features but now I also have other 3 projects focused on each main feature. I jump from one project to another daily and focus on making small steps.
after watching it a second time one month later, i can say that i still needed it, you're words are perfectly chosen, thank you.
i might watch it again in a month XD
This is incredible, thank you! I'm so glad they resonated with you
Came for game dev advice. Left with really deep life advice.
Thank you ❤
I'm so glad ❤️
Some Blender advice
You can duplicate bones by using shift+D to speed up rigging
I think I learned that at one point 😂 I'm just set in my ways and do things slower than I need to
I always loved making board games as a kid and was fortunate enough to go to college to learn game dev. But now I'm just about 8 years out of college and have yet to release my first commercial game. I have a huge problem with starting/abandoning projects myself, but this definitely helped to keep me motivated and on track to finally finishing something.
I'm so glad! Good luck!
that model in the background gives me serious Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 vibes
This is all such gold. Thank you. I want to make a giant open world RPG. That's what got me started. 6 months later.. i have some trees lol. What I needed to realize was that putting that to the side so i could work on small games for a bit wont make my dream project not happen, it'll make it happen faster. because when i do get back to it, i'll know what I'm doing. But I think those big dream projects are important. It's what draws us into game dev to start with.
Some of those hit home pretty accuratly. Especially isolation and beeig afraid to share the things is the number one for me. Imposter syndrome and not liking the project comes next as well. Totally agree with you! Great video!
Thank you!
Great video. I do have one critique though (As both an Indie and AAA Game Dev). When it comes to step number #8 (768 seconds in), I would alter this a bit to suggest to not fail to plan. In my experience, not going in with a plan of what you, the person making the game, want to even do is often what leads to the other steps you've listed. This is why, in my opinion, its best to start your game on paper/in writing as a GDD (Game Development Document) before you start to draw, paint, animate, code, etc. Doing this will help mitigate the follies of Step#8 (and likely a lot of the other steps as well).
Best advice ever: Make games that you want to play and that you're passionate about. Regardless of how small or niche you think it might be, it WILL find an audience.
Thank you... so much, you won a new member in your community for sure, best motivation video I've ended upon, and the funny thing is, you kind of popped up out of nowhere, and I'm grateful for it.
I'm so glad it helped and you found my channel! Thank you so much!
@@3gnomesgames909 Thank YOU ! 😁👍
@@3gnomesgames909Just made a new channel to follow you, blank canvas, starting anew.
Now, i can binge watch all your videos :)
Yes. Shout out to number 8.
Took me 4 tries before I finally committed to the language, rendering engine, and technologies for my project.
At least I had the good sense to restart early on in the project, cause lord knows I'm too far into attempt 4 to start over now.
I really enjoyed listening to this, its given me some food for thought on my early journey into game dev. Your words feel authentic and that you are speaking from a place of wanting to help others and inspire.
I'm so glad! Thank you so much!
Omg!! Was in the middle of commenting when ⚠️ LIGHTHOOF SPOTTED ⚠️
So happy to be a part of this community with you!
That said I very much agree with your slightly hot take about going it alone. Collaboration often creates more challenges than learning the skill yourself. And learning is so intrinsically rewarding!
This thing of ALWAYS starting small is bad too because many times it forces people to just not like what they are doing and give it up.
The most important thing for real is to do what you love. Want to make a BIG OPEN WORLD game, yeah that is hard, but maybe instead of starting from zero, you could start by making a big mod in Skyrim or Fallout for example, the game Forgotten City was born from that, a mod from Skyrim. Pavonis that are working on a big game started working on Overhauls for XCOM. Even one of the best games from Stream, Enderal is a mod of Skyrim.
You can use that as your school and go on.
Starting small is good, but for many people, it just makes them go away because they just don't want to work on something they don't love.
I mean, to be entirely honest, if as an indie dev you're incapable of loving a project that is small enough to be within your grasp that's something you need to learn to get past as well. Small projects can still be innovative and exciting, and as a solo indie dev you will NEVER make Skyrim 2.0 from the ground-up. It is, practically speaking, impossible to do that as one person. If you want to make AAA size games you need to work in AAA. If you want to be Indie, you need to get over aspirations like that quickly and learn to love projects you can actually create.
@@pleasantvegetable I never said anything about you making skyrim by your own
I do agree that a lot of great game devs started in big mod communities and that's totally valid. I guess I was talking more about their first seperate game project
I'm pretty sure it's easier to fail than to succeed at just about anything. Good vid
True! And thanks!
I've really been struggling to consider myself a game dev. I'm officially one year into my journey (as of this week) and don't really have much to show for it. I follow a course, made their game. Then recreated Pong. Then started recreating Space Invaders but dropped the project to focus on life stuff as I was unemployed and should be working towards things that'll help me get a job quickly. Then I did GMTK Jam, made a trash game where you "hunt" monsters but it was basically just horrible hide n seek, I struggle to even consider it a game tbh, it was made to just help me relearn Unity quickly. Then i started making a roguelike which I had been wanting to make for almost a year. Made pretty good progress on a weapon and bullet hell system but then the Unity drama slapped me in the face for 2 months straight until i finally decided to drop my project and learn Godot. Then i finally found a job and that meant i had to change my sleep schedule which sucks as I'm someone struggles to concentrate in which night time made it significantly easier for me to focus. Now 3 months later, I think I've adjusted and found a workflow that kinda works (not as well as my old one though) so throughout these 3 months, I've been trying to make a much simpler game than the roguelike I originally had planned... a short but sweet JRPG and Undertale inspired game (not a clone). However, writing story and characters is a lot harder than i thought and so ive been trying to do that for 3 months, with most of my progress being made this past week (like i said before, new workflow took a bit to adjust to).
So yeah... that's where I'm at... I'm proud that I still love game dev and haven't given up, disappointed at how much I procrastinate the only thing I genuinely want to do, it doesn't make sense. My first year anniversary of game dev and it hurts to consider myself a game dev :D
Regardless, If there's one thing I know... It's that I'm NEVER gonna stop trying to make video games! I CAN FAIL FOR ANOTHER 19 YEARS AND IT WON'T BE ENOUGH TO STOP ME AGHAHGAHGAHGH This is truly what I want to do with my life... I don't believe in purpose, but I do believe that this is what I want. If I can ever get paid to do this for a living, I may actually just start levitating.
i think that's the right mindset, but be careful not to put too much pressure on yourself, after a while it might make you scared of what you want. Try to be kind to yourself, if you had a bad day or are too tired, you'll make minimal progress or skip entirely. And that's ok, as you said, you'll still keep at it and just slow down or make pquses, but never give up :)
I'm glad you're sticking to it! It's so hard because no matter what you try and do it seems like there's always new opposition- but mindset really is what will make the difference
These are so true for app development too. I learned a lot of these the hard way when I got into app development. I’d like to get into game dev at some point and will definitely try to avoid them but we’ll see lol.
My approach to avoid remaking my game assets is to not create polished 3d model or level 100% but start from blocking, and put in the game and leaving it there until I make all other stuff in the current stage, next phase I will refine everything little bit not to the polish state, and keep doing this way. By doing this, I can keep make small changes during the development stage and no rework required.
Great video, I'm happy this video was recommended to me. I love to listen to genuine people discussing gamedev and its hardships.. I've been trying to make a game since 2017. I keep starting and I keep giving up and I don't know if my brain is wired the wrong way, because I can't blame ADHD for everything but... some of these points, where spot on.
you saved me from one dangeroud mistake from doing. I had this basic story and plot written for my game. Today I was reworking on story because I had this new game mechanic in mind and had another cool idea to fit in narratively. I even started working on new improved story. Now if I think about it. My previous story is flawless. I will simply refine it when it's needed but I have no need to add new mechanic or anything like that.
you inspire me a lot to keep walking the walk. and its amazing that you know what effect you have on people and the magnitude of it. it truly is enormous. Love your content and cant wait to play your game.
Thank you so much! That means so much to hear
I think we need to show this to some AAA devs, Naughty Dog could certainly use #8
Ohhh nooo! My first game is soooo big! 😳
Cheers man I needed to hear this
The ending about imposter syndrome and your perspective on it was fantastic. Thanks for the video.
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it
My biggest setback is that I am only good at programming and game design itself. I'm a terrible artist and I'm also awful at level design. So I spend weeks programming something, get to the art and level design part, then lose my motivation and stop the project permanently. I feel as a solo dev, if you aren't gifted in art at minimum, you can't finish a game. And artists are so expensive to hire.
Edit: I can do pixel art quite well, but I don't like 2d games and don't want to make 2d games.
That's valid
@@3gnomesgames909 you know what? your video motivated me. I am going to learn procedurial generation so I do not have to do level design. That would fix one of my issues. Thank you bro.
@@saltyman5603 that's AWESOME! I'm so glad 😊
kingdom of loathing, Minecraft, Getting over it, Thomas was alone.
It didn't stop these from making successful games, so can you! Keep making games, no matter if it's hand drawn or lots of assets!!
@PixelBlight tge style I am good at is minecraft, but it's really limiting and I don't want to be compared/sued for being similar in look and survival. Getting over it is bought assets and being an indie and using bought assets means I lose colustoners over being an asset flip even if my game is not an asset flip. I will figure something out one day I'm sure. I'm still learning procedural generation which makes level design easier on me.
Seeing this from Brazil man, needless to say it was a great video, thank for really saying those things, some things you say, people just doesn't have courage to assume, that's the point, and.. yes, we are gamedevs I guess, we make games, we are gamedev's at some point, just simple has that, thank you, I'm here until you have 1 million subscribers, you deserve it. Wish you the best.
Thank you so much!
For number 6, Gme design schools aren't much better than tutorial hopping. You are better off taking the classes you need for what you want (Want to be programmer, take programming degree), than to go for a game design program and learn a little of everything. You would be better off using the money you would use for a game dev degree to support yourself and just tutorial hop 8 hours a day and getting the humbe bundle documents every couple weeks when they release a new learn ___
Cleo - A pirates Tale is an Indie game by 1 person that worked fine ..now he's working on his next game
My first project is a bit of an MMO....
So watching these videos, gives me pause for reflection.
However, I've been a C++ Engineer doing every aspect of product development for more than forty years.
So I'm guessing that the pieces people would normally find to be hard to do in MMOs, will be the pieces I already know how to write. Ie: backend systems, servers, SQL Databases etc....
From this effort I expect to end up with two Unreal Marketplace products to help other developers get their MMOs off of the ground.
I guess I'll find out.
At the worst, I'm learning a lot, and will be able leverage everything for other games.
This advice applies to ALL disciplines, not just game development ;) I know because I've been through exactly all of these struggles in my industry (tech) and started to see rapid growth once I started knocking down each of these barriers.
Based
This is exactly what we need to hear! Thank you so much!
Dude, you’re awesome!! Thank you for the encouragement and inspiration.
Thankyou for this video, I was finding a lot of other videos on this subject were ether disheartening or made me question myself in a bad way.
Also I was worried about what I was being advised on because yes these people have made games but they haven't had any success.
so how right are they?
I'm so glad it helped you, that's all I want
Pirate software one said, don’t compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself to you, last month, last year. How far have you come? I am paraphrasing, but yeah
That's great advice
On your point regarding imposter syndrome: I don't know if this is counter-intuitive, but I actually find lowering my expectations on myself helps to relieve pressure.
If I tell myself I'm a game dev and/or other people call me a game dev, _that's_ when the imposter syndrome starts to rear its ugly head because, for me, being given such a label comes with huge expectations and presumptions about myself. If I'm a "game dev", especially if other people see me as such, I start to worry that I'm not going to live up to the expectations set for me _as_ a game dev: I need to make games, they need to be good and they need to be successful by some metric (profitability, critical acclaim, widespread notoriety, etc.) because that's what separates a real game dev from a wannabe or a hobbiest. Until you succeed at something, you're not that thing; you're just _aspiring_ to be. It, like all things in life, is something to be earned.
As such, openly calling myself a "game dev", even though I've barely been able to scrape my way through Blender making an ugly doughnut makes me feel like an immediate failure. It makes me feel like I've got an enormous mountain ahead of me to climb to finally get to the point that I can comfortably accept the title of "game dev" in earnest, all while weighed down by the lofty presumption of what it means to actually _be_ a game dev, without feeling like I didn't earn it. Because that's the root cause of imposter syndrome: the feeling that you didn't earn it; that you don't have the right to call yourself that. But deluding yourself into believing the mere act of trying is enough to call yourself that isn't the affirmation you think it is; it just inflates your ego and forces you to cower behind that presumption until such time that you feel like you don't need to anymore. The problem is that, eventually, you get really comfortable hiding behind your ego and it can very often lead you into places that result in your inflated sense-of-self getting out of hand, making you pompous, self-righteous and narcissistic. Even worse, it can cause you to stagnate as a developer because you start to feel like you don't need to worry about whether your games are good or not; you're _already_ a game dev, so you don't need to try any harder than you already do and anyone telling you your work is substandard or pointing out where you could improve is just plain wrong (even if they're objectively correct).
_Actually_ dispelling imposter syndrome comes from accepting that you're _not_ what you think you are - yet. But you're _on your way._ And, so long as you persevere and you're willing to accept mistakes and failure as part of the process, you _can_ get there one day. You _will_ earn it.
That's what keeps me going, personally. It's that sense that, yeah, I know I'm not a proper game dev. I'm just a guy messing around in Blender or something. But, with time, that may change. Until then though, I don't need to worry about holding myself to unreasonable expectations (and, thus, incurring imposter syndrome) because I'm just a guy, not a game dev, so I can work my way through the process without the pressure or the fear of failure. It makes learning feel less strenuous, failure feel less painful, criticism feel less scathing, and, most especially, makes praise feel like a real achievement - "Someone told me they like my work. Someone said I'm good at this. This is actually working. This is actually becoming real. Maybe I _do_ have what it takes." It's a feeling I will relish if and when the day comes.
Accepting what I'm not (yet) is incredibly liberating and gives me a clear goal to strive toward: that I want to _earn the right_ to call myself a game dev, with confidence.
This is a fantastic take, thank you
WOW this is such a good advice, take it from someone whose done all that you have mentioned. Listen to this guy!!!
Nice Vid, the last point is relateable xD
I just started on UA-cam and hope we can revive the Game Dev Community.
Thanks for your help in doing that.
Thanks! And thanks for your help as well if you're working towards that goal!
Really nice video, growth in skills does make me constantly come back to old work but after months I have found what I am happy with :)
(also thanks for featuring me :) )
Thanks! And of course! You're such a great part of the community and I love seeing the updates you make on your game
This is a great video, good job!
Thank you!
What's with the strawberry pie-der thing in the background?
It's just a recording of me modeling an enemy for the game I'm working on! You can check it out in the last devlog I made if you're interested
Damn, alot of those points hit home. Definitely needed to hear this. Thanks! Subscribed.
Glad it helped
This was great! Thanks man!
Hey, thanks!
Hello there 3 gnomes. I must say i quite enjoy your video.
its always good to gain perspective on the road ahead, even if it hasn't been started.
i just have a question though now, specifically regarding the first pitfall, that being that if i am to attempt some kind of intense project based learning, how hard should it be to make the game before it becomes too much.
this of course would not be without structure and breaking up the game into certain parts.
Thank you fore reading, i apologize for the words you have read, but i appreciate your patience.
The problem is more that by the time you've been working on your game long enough to get better, the earlier stuff you made will hold back your project
So then we run into 8 again. Well then thank you for the feed back.
12:49
This is a good thing... Its a tool for improvement on yourself and your game...
Its only ever bad if your doing it to procrastinate doing something with a higher priority :( or you've gone insane and decided to completely throw away that system, art, sound, game engine, language, in order to remake it from scratch, just because you hate where your game is at that point in time :/
Great video. Thank you.
Think I have done every one of those and still do lol Great video
😂 thanks!
Game development is like a decently-calculatable lottery
Great video man. Inspiring to say the least. Can't wait to see your work!
Thanks so much!
nah bro why was this so inspirational
BUT I want to make an Open World RPG! is what I always hear from new game devs. Or just make lots of money. I do enjoy making games that are fun and if they profit great! if not I did learn a lot from the journey.
I had really cool idea of a rogue-lite game, I ended up not going forward with it because I haven't played that many such games and I do not like it either.
I'm struggling between too big of a project and working on something I'm not interested in. I love love love RPG's. But they make for such a big first project.
They really do but I understand the struggle
Looking to work with a 2D designer for an indie game dev.
I have developed 12 games so far.
Thank you for this. Liked and subbed
Thanks for the sub! I'm glad it helped 😁
Use the Mirror modificator aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Also good pieces of advice, thanks
Loved everything about this video,
Thank you!
Is it a good idea to upgrade a small game to be big and impressive? I have ambitions for this game I'm making, to make it a massive open-world rpg, but grown like a sequoia or redwood out of a tiny demo outlining only the basic mechanics -- and my initial game after the demo will be a single village area and perhaps a wood around it, with nothing else, but my plans are to grow it slowly based on the needs of multiple adventure-quests one after the other, very slowly writing a sort of saga. My question is whether or not it's a good idea to do this, to upgrade my game to these proportions?
If you've got a solid base that's not a bad idea at all
I don't think starting with the MMO design is actually a problem. I'm all for people dreaming big and going full force. Along the way, it should be clear that you can extract parts of that MMO into its own game and iteratively build up to it, the only way people learn how to do that, along with many other skills and lessons, is by going for it.
We also don't need more shovelware. No reason for people to ship small games no one is gonna play just for the ego clout of "I shipped a game".
The shovelware point is valid, I do see the logic in that
Been failing for 20 years (43 now!). Life keeps getting in the way.
Based. All you can do is keep pushing forward 💪
Me too! I've made every possible mistake along the way and learned a ton during the process.
I think the most valuable advice I could give to newcomers is:
''Every shortcut you take will cost you way more time and make your life miserable''.
You use a game editor to avoid learning proper coding techniques and end up fighting against the limited possibilities, wasting hours to bypass artificial restrictions that would have been otherwise trivial on a ''real'' engine.
You choose to rely on the asset store to save time on learning making 2d or 3d stuff and end up burning a gazillion of hours trying to make all this mess fit together...
It applies to everything. There is no shortcut, unless you are willing to sacrifice most of what made your project unique in the first place.
I have been completed 2 tutorials on is platformer and other is space shooter (both 2d)
And I can't do anything on my own I fell stuck and empty in my head. There was one video I watched that said something like " if you want to learn you gotta do the tutorial 7 times" So I don't know maybe I will give it a try to ake the same tutorial 7 times and then I will know at leat some programming.
That being said I think the 1 thing and the biggest that Game Devs fail is becouse lack of programming skills.
(And I hope I will not give up)
I just want to make a 2d or 2.5d fighting game that looks old school but has modern controls and simulation boxing
Thank you for makong this video for is. Bless you 🥰🙏👏💙
I'm so glad it resonated with you 🤍
@@3gnomesgames909 everything what you said is very true. I hope many people will find your video and hopefully will help them open their eyes and change their idea or perspective in the right direction. 😉👌
Solid video.
great video!
Thank you!
Well if you ever remember the rest be sure to let us know
i liked that video and sub cuz it's really good and helpful
Thank you!
Well as someone who went to school specifically to understand coding and game design for 8+ years with 2 degrees and high honors... I don't understand code.
I have yet to get it to click in my mind and I clearly am missing something to make it, which has hindered me from moving forward with game design and it is painful.
The tutorials I find are nice, but its still annoying to watch 1-2 hour vids to figure something out that should only take a couple of minutes.
I don't know why I'm saying this, maybe its just because I don't know how to learn form failure as discussed.
From the absolute basics: Do you understand algorithms? They are a sequence of steps to acquire an expected result. Most of programming is understanding how to explain to a computer how to do something. The problem with most tutorials i see online is that they just give you the solution for a problem step by step, but they don't teach you how to reach to this conclusion. If you are referring to programming languages, you can learn most of them in a few days by reading their documentation and getting acquainted with how they do things (Lists in Python may behave differently from lists in C# for instance).
By "algorithms" I don't mean math formulas or complex calculations. I mean "This function receives this value. If this value equals this, do that. If not, do that other thing").
@@_JPkun If you are taking about breaking down larger problems into smaller problems, then no, I do not understand algorithms well. Kind of hard for me to explain something to a computer that I can't figure out how to understand myself.
I have tried a few languages and engines, but I can't seem to get any to click with my head, especially Python.
@@_JPkun I do at least understand basic if/then scenarios, just not anything more complex like while or for for example. Don't really know how to place the pieces together, or really know if the pieces are for the right puzzle.
@@Surkk2960 Ok, I ask this because understanding how to break down problems into parts as tiny as possible is the fundamentals of programming. Programming languages are like having the ability to explain to a French guy how to make a sandwich, then to a Japanese guy and so on, they are not the defining factor of a good programmer.
Loved the brain eater pie
Thank you!
Bruh how did you know my first project was to make big mmorpg game xD
It's a right of passage 😂
The discord link in the description wasn't working for me 😓
Anyone spare a link?
This vid was amazing thanks i relate to two of these❤❤
Eh, depends what you think failure is. Did you even set goals of success? Some Japanese studios set goals of "must sell 10 million copies." Then they only sell 6 million and explain "game is a failure."
GOOD advice
Glad you think so!
Nice video
Thanks!
#1: Avoid RPG's and 3D Fighters
#2: Don't expect to make a multimillion project as your first one
3: Even if your concept is HOT, HOT GARBAGE, FINISH IT ANYWAY.
What really is an MMO? If you think about it, instead of focusing on the world of warcrafts, why not go instead for club penguins and more lite versions of the genre, i mean, Maplestory has been around for 20 years or something like that. Saying that, i don't think I'd ever do an MMO myself, i'm more of a roguelike (Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne and the like) enjoyer and survival-craft-adventure thing (picture Terraria or Valheim).
That's true, it can be a lot more than WOW
I'm glad I watched this
Great video! Have a sub, a like and a comment from an imposter who can never accomplish anything :(
You can do it!
❤
Someone wants to make a game with me😅
😢😢😢😊
Till 15 minutes mark it was awesome, after that.. Too cheesy bruh, like come on man, grow up! Be a man!😂