I’m making this thread because I feel like I’m “doing it wrong” when it comes to game development. I won’t bore you all with the details, so I’ll just make a list of my concerns/issues, and hope that I can learn from whatever advice you all may be able to provide.
Motivations:
I love games, been playing since the early 90s.
I love software engineering. Got my CS degree 12 years ago and have worked in the SWE industry since the day I graduated.
I love creating things and have 2,542,612 ideas rolling in my head of games I’d LOVE to make.
Playing the current wave of indie games gives me renewed hope that I don’t have to have the budget of Activision or Ubisoft to make cools games.
-Unity, Unreal, Godot, etc are free!!! (sort of)
Roadblocks:
I’m 34, married, one child that is 2 years old
I have a fulltime job that demands 40-50 hours/week of my time
Weekends are spent doing typical husband/father stuff (clean up the yard, fix the house, family time, etc)
I have almost no free time during the week. There are simply not enough hours in the day.
I’m a one man army. All the art, music, and graphics I have to do myself. I am NOT an artist
My concerns are that I just won’t have the time necessary to do anything meaningful in this industry. I’m not looking to become the next EA, but I’d love to put something out there at some point that makes the news for a day.
I’ve been playing with Unity for about 2 years now. I’ve made tiny projects here and there. But nothing that I’d ever bring to market. And these tiny projects take months to make. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. For example, my current project is just a one scene demo of a shmup with the player, one large enemy, and a life bar. That’s it. It took me 2 months to make that. Not because I had difficulties with the coding, but because I literally have no time.
I’d love to do a game jam, or go to a unity convention, or something like that. Learn, grow, meet people in the community, make some connections in the industry, etc. But, literally no time.
To all the game dev vets on this board: How do you do it? Where do you find the time? I know everyone’s life is different. Yet, there has to be a better, more efficient way, to do what I enjoy doing. Because make no mistake, even though I’ve only made tiny projects for a few years, I LOVE doing it. It’s so much fun!
Your a hobbyist. Just accept it and keep having fun. Embrace the limitation of only being able to create simple games. The more you do this the more creative you will become with your time limitations. Pretty much every indie goes through the stage of whats in your mind then reality kicks your ass.
My advice is too ignore the software engineering side of game dev and embrace something like Playmaker, Node/Flow canvas (my preference). Otherwise you will never finish a game and will spend all your energy reinventing a million wheels.
I do not find the time. I squander it and sacrifice moments I could’ve spent with those I love, and I regret it every day. Just wanted to leave this grim reminder if you ever forget your priorities.
Just limit the hours per day, and when you limit those hours think to yourself about how much good news it is you did limit those hours! It means you get back to those who are really important to you sooner. It’s a happy thing.
Core mechanics: 30 hours.
Content creation: 100 hours.
Polish and release: 50 hours.
Work you underestimated and blew your schedule with: 100 hours.
So plan out 3 months with the understanding that you’ll probably need another 2 to finish. 2 hours a day. Organize and track your time.
Main roadblocks: visuals need to be simple and clean. You don’t want to invest much of your time here since it will be inefficiently spent (your strength is code not visual). Plan for this.
Nothing prevents you from building complex games. You just have to be willing to embrace the idea that you will be working on said game exclusively for decades and that you will have to make compromises to see your vision to completion.
Im a father of 2 with a understanding wife (which helps alot). But my trick is to get stable routines, in my case I work at dayjob from 0830 to 1700. Get the kids from kindergarten then when wife gets home at 1830 we make dinner or eat out. We put them to sleep at around 2000, my wife is doing this so I can start working on the game around this hour. Work on the game until 2400 to 0200, get up at 0830, rince and repeat. Weekends are reserved for family.
This is, essentially, what I’ve been trying to do for awhile now. Wake up at 0700, get the kid to daycare, go to work, leave work at 1630-1700, pick kid up, go home. Yet, that’s when the uncertainty comes in. My wife, whom is very understanding as well, works really long weird hours. Depending on the day she could get home anywhere between 1800-2300. Which sucks because she really hates not spending time with our son.
Which leaves me as dad for the night. Cook dinner, clean the house, keep the kid from killing the dog, etc. Mommy then comes home, we have what little family time we have left in the day together. By the time everyone is asleep, it’s 0030 and I’m exhausted.
Which is why what @hippocoder stated hit a bit close to home. There have been some nights where I’ve had to ignore my family just to get an idea out. Then I sit back and wonder if doing so was worth the time I didn’t spend with my family
You work 40-50 hours per week and you have a family. Even working full-time it takes A LOT of time to make a full game solo. You should join/build a team, or it will take you DECADES to make something decent.
IMO, the most important ingredient to success in situations like yours (and many others) is efficient, organized time management. Schedule. Track. Quantify. Know how many hours you spent on something. Keep track of everything.
If you can do this, I think you have a shot at doing something good. If not, then it’s really unlikely.
I just graduated from college. So I don’t have and I don’t know the hard dad struggles. But time management is something that EVERYBODY should consider. Plus, that it will set an example to your kid. Prioritize your day will make an interesting education activity for your child
We can’t make more time. There’s only so much to go around. If we need time to do something, we have to stop doing something else that currently takes up that time.
If being a (semi) pro game dev is what you really want, you’re going to have to sacrifice some of your existing time to work on it. No way around that. If there’s nothing in that time you will be willing to sacrifice, then you can’t be a (semi) pro game dev. Yet.
It comes down to figuring out what you really want in life. I’ve been a pro game developer since 1994, and I spend most of my days here at home with my wife (also a pro game dev) working on our games. We raised three kids to adulthood during that time. Our son is now getting involved with game development on his own. The sacrifices were many and large. But that’s what it took. Because that’s what we wanted, and that’s what we loved.
Sounds like you’re taking some tiny bit of time to do this, but you’re finding that time to not be enough. It isn’t, and honestly it never will be, because to be successful in game development often requires more time in a day than there actually is in a day. Projects typically take three times (at least) longer than you planned for, and then after release even more time creating and releasing updates. It’s just the reality of the business.
If you really want commercial success in this industry (or any industry), you’ll have to make (sometimes major) sacrifices to get it. There’s no way around it.
Being a hobbyist has its virtues, that’s for damned sure. Not as much at stake and not as much heartache. I sometimes wish I’d stayed that, and done something else with my own life. But that’s a whole other story.
You can work on literally anything at all you want. No need to pay attention to customers or a boss.
The hours can scale up and down as life dictates.
You end up with more money then a game developer.
You don’t have to do the boring bits. Sure an indie developer might get to spend 80+ hours a week making games. But most of that time is spent doing boring stuff because they have to actually produce something that commercially viable.
