I agree it is nice to have someone to talk to, when I first left “that company” to pursue my own thing I did it all on my own and then finally poached another guy to work with me. I agree it’s easy to get burnt out with what’s in front of you, but I’m still saying it’s very much possible.
You just have to learn to swallow your pride and accept as much help and / or develop a skill of quickly and effectively reverse engineering other products to get where you need to get quickly. I had to expand into a team due to the sheer scope of the game I’m planning to do, that’s not to say I couldn’t of done a smaller version by myself because as it stands right now 90% of the game is built by me. That’s coding / tech / artwork and storyline… In the early days I just bought as many assets as possible and modified to suit, now I have the chance to do a lot of it from scratch with a team.
That completely depends on the person, when I was working in IT a lot of the Cisco Exams / coding examinations and just coding by itself were all self study I majored in game design and computer physics though. I learnt how to use the OpenGL API by myself and I also learnt how to build engines and do artwork by myself, don’t get me wrong it took a long time and I did work for a fair few AAA companies in my time. But I don’t feel working for a AAA company helped me in any respect, in fact in a lot of ways it restricted. If I could do it again, I would of just earnt more money out of IT so I could of built a bigger team.
Interesting, I guess it is similar to most large companies in that the larger they are the more specialized/restricted you become in responsibilities.
I feel IT has generally adopted this model in the last 10 years or so in that they have created such specialized roles you now need to walk in being an expert in a particular product and a small slice of a certain technology. It’s very sad talking to guys who make high 6 figures but can’t explain what a packet looks like because all they do is “web security” and their only qualification is how to use a particular set of premade tools.
Is this a self fulfilling prophecy kind of question, most of the people here are currently in the trying to make a game set. But the people who would say ‘No I wouldn’t have tried’ have probably already left Unity and the forum. You probably need a leaving Unity exit pole or statistics on people who used unity then stopped using it.
To be 100% honest… I know I keep on doing this because I’ve gone too far away down the path already to even think about going back. But if I knew, back in 2001, how hard would be to become a ‘decent’ developer (still trying) I would’ve stayed with my Magic cards and comic books.
I started in the 80’s, and by the naughties I fancied getting into VFX. But when your job is in your blood, and the years encroach (mid 40’s now), you sort of get on with what you’re already in the middle of and forget the other stuff. Speaking for myself anyway.
I can’t imagine having a job that isn’t hard work, so that aspect has never really occurred to me. I’m more bothered about time sat watching paint dry (currently watching Beast, 3 hours in, ~2 to go. Yawn.).
For me, I am flying solo on my game design and I do it because it is something I enjoy, it keeps my mind going. It also keeps me out of trouble at times. I would never give that up for the world.
I have a good career, currently, so money isn’t my only aim. But it is one of my aims. I just don’t understand why every game I see is always trying to compete with what everyone else is doing, while classic genres are completely ignored.
I angry birds, then mad birds, then angry bees, then mad bees… then bee madness… it’s like, it’s worse than unoriginality. Worse than having no ideas at all to just try to kinda-copy, try to trick a few people into clicking download for 1,000 bucks in ad revenue or something. Whats the point, I make more than most indie devs at my day job.
So if I’m going to spend the time, which I have little of these days, I’d rather make something that will stand up to honest scrutiny from a broader audience and deliver an experience people will genuinely enjoy. I’d also prefer a scientific approach which is replicable, derive formulas and continue making games at a faster and more consistent pace as I mature.
But it’s the same with anything, right? Being “good” at something is based on how skilled you are compared to some average level of skill. As long as there are other people who also want to be good at the same thing, the level at which people are considered “good” will be constantly rising, as the people getting “good” will be pushing the average up.
Doesn’t matter if you’re making video games, music, writing books, cooking… if it’s competitive, it gets hard. If you want to be “good” you have to work at least as hard as everyone else who wants to be good, and that’s going to be harder in some respects than the people you’re looking up to had to work (except I guess where you’re in the adolescence of a field… by hunch is that second generation pioneers in a field are the ones who have to work the hardest, as there are people before them they need to improve on but they have the least prior knowledge available to learn from).