Bright-eyed, naive children think that game development is easy. Or at least, expect it to be easy. Anyone who has gotten their hands dirty with actual development know that it is insanely hard. You have to learn tons, and always be prepared to learn more. You have to constantly find creative solutions to difficult problems. You have to be multi-talented, and spend an inordinate amount of time honing those skills. And the sheer, mind-numbing amount of work required is insane.
Some people here make comparisons to other disciplines. There is no adequate comparison for game development. A musician learns their instrument, and then spends time perfecting their craft. Game developers have to absorb far more knowledge than almost any other discipline. They have to simultaneously be writers, artists, musicians, painters, animators, sculptors, performers, directors, marketers, salespeople, business-people, and technical professionals. How many other comparable fields cover that?
The sad irony is that while a musician can probably create finished work in a matter of days or weeks, a game developer’s work could take months or years, and the results can very well be all the same.
I’d have agreed if the scope of what is a game is clearly defined. It isn’t and I can’t in good faith, argue that it could be. Even a walking sim qualifies these days, which is why I can’t really say making a game is a fixed point of difficulty, not least when there’s asset store, visual scripting and millions of dollars poured into making it easy to click and deploy a playable game from start to finish.
If you make a fixed point somewhere, then you’re right. For example: how hard is it to be a game dev making Eve Online might raise a few eyebrows.
Even with the minimum requirements, we’re still talking about a level of technical proficiency that is daunting. And there is a long distance between being an Asset Flipper and an actual game developer. In order for someone taking the route you described to actually be acknowledged for their skill, they would have to have refined their level design and visual scripting skills to an incredible degree. We would still be talking about a remarkable amount of time, effort, and practice.
It seems like many people greatly underestimate the amount of skill and work involved based on the number of people who are solo developers and have a dream of making a game similiar to any AAA game in recent years.
In reality it would be very challenging for most solo developers to tiny teams to be completing games as good as the ones back on the N64 and similar. Of course sometimes people do it but even those people generally comment at how much harder it was than they ever considered.
This is all in a person’s control as @hippocoder mentioned. Ultimately to a large degree game dev is as simple or complex as a person makes it with their choices. Of course trying to make a game very much like a game made by a team of 100+ skilled people will be an incredible challenge and quite likely never completed. But a person doesn’t need to set a near impossible goal and can instead choose a much more modest realistic goal.
So yeah many underestimate and scope way too big as a result. Often they learn and their next game is a fraction of that scope. Just part of the learning process I guess.
I wouldn’t compare something that usually requires a team to something an individual does. It would be more on the level of someone writing music for an orchestra, playing every instrument, and advertising/selling it to the public. That is years worth of skills.
I agree completely. Of course people can and will do what they want. I just focus on what I can do and more specifically what I can do well. I try to innovate in the ways that I can. Some people will like what I make and some people won’t.
I think maybe that is an important thing for devs. To just accept that. Maybe people try so hard trying to impress people or maybe they are afraid some people will criticize them if they are not trying to create some epic game. But there will always be people who don’t like what you make or don’t like what you are doing. Just the way it is. And that is fine.
To be honest, I think the biggest issue for a solo developer is being an artist and an engineer at the same time. It’s an almost physiologically difficult thing to do to switch gears for me, and when I am actively doing both I feel like I am at about 50% efficiency.
Because let’s face it, the most difficult thing about being a solo developer is when your game has a big hole in it and you find your skills wanting in terms of fixing it or improving it.
Most people just find one thing they are good at and make it their world. But when you have to face a new and completely different dragon every day it can be hard to keep up the motivation. A good example is marketing, which I think often ambushes devs at the very point that they thought their work was done.
I get this completely. I do my best work when I shift into that specific mode. Like when I am working on logic and I am “there” I cannot make art beyond basic shapes and junk sketches. I have to truly make a shift into that other mode and I mean it is something I can physically feel happening.
Over time I have learned to work with it instead of against it by literally making quick junk art stick figures rectangles etc just to have available for logic and testing. Then later I will make a shift to that other hat and do an iteration to make stuff more proper. And I iterate like that many times on a piece over the project lifetime always improving it a bit.
Been thinking a lot about (and actually made a post on a forum a few days ago) hiring an artist again so I just don’t even have to deal with it at all. Although I enjoy making art especially ultra low rez pixel art all of the different hats needed… it’s just a huge amount particularly for doing it very part-time.
You [quote=“AndersMalmgren, post:33, topic: 727941, username:AndersMalmgren”]
You can always use assets and customize in blender. Find ready to use and custom models on artstation etc
[/quote]
Can, some can, but not everyone can. That will be introducing step of difficulty.
In particular example yes. However,we got tons of assets, but lets put that aside and say, can starting dev write own full blown AI algorithms? Most probably wont.
Well first of all I don’t have any trouble being either an artist and engineer, I dare say I am more than good enough at both though definitely a better engineer. It’s that it takes me a few hours to become adjusted to the different psychological demands. To be an engineer you have to be focused on functionality and design specs, whereas an artist is driven mainly by emotional response and a vivid imagination.
As an artist, I don’t think it’s reasonable to try to customize bought models. Unless you are just adjusting the colors, it becomes a tediously difficult task to do anything, especially when there are baked maps involved. It’s easy for me to build a highpoly model, retopologize it and bake it, but when I don’t have that highpoly, any substantial modifications are really out of the question.
So for me, there are only 3 options: getting models custom made ($$$), procedural generation (somewhat of a black hole of diminishing returns), and doing it myself. For my current game I am using a combination of procedural generation (for the asteroid belt environment) as well as a combination of modular assets and a fine-tuned efficient workflow for the rest (mainly a good-sized spaceship interior and exterior as well as a lot of small assets).
I tend to spend a lot of time browsing artstation and my inspiration folder, and listening to soundtracks, to get into artist mode. For programming I meditate or listen to some classical music. But yeah it takes time for my head to make the shift.
And yet both were made by developers with a track record. Neither was a first game.
Dong Nguyen had been in the industry running his own studio for eight years before he released Flappy Bird. He’d released at least five different games before Flappy Bird.
Matt Hall had worked in the industry in various roles. Then he worked on his own for several years. He had number one titles on the App Store before the release of Crossy Road.
Andy Sum had about ten indie titles released before he worked on Crossy Road. I’ve hung out with the guy at various game dev events. He knows his stuff. He isn’t some fresh out of highschool wannabe developer.
Are you sure? From memory Grinding Gears isn’t much bigger then Hipster Whale. (Since they are both private companies, its hard to find definitive stats. If someone has better google fu then me, I’d be glad to be corrected).
We do ourselves a disfavor when we talk about mobile titles as being “low skill” and “exceptions to the rule”. On close examination, this is never true.
Definitely agree they are not low skill at all. In terms of sheer effort though it’s certainly more feasible than creating an openworld rpg for PC or something like that.
I think there’s definitely a lot of misconception about the skill it takes to make a good little casual game, or creating minimalist art. It’s like writing a very short story - it takes just as much skill if not more to make something conceptually complete in a smaller space, and mistakes are that much more obvious.
