Do you ever feel like the difficulty of gamedev is underestimated?

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I certainly do… Obviously for someone who makes games they understand how complicated it is and everything, but for the average person they just think its as easy as learning to play a trumpet or something. Atleast that’s what I’ve observed. For example, my family is one of those people. “Michael, stop playing games and do homework or something productive.” No matter how many times I’ve tried to explain to them what I’m actually doing, it just won’t get to their heads.:smile: Another kind of those people are my friends. I show them some of my projects and they just laugh and ask what I’m doing with my life, and they they start talking about how if they knew how to code how good their games would be compared to mine, lol. Sometimes this gets me kinda frustrated, but I atleast I can always get a good laugh whenever one of them tries to learn and then quits after the first week. :wink: hahha.

So do you guys experience a similar situation? If so, in what ways? Although no one realizes that there is a genius behind every project, at the end of the day we’re all learning something new everyday, which is much more valuable than the lack of exposure our intelligence gets.:slight_smile:

Edit: Also I just wanted to add that I’m no genius at all I’ve only been using Unity for a year, I am mostly talking about all the professional and more experienced developers.

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With exceptions, that’s true for most professions :slight_smile:

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Not really. Game dev is relatively simple as professions go. Witness the flood of available games out there.

When you can reliably live off your games expect and demand respect. When you make games people have heard of then you are accomplishing something.

Otherwise it’s no more significant then me saying I’m a mechanic because I can do an oil change.

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I’m confused.

Oil change → flooding the markets with bad games.

So they are not game devs.

Being bad at a profession is easy. I am assuming he is talking about doing a professional and being good at it.

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In my experience if you are good at it respect is not hard to come by. Simply show off your work, tell them how many downloads you’ve had, or reveal how much money you are making. Same goes for most skills.

If your parents are still telling you to do homework… If other people are convinced they could do better… Well that probably means you aren’t that good yet.

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I think that generally you shouldn’t ever expect other people to understand anything about what you’re doing, unless they have same profession.

Regarding parents, I believe if you’ll start paying your share of household bills with money you earned, they most likely will leave you alone.

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Well, to back what the original poster said a bit, yes you can earn respect if you do those extra steps you mentioned, while in other professions you just say what you do.

“I’m a doctor”

vs

“I’m a game dev. No, it’s not my hobby, it’s my profession. No, really. My game has x downloads per day. I mean I make x$ per month! I’m doing pretty good!”

(Edit: As proof, in my social life, when I don’t feel like talking about myself and I don’t want to lie either, when people ask me what I do I say “Software Development”.)

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True. That is one difference with game dev. The entrance barrier is very low, meaning the title earns no inherent respect. And nor should it, not unless you have done something with it.

In my social life I get plenty of respect for saying “I’m a biochemical engineer”. But in my work life everyone is an engineer, so I tell people “I run a side business making games”.

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Well, it’s the job of engine developers these days to sell to game developers. That does include attracting would-be game developers.

Difficulty is based on ambition if you ask me. There’s a reason AAA games aren’t done by one person using a laptop.

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I feel like I could have made a funny response to that. I’m just one guy developing on a laptop.

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I think all depends on your background.

Game dev is full of noob programmers, thinking they are actually good, and not even admitting they are pre-juniors. And I can continue. Sorry guys if anyone of you feels hurt, but that’s the truth.

Speaking strictly at Unity, Unity devs delivered a tool, super easy to use and powerful, but most of peoples coming here have no idea how to program in C# and maybe zero game dev background.

Oh… shall I continue with so called “gfx” artists who put 3-4 million triangles in a chair or table?

Edited “gfx” part for @Ryiah :slight_smile:

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Yup. Try marketing your game after finishing it.

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Reading the part about programmers brought to mind those artists who submit a low quality asset and then create a thread wondering why the Asset Store rejected their entry. We haven’t had one of those in a while…

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I will modify for you, I will put 3-4 instead one, just to make it clear.

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I thought the decision was unfair. That single chair was totally ready to be textured for use in a game. :wink:

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To get back to @DugelStudios question:
I totally get what you’re saying!
My brother always asks me why I haven’t published any games yet and why I always start a new project … as if it were that easy to create a great game out of nothing :frowning:

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Because a lot a you are superficial and jump over learning to production, and think is the same thing. Is not.

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Publish something. Anything. The experience is invaluable.

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While I do agree that game development isnt any harder than any other profession, say an accountant, if you tell someone your an accountant they won’t think much except acknowledge you have a good job. But if you tell them your a game developer, they’ll give you a puzzled look and think to themselves “I thought everyone stopped playing video games in middle school?” Just what I think anyways:smile:

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Depending on the task, programming is considerably more problematic than accounting. Accounting always has answers, while programming involves a fair bit of inventing problems to solve.

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