hey, I’m new around here.
I was just curious about the talents a game dev has; like, do you guys make the music and art for your games along with the actual coding and whatnot?
Is it hard to maintain multiple talents when working on games? For example, I’ve studied art and music simultaneously, and found it extremely difficult to keep up a productive lifestyle and still make progress .
I’m personally only a coder and software designer. Most people I know are string in one area only and have limited or no skill in other areas, though I do know a couple “Jack of All Trades” kind of people who do really cool stuff on their own (but aren’t experts in each area).
Based on that, I don’t think that the “secondary” skills necessarily need to be hard to maintain. If your speciality is being able to do a bit of everything then you don’t need to be world class in each area. So having the basics down and sticking to them is probably good enough, and if your project needs more than that it’s probably time to get a specialist on board.
thanks for the response.
I’m glad to hear it’s doable; I’m rather fond of Jack of all Trades.
I must say, your project looks pretty cool; is your group comprised entirely of specialists?
I’m pretty much only a coder. Instant gratification for me. 
While I can do basic, low-poly modelling very simple animations, I’m hopeless at adding detail and UV unwrapping. I can also make semi-decent hard-surface textures. Now, audio? forget it.
I started off as someone who does music, but then slowly developed a liking towards other types of art such modelling and now even programming if that is considered one. So I guess I’m a jack of all trades 
Very difficult. I have made a firm commitment to creating my game, and that means what free time I have goes into game dev; opportunity cost and all that. I am stopping my viola classes, and weekends I no longer go out unless it is necessary in order to stay in to do dev.
In addition, while I can draw somewhat, and know how to make music, it is fact that the time I’ve put in can not rival what the professionals can do; hence areas that I am weak in, I will look for help from freelance contractors.
Haha, thanks. Pretty much, though the core group was only 3 people. We outsourced the stuff that our specialties didn’t cover - so we bought stuff online to get us ~80% and then farmed out modifications as needed to other specialists we know.
The exception to that is the environment tileset. I made placeholders myself (just dragging out boxes of the appropriate sizes) and then got a 3D modeller to make nicer looking ones for us (which mostly meant just re-creating my boxes and adding UVs and textures).
Paid my way through art school by working as an engineer. Much of my early career bounced back and forth between art/design and engineering. So I am both an artist and engineer, professionally and senior level at both. For me, I like to do both and be able to do anything I need in building a game. Personally I tend to see game development as a single skill with many facets.
My role is usually some combination of UI/Tech Art/frontend, but varies a lot depending on the project. Being bilingual (art/code), I often work a lot with building pipelines and working as a interpreter between art and eng. Knowing both is a great benefit in problem solving. It also gives me the opportunity to build a lot of prototypes, which where I work… involves some pretty freaking awesome stuff.
Music is a complete mystery to me. I don’t touch the stuff.
The games in my profile. I programmed them entirely from the ground up (no starter kits or plugins), made all visuals, all sound effects and all the music (only psi.kart has music).
For me its really just the result of years of hardcore ADD. I will literally sit there with my keyboard out hooked up to a synthesizer, Unity open, and Zbrush open. I will then type some code into Unity, my mind will drift and I will start pressing keys on my synthesizer, my mind will drift again, I’ll make something zbrush or do a few strokes in it. Round and round and round. I’ve set it up so I just get distracted by another productive activity.
I find forcing yourself to get good at multiple things have cross-effects to other things. All skills are sort of intermixed in some way. It’s like if you want to be an animator, it’d also do you good to get good at dancing so you have a sense of rhythm and timing, and finesse to body movement, which development of those instincts through dancing will translate into better instincts as an animator. That relation is fairly obvious, some things it gets more abstract but I think everything has some relation like that, at some level. Like it’s really weird that learning to play the synthesizer I feel made me a better programmer because it taught me how to better focus my mind on a single thing and keep a rhythm with it, like when I get going hard on programming I will actually unconsciously press my keys in a rhythm and kind of get into a groove with it that same way as if I were playing a synthesizer. I find there is some weird relation like that where any skill can be beneficial to another skill in some weird unexpected way.
Replace the music bit with Illustrator, and you live in same world I do.
In straight up software, and even in graphic design/illustration this trait is more of a challenge than benefit. The beauty of game dev is that ADHD/ADD is a wonderful benefit. I can get fully distracted on a totally different path in the same project. It seems like this trait is pretty common in the industry (diagnosed or undiagnosed). Often it feels like producers are there largely to keep a roomful of ADHD game geeks on track.
I’m a coder and game designer, I leave the rest of the art/music/sound effects etc to specialists who know what they are doing.
I firmly believe in the old adage “Jack of all trades, master of none”, and it rings very true in game development.
Although now and again some people are pretty good at many things, but it also comes down to the amount of time you have on your hands.
For me, I do everything myself (Aside from the strictly financial business and occassionally menu graphics, that goes to my brother for the most part, and besides my latest game which has been all me). I’ve spent 12-13 Years total in both Music, Graphic Design (2D and 3D), and Programming. All started at seperate times. I was 9 when I started learning about programming old age Basic on a Tandy 1000. When I was 13, I started graphic design. 16 I started playing music, eventually began self producing everything, and a couple other peoples tracks. I had semi hiatus’s with each of them, but eventually I came back after getting good at each, and decided to start using what I know, to make whole games on my own.
Jack of all trades except music for me. Beginning coder (slowly working on that), developer, all of the art. The 2d platformer I’m trying to do is ridiculously art-intensive so if my soldering quest tomorrow goes well I can finally move forward tomorrow!
I’d say I’m a jack of all trades… almost. I started off as a Leveldesigner for the goldsource way back in early 1999. Did some mods for it and over the years I became really skilled in 3D Environment art. After switching to 3dsmax I picked up modeling other 3d objects as well. That naturally forced me to get good with 2D art and textures as well. I DJ since 1997 and still occasionally do so sound/music production is covered, too (though I’m not really that good at production). I’m a trained wholesale and export clerk and due to working on mods for many years I got good at managing projects and teams over the years and learned how to handle financial matters and to some extend legal matters. For a living I do webdevelopment/programming and package design in an ad agency so I’m not a total noob when it comes to code either.
IMHO being a jack of all trades type of guy is kind of a necessity when you want to start a project on your own. I may not be the best programmer ever but thats the fun of it all for me; learning new things to better myself.
And when you really need something done you can’t do by yourself, you can always ask some friends who are experts in this field - or find/hire people to help you out. Or learn how to do it
The only thing I really suck at is animating… its the one thing I really hate to do because I suck so badly at it.
And Shaders… they confuse me and I never wrote a single line of shader code so far since I got specialist friends for that
I also enjoy painting and fiddling with electronics but thats not really related to unity. Though it fits into the overall “be creative” theme
I am a software dev, and my passion is sound. So, coding, music and sound effects.
I would also share my ideas on the game design and the story if I feel I have something to add. I’m not willing to throw my time at anything else though, I’d rather polish what I’m already doing.
Coding is my thing, and I’m not very good at anything else. However, I’ve been working to become better at art stuff, and I think it’s paying off. It’ll be a while before I’m retail-ready with my art, but it’s a lot better than a few years ago.
I seem to be an apprentice Jack-of-all-Trades, in that I have a basic understanding of how to do most things. The only things I can’t do myself at all are:
I’m only a programmer, but I find it helps to know a little bit about each area of games even if it isn’t much. I can do basic 2D(mostly UI), very mediocre 3D hardsurface and I have limited knowledge of making sounds/music. I’m also at a competitive level in a FPS game which I’d say is my only “true” talent, although I’m finding myself with less time to train so I can’t continue with that for much longer.
I wouldn’t say I have a talent for programming, networking maybe but the only reason I’d say that is because I focus on it.
ha, yeah; coding seems great for making fun things super fast.
google some music stuff; it doesn’t take long to make something simple that sounds nice.
that sounds like what I did, it’s fun
A fellow viola player! I know what you mean; I had to quit my viola lessons as well when I started getting into this stuff.
is it expensive to outsource?
I’m guessing that it’s pretty common.
engineer…and art? isn’t that counter intuitive? hah. I always thought engineers were the most boring people ever, but you sound pretty interesting.
that’s pretty cool, I wish I was ADD; for me, if I get bored, I’ll go waste a couple hours on 9gag or something.
yeah, I’ve noticed how being somewhat talented in two areas helps in one.
and, I never thought about how dancing might help with animation, that’s a neat thoughtline.
yeah, the master of none part is kind of annoying, but do you ever find it difficult not being able to understand, say , the artistic parts of a game?
heh, I started with music and ended with programming. But, 12 years! that’s a lot of experience! How many games have you made? What’s the most complex that you’ve tried?
Thanks for all the replies! it’s really interesting seeing what other things you guys do.
I wanted to reply to everyone, but I’m in a hurry at the moment , sorry.
I’m an artist and have trained myself over the years to specialise in programming. Truth be told I don’t consider myself anything special although others are quick to say I am talented. Because I think ultimately people can all raise their game and push their work to the next level with the required amount of backbone and willpower.