My perspective on this is a bit different but it has worked really well for what my goals are. I believe that for newer indie devs the most important thing is skill acquisition. Its knowing how to do things and what to do, instead of having a fully finished and released game. Keeping scope in check and doing tiny games when you start will help you release something, but it won't teach you nearly as much as trying your dream game. The dream game route will likely not succeed but 1 or 2 years in, the dev that stuck with that big project will have more experience and knowledge. In my opinion thats more valuable to new devs than two released games with barely any buzz or reception. Just my 2 cents!
I love this. And learning. One of the reasons, probably in hindsight would have been worth a mention, I offer this kind of focus and scoping as a goal is that you will learn an astronomical amount about so many aspects of dev if you ship something (this applies at granularity as well, ie ship a whole game or a whole character). However if the learning goal is to ship that whole game and you spend the entire time building 500 characters, no one will ever get to play your game. You'll be a stunning character artist, and have learned a lot, but no game. I jus tkinda took for granted the learning along the way, but agree for sure. I am a big believer in learning. I'm kind of addicted to it. So 100% on board with these two cents and appreciate the insight. Thanks for watching and commenting
something you just said. I'm new to this unreal engine just a few months and i feel determined to give it a go, so just dropping my start date here really ready for the finish, I hope one day you will be giving my game a go 😀
Thank you, I’ve struggled with this exact problem for the last year or so. Even though I’m still a beginner I’ll be comparing myself to seasoned game devs expecting my very first released game to be on the same level. For the past few months I’ve been applying this mindset of limiting my games scope down enough to be as realistic as possible. Now I’m proud to say that my game is going to be releasing this mid November. Whether or not it’s amazing is beside the point as at this stage in my learning I’m prioritising finishing a project - start to finish. Genuinely thank you for all your videos and your help in the discord. You’ve been a godsend in teaching unreal and getting my game closer to being released. Thank you.
Yes this is great advice, it's what I did about a month ago. I wanted to make an open world game but once I got things going I realized just how huge of a undertaking it was for learning, so I downsized it to one part of what I built to learn, refine and make my project linear, test everything out in one area then more on.
Hey Kevin, great chat! I like this video series concept. A topic I'd be interested in hearing about is outsourcing. What comes to mind when you need to share your project for independent contractor work? From an indie perspective.
Yes, I’ve felt the same, but back when I was learning frontend development. I learned not to focus on others and the amazing games they create, but to approach it with humility and move forward very slowly with the topic. Though I must admit, sometimes I get the feeling that it's too late to make a game or that I’ve missed the chance because others have made better games. Nevertheless, I keep creating and I won’t stop until I publish my game. It may just be a demo, but it will have an interesting storyline and many cool details.
This is literally what I'm struggling with right now :D I am super comfortable in sculpting, modelling and texturing and am now learning to use the Control Rig Tools from Unreal to also rig and animate a polished character. And boy am I not happy with the results, get frustrated by the huge skill gap from modelling to rigging/animating and get annoyed by the whole process. Thanks for the video, it helps to hear it is the same for everyone :p
I like these little informative clips. Maybe you could do one on the topic of performance. What can you do and what can't you do and can you even determine that before starting the project or do you have to do it and then see how it goes and where you might need to change things. simply important things to ensure that older hardware can play the game well or things that should be avoided at all costs if you want players with poorer hardware to be able to enjoy the game.
Thanks for the video ! What i've noticed personally, is that when i started, Because of what i saw UE5 was capable of doing, I tried to emulate the realistic things, mechanic or graphic i was seeing. And that's where the trap is. GAS (Game animation samples) and so on are great versatile systems, but are they REALLY that important that your character run in a realistic way ??? Will that really make your game funnier ? And why try to compete with AAA, they have more budget and people and experience than I do anyway. I realized that most game i play, i play them out of fun and not out of realism, unless it's a simulation (like Dirt Rally). And even then I like my Need for Speed most Wanted 2006 more than however, these gems are scarce. After learning about animations i took a look at League of legends walking animation, and boy they're not realistic at all ! Yet I don't care, i still want to climp the ELO ladder. I realized that in fact, I don't care, because what makes LOL good is the gameplay, it's fun and that's all we need ! I know for sure i'll never get to build just 1 level like Battlefield, with the camera shakes, and so on.... even less for an entire game. So now my inspirations are to do the 2 following games - Dofus (A french turn by turn game) - S4 League (A TPS with REALLY fun mechanics and game modes !) They're simple in design, and they tend to focus on gameplay first. It's just the gameplay that makes them the right amount of fun/competitive. While i love my Halo, my Battelfield, my Dirt rally, it's a fact that these behemoth are requiring thousands of hours of work from teams at a time. And even if you maange to do one by yourself, while your were deving your project, the AAA studios did 10 of them, with better graphics than yours. I played Throne and liberty. It's indeed pretty, but the gameplay is empty, so I left 1 day after playing it. Dofus is far more superior in every way of the gameplay. And yet when you look at it graphic wise, it's completely opposite. And i'm sure they spent thousands and thousands of hours on design. That's why we still play boardgames, we want fun, not realism, reality is realistic enough.
100%. Its funny you mention LoL. I use to snub LoL as a Halo, 3rd Person, FPS player. Then I had a similar learning with LoL based on replayability etc. Learned a ton as result
AI is big helper. I can draw and desing concept art and character, sculpt the character, texture it and rig it etc. Designing a character duration is 10 day, sculpting is 5, texture and rig etc. Total duration is 1 months. I design and base model with ai and it is duration 2 hours. It is shorten total duration and makes it half hour. Whenever think scope and duration we have to consider AI tools.
I primarily animate, and quickly realized i needed to outsource allot of unreal work on Fiverr to make progress. Examining the blueprints they produce with GPT has been a good way to learn though. I've also realized getting a beta out for feedback is going to be super important - my reservations lie in that my product is for Oculus which has a small customer base so I want to make a good impression badly!
First rules of scope, no matter how much you underscope, it's overscope. I downsize a zelda game into a very simpler VN, using known story formula, 5 years later after plugging hole
@@livinfreestyle6727 the playlist moved to the next video before I finished my story 😆 the downsizing happened at the beginning of the project, yet the story proved to be overscope despite the formula and after plugging all plothole that allowed the story to work at a basic level, the character is not interesting because it's still a mute player insert character from the zelda like, so I still need work else the beginning ofbthe story is boring. The scope failed at: A story that reflect my caraibean culture... the more specific the more likely it is overscoped, hence why it budget has generic story, you skip the figuring out part of creativity, ie research and development aka uncertainty also known as deadline buster. Innovation and creativity is overscoping.
Establishing your scope as a baseline is super important, but also revisiting that scope as your production progresses. Developmenmt is messy and things RARELY go to plan. Things take longer than initially projected, mechanics do not work out as planned, encounters are far less fun in practice than they seemed on paper, a team member dreams up an amazing, yet unplanned feature. All of these will affect your scope. At that point you need to ask do you extend your schedule or do you cut features. Depending on the team and the budget either or both may happen multiple times during a project. You may for example extend a schedule for a feature that is not working but at some point later in development have to cut it because...it's still not working.
i am planning to do animation with maximo, text to speech for story voice with elevenlabs, sound would be create by ai too. My work is only create a simple character mesh and enviroment ( Nanite on ue 5) and a bit of programming with blueprint and with your advice i would like to start with a small simple project in the future and ship it to steam just for fun. I ´m deeply appreciative for all the videos that you created for us.
I think the biggest trap is money. Scope is not really relevant if the budget is there (e.g. Star Citizen). Let me explain this in a little more detail. You can spend 1, 10, 20 years or your whole life building the game if your budget is almost not limited. The budget includes income, purchases and general expenses. If you are dependent on selling the game or only have a limited budget, then that is a problem, then time and resources are limited and thus the scope should be relatively smaller. If you have a job and can only work on the game for 1-2 hours a day, then it is financed by that job and it just takes longer, the scope is just tied to the time and income you provide. So I would put it like this: The budget determines the time (and resources in general) and this determines the scope that the game can have (Budget -> Time -> Scope). To be more clear: Reducing the scope without having the time/resources and budget does not allow (or guarantee) to build your game, it just redifines the budget it requires.
Fair call out. I was thinking mostly about indie or solo devs where money is quite constrained, but easily see this point, that given money, it can change the game. Thanks for watching and commenting.
I feel scope is only an issue for small teams or a solo dev because you probably aren't doing it full time. Time I would say is the biggest issue. I have an idea for a large-scale RPG, which is totally possible for me to do as I have the skills and knowledge to do it, but because I already work full time in a completely different field to game dev I can't find enough time to devote to production.
I think this makes sense. But it is at least worth mentioning that scope and time are pretty well tied together. Even if you were independently wealthy and could do solo full time, I think scope still plays a big roll as exemplified by the idea that even in a full pro environment scope creep and "scoping" in general is a huge piece of planning. Also, how cool would it be if you got to the point where you could build your RPG full time!!!
The biggest mistake is that people don't prove their ideas and jump into building them. And then find out they were wrong after investing time. Everyone has scope. Using it well is what's important.
Oh no... there is still "leg sliding".... "The turn is not natural enough...".... and then it takes forever to perfect everything... "Oh, let's crap the entire thing and go with Motion Matching instead... oh no..."
Anything Made to be Online. i feel like that's a huge Basic, everyone wants. but, so few understand the Needs/differences for example.. Well UO and WOW have a login and client.. what's the difference.. i should be able to that?? lol...
@@livinfreestyle6727 but yeah, I confirm everything you said in that vid.......been there done that, hitting reality wall is hard, but we should keep trying and learning as oppose of dismissing an idea because it would be impossible with limited resources.
This is a fair and critical thought but I was looking at this more in the light of striking out on your own as an Indie/solo dev and that experience being part of what makes the enemy of good being perfection thing. Plus not knowing what it takes for something outside your discipline even though you've been surrounded by high quality versions of those things in the past
Exactly! In addition, I think there are lots of videos like "Make a game in 30mins/1hour" that have created a wrong perception that game dev is easy nowadays. When in reality creation of a simple 15 min demo can take YEARS.
My perspective on this is a bit different but it has worked really well for what my goals are. I believe that for newer indie devs the most important thing is skill acquisition. Its knowing how to do things and what to do, instead of having a fully finished and released game. Keeping scope in check and doing tiny games when you start will help you release something, but it won't teach you nearly as much as trying your dream game. The dream game route will likely not succeed but 1 or 2 years in, the dev that stuck with that big project will have more experience and knowledge. In my opinion thats more valuable to new devs than two released games with barely any buzz or reception. Just my 2 cents!
I love this. And learning. One of the reasons, probably in hindsight would have been worth a mention, I offer this kind of focus and scoping as a goal is that you will learn an astronomical amount about so many aspects of dev if you ship something (this applies at granularity as well, ie ship a whole game or a whole character). However if the learning goal is to ship that whole game and you spend the entire time building 500 characters, no one will ever get to play your game. You'll be a stunning character artist, and have learned a lot, but no game. I jus tkinda took for granted the learning along the way, but agree for sure. I am a big believer in learning. I'm kind of addicted to it. So 100% on board with these two cents and appreciate the insight. Thanks for watching and commenting
something you just said. I'm new to this unreal engine just a few months and i feel determined to give it a go, so just dropping my start date here really ready for the finish, I hope one day you will be giving my game a go 😀
I'm beginner at game dev, it's much to learn about, thankyou for the insight...
You got this!
Thank you, I’ve struggled with this exact problem for the last year or so. Even though I’m still a beginner I’ll be comparing myself to seasoned game devs expecting my very first released game to be on the same level. For the past few months I’ve been applying this mindset of limiting my games scope down enough to be as realistic as possible. Now I’m proud to say that my game is going to be releasing this mid November. Whether or not it’s amazing is beside the point as at this stage in my learning I’m prioritising finishing a project - start to finish. Genuinely thank you for all your videos and your help in the discord. You’ve been a godsend in teaching unreal and getting my game closer to being released. Thank you.
Awesome. I'm looking forward to playing the game. Make sure you share in discord
Its definitely scope. Cant see the forest for the trees, once you're down in it, you cant tell that your growing the forest.
Thanks for watching and dropping comments
see you in five years! Kidding but maybe not, thanks so much for the content, you're channel has helped me learn a ton!
That's great to hear and I'll be ready for that email (hopefully I'll be spending a ton of cash on all you alls games in that time)
Yes this is great advice, it's what I did about a month ago. I wanted to make an open world game but once I got things going I realized just how huge of a undertaking it was for learning, so I downsized it to one part of what I built to learn, refine and make my project linear, test everything out in one area then more on.
Good stuff!
Hey Kevin, great chat! I like this video series concept. A topic I'd be interested in hearing about is outsourcing. What comes to mind when you need to share your project for independent contractor work? From an indie perspective.
oooo....that's a great one to keep in the back of my mind. I'll add it to the list
Yes, I’ve felt the same, but back when I was learning frontend development. I learned not to focus on others and the amazing games they create, but to approach it with humility and move forward very slowly with the topic. Though I must admit, sometimes I get the feeling that it's too late to make a game or that I’ve missed the chance because others have made better games. Nevertheless, I keep creating and I won’t stop until I publish my game. It may just be a demo, but it will have an interesting storyline and many cool details.
and without yours videos, I wouldn't make it, Kevin turbo master 😊
I'm looking forward to playing your game. Thanx for watching and dropping comments
This is literally what I'm struggling with right now :D I am super comfortable in sculpting, modelling and texturing and am now learning to use the Control Rig Tools from Unreal to also rig and animate a polished character. And boy am I not happy with the results, get frustrated by the huge skill gap from modelling to rigging/animating and get annoyed by the whole process. Thanks for the video, it helps to hear it is the same for everyone :p
You’re welcome. You are definitely not the only one. Myself included.
Thanks for the video!
You're welcome. Thx for watching
I like these little informative clips.
Maybe you could do one on the topic of performance.
What can you do and what can't you do and can you even determine that before starting the project or do you have to do it and then see how it goes and where you might need to change things.
simply important things to ensure that older hardware can play the game well or things that should be avoided at all costs if you want players with poorer hardware to be able to enjoy the game.
Glad you like this format. I'll come up with some more and we'll see where we go. Im guessing I'll see you in a stream coming soon. Thx pbm
Thanks for the video !
What i've noticed personally, is that when i started, Because of what i saw UE5 was capable of doing, I tried to emulate the realistic things, mechanic or graphic i was seeing. And that's where the trap is.
GAS (Game animation samples) and so on are great versatile systems, but are they REALLY that important that your character run in a realistic way ???
Will that really make your game funnier ? And why try to compete with AAA, they have more budget and people and experience than I do anyway.
I realized that most game i play, i play them out of fun and not out of realism, unless it's a simulation (like Dirt Rally). And even then I like my Need for Speed most Wanted 2006 more than however, these gems are scarce.
After learning about animations i took a look at League of legends walking animation, and boy they're not realistic at all !
Yet I don't care, i still want to climp the ELO ladder. I realized that in fact, I don't care, because what makes LOL good is the gameplay, it's fun and that's all we need !
I know for sure i'll never get to build just 1 level like Battlefield, with the camera shakes, and so on.... even less for an entire game. So now my inspirations are to do the 2 following games
- Dofus (A french turn by turn game)
- S4 League (A TPS with REALLY fun mechanics and game modes !)
They're simple in design, and they tend to focus on gameplay first. It's just the gameplay that makes them the right amount of fun/competitive.
While i love my Halo, my Battelfield, my Dirt rally, it's a fact that these behemoth are requiring thousands of hours of work from teams at a time.
And even if you maange to do one by yourself, while your were deving your project, the AAA studios did 10 of them, with better graphics than yours.
I played Throne and liberty. It's indeed pretty, but the gameplay is empty, so I left 1 day after playing it. Dofus is far more superior in every way of the gameplay. And yet when you look at it graphic wise, it's completely opposite. And i'm sure they spent thousands and thousands of hours on design.
That's why we still play boardgames, we want fun, not realism, reality is realistic enough.
100%. Its funny you mention LoL. I use to snub LoL as a Halo, 3rd Person, FPS player. Then I had a similar learning with LoL based on replayability etc. Learned a ton as result
AI is big helper. I can draw and desing concept art and character, sculpt the character, texture it and rig it etc. Designing a character duration is 10 day, sculpting is 5, texture and rig etc. Total duration is 1 months. I design and base model with ai and it is duration 2 hours. It is shorten total duration and makes it half hour. Whenever think scope and duration we have to consider AI tools.
LOVE THIS
Thx for checking out the vid and dropping comments
I primarily animate, and quickly realized i needed to outsource allot of unreal work on Fiverr to make progress. Examining the blueprints they produce with GPT has been a good way to learn though. I've also realized getting a beta out for feedback is going to be super important - my reservations lie in that my product is for Oculus which has a small customer base so I want to make a good impression badly!
Beta, alpha, and all kinds of early feedback testing to build trust with your players I think will be helpful
First rules of scope, no matter how much you underscope, it's overscope.
I downsize a zelda game into a very simpler VN, using known story formula, 5 years later after plugging hole
"5 years later". I've almost caught you!! I'm sure there is a Fight Club quote in here somewhere. "First rule of scope..."
@@livinfreestyle6727 the playlist moved to the next video before I finished my story 😆 the downsizing happened at the beginning of the project, yet the story proved to be overscope despite the formula and after plugging all plothole that allowed the story to work at a basic level, the character is not interesting because it's still a mute player insert character from the zelda like, so I still need work else the beginning ofbthe story is boring. The scope failed at: A story that reflect my caraibean culture... the more specific the more likely it is overscoped, hence why it budget has generic story, you skip the figuring out part of creativity, ie research and development aka uncertainty also known as deadline buster. Innovation and creativity is overscoping.
Establishing your scope as a baseline is super important, but also revisiting that scope as your production progresses. Developmenmt is messy and things RARELY go to plan. Things take longer than initially projected, mechanics do not work out as planned, encounters are far less fun in practice than they seemed on paper, a team member dreams up an amazing, yet unplanned feature. All of these will affect your scope. At that point you need to ask do you extend your schedule or do you cut features. Depending on the team and the budget either or both may happen multiple times during a project. You may for example extend a schedule for a feature that is not working but at some point later in development have to cut it because...it's still not working.
Yeah, development is a constant dance with scope. Thanks for the comment!
@ love the channel btw... Amazing info, thanks for sharing.
i am planning to do animation with maximo, text to speech for story voice with elevenlabs, sound would be create by ai too. My work is only create a simple character mesh and enviroment ( Nanite on ue 5) and a bit of programming with blueprint and with your advice i would like to start with a small simple project in the future and ship it to steam just for fun. I ´m deeply appreciative for all the videos that you created for us.
Glad you find the videos helpful. Good luck with the character, you've got this!
I think the biggest trap is money. Scope is not really relevant if the budget is there (e.g. Star Citizen). Let me explain this in a little more detail. You can spend 1, 10, 20 years or your whole life building the game if your budget is almost not limited. The budget includes income, purchases and general expenses. If you are dependent on selling the game or only have a limited budget, then that is a problem, then time and resources are limited and thus the scope should be relatively smaller. If you have a job and can only work on the game for 1-2 hours a day, then it is financed by that job and it just takes longer, the scope is just tied to the time and income you provide. So I would put it like this: The budget determines the time (and resources in general) and this determines the scope that the game can have (Budget -> Time -> Scope).
To be more clear: Reducing the scope without having the time/resources and budget does not allow (or guarantee) to build your game, it just redifines the budget it requires.
Fair call out. I was thinking mostly about indie or solo devs where money is quite constrained, but easily see this point, that given money, it can change the game. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Scope is always going to be the issue. I would say that burn out would be the second issue -- probably because of scope.
Yeah, burn out is real. That one I try "switching gears" to keep it fresh Thx for watching!
im marty mcfly and your doc emmett Brown is teaching me, thats why im here, but where is the delorean?
“this isn't meant to discourage you, I'll get to that later"
what!? don't discourage me later 😢
I totally laughed at this interpretation!
@@livinfreestyle6727
Glad to hear that, your channel has helped me immensely, wish I could give tips, but maybe a laugh here and there is good too 😅
I feel scope is only an issue for small teams or a solo dev because you probably aren't doing it full time. Time I would say is the biggest issue. I have an idea for a large-scale RPG, which is totally possible for me to do as I have the skills and knowledge to do it, but because I already work full time in a completely different field to game dev I can't find enough time to devote to production.
I think this makes sense. But it is at least worth mentioning that scope and time are pretty well tied together. Even if you were independently wealthy and could do solo full time, I think scope still plays a big roll as exemplified by the idea that even in a full pro environment scope creep and "scoping" in general is a huge piece of planning. Also, how cool would it be if you got to the point where you could build your RPG full time!!!
The biggest mistake is that people don't prove their ideas and jump into building them. And then find out they were wrong after investing time.
Everyone has scope. Using it well is what's important.
Thanks for checking out the vid and sharing your thoughts
Oh no... there is still "leg sliding".... "The turn is not natural enough...".... and then it takes forever to perfect everything... "Oh, let's crap the entire thing and go with Motion Matching instead... oh no..."
That is like a whole other thing. The perpetual, “oh wait there is a better way”. Or “”I just figure out a much easier way”
Anything Made to be Online. i feel like that's a huge Basic, everyone wants. but, so few understand the Needs/differences for example.. Well UO and WOW have a login and client.. what's the difference.. i should be able to that?? lol...
Its not entirely clear to me what your question is, but thanks for watching!
I thought you were gonna be talking about Gun sights 🤦♂🤦♂
I’d say that’s fair. It is game dev.
@@livinfreestyle6727 but yeah, I confirm everything you said in that vid.......been there done that, hitting reality wall is hard, but we should keep trying and learning as oppose of dismissing an idea because it would be impossible with limited resources.
You best believe i will be sending you that game. You don't know who you are messing with, Ask a dev.
I love it. Letsss gooo!!! -signed...your biggest fan
If your senior devs can't assess scope properly, then they shouldn't be seniors. Same with leads, directors, etc.
This is a fair and critical thought but I was looking at this more in the light of striking out on your own as an Indie/solo dev and that experience being part of what makes the enemy of good being perfection thing. Plus not knowing what it takes for something outside your discipline even though you've been surrounded by high quality versions of those things in the past
Exactly! In addition, I think there are lots of videos like "Make a game in 30mins/1hour" that have created a wrong perception that game dev is easy nowadays. When in reality creation of a simple 15 min demo can take YEARS.
I don't know why, but "couchwarrior" made me laugh this morning, but yea, it's crazy what goes into this stuff