An alternative to quitting game development.

Okay, so as you know I'm a toxic forum troll who makes ridiculous pseudo sage threads that nobody likes (and yet still reads) but I think I might actually have something of value to the community to say. No, this is valuable to the world. All of humanity can benefit. Put down your guns. Put down your sawed off shotguns. Put down your flame throwers. Don't post that rick roll GIF. Just listen.

How about instead of quitting game development because you're lazy or maybe you suck, or you suck and you're lazy... why don't you make a compromise in your life. I'm doing this myself and since I'm a completely pathetic whiny loser (it's all your fault mom) that means that anybody who can go the whole day without wetting their pants can do it, too. So, here's my proposal... Frog's alternative...

What if, instead of everybody going crazy and working their butt's off, only to end up posting yet another "burn out" thread or vice-versa, drifting through the land of wind and ghosts while watching Markiplier play HuniePop or playing your 15,000th game of LoL/Hearthstone/Minesweeper or whatever the heck it is you do with your time when you're running away from your destiny like Strider ran away from the Narsil until he needed a CG pirate ghost army to perform a Deus Ex Uruk-hai... what if, instead of all of that...

Every night... you complete one thing.

Just enough to keep your game developer street cred. Because, if you don't develop games, you're really not a game developer, let's be honest. Most people don't need to quit game development because they're already in a state of perpetual quittery, as in... okay, let's analyze the situation here. If you had quit game development, would your schedule be any different than it is now? If the answer is no or not really, then you, sir or madame, have essentially already quit.

Again.

Just one thing. One feature. One mechanic. Something. I'm not talking about a fully polished ZOMGWTFPANCAKE sock rocking gold master sword finished product... I'm talking, just finish one menu. Put in an enemy. He doesn't have to have all of his abilities, just the basics.

If you make progress toward your goal, it's like chipping away at the wall in The Shawshank Redemption. Sooner or later, you're going to crawl out through that hole and into a sewer pipe. And then after that sewer pipe is catharsis.


"I FINISHED MY GAME! IT'S DONE! I THOUGHT THIS DAY COULD NEVER COME!"

(or don't, see if I care...)

 

Best suggestion ever, ban yourself from unity general forums. This will probably work.

 

I can't "ban" myself because don't have administrative privileges... and how would that work as "an alternative to quitting game development"? Don't make sense brah.

 

Well your alternative was to 'just do one thing' instead right? So quitting posting on general forums is pretty much instrumental to freeing up your time to 'do' that one thing every night bruh?

I'm sure the mods could help restrict your account to general forums if you really wanted, but yes this takes more self restraint as opposed to technology, you could always sign out and browse general forums, or if they IP ban you you could use a proxy.

 

I already did it... that's the beauty of compromise, instead of giving up something you want entirely for something you don't want, you keep a little of the thing you want and also accept a little of the thing you don't want.

The whole notion is that the game will get done.

How many days on your calendar can you honestly say you did nothing at all on your game? I know for me, that's a heck of a lot of little red lines. If I had done something, even a tiny something, every night... I could probably have three or four completed games by now.

 

A lot, a helluva lot in fact. That's everybody's problem, we all have issues following through.
But why don't you start a WIP and concentrate filling that will posts and updates as opposed to starting hypothetical debates on general forums?

Also I noticed you just started a twitter account, probably another potential time waster

Stay away from twitter especially if you're pac man

 

Firstly, my ideas are simple and easy to copy. I don't do fancy 3D graphics or anything like that. If I come up with a good formula for game play, it will be accessible and super easy to clone. I have told you guys stories before of a forum poster on a community that was literally copied by Team Meat... they acknowledged this, and even featured the original character Ogmo in one of their games. I get my ideas from other people's games. If find that in the realm of super-simple 2D games that there is a lot of idea borrowing. There's almost an etymology to it... this game borrowed this from that game, that game borrowed this from these games...etc.

Secondly, I don't want anybody getting completely numb to my idea before I have a chance to present it fully. I don't expect anyone to become a rabid fan of something I'm doing to the point where they never stop thinking about it and maintain energy and hype... that's something that Legend of Zelda can manage in the fans of its series, not some random guy's 2D pixel art game.

Thirdly, it's not pretty yet... how am I going to convince somebody to like it if I am not happy with it?

I don't believe in bringing the whole world in to every detail of the development process, even though that seems to be very popular these days. I plan on showing it to a few people when it's around the beta stage, people I will choose based on my own criteria. People who's opinions I value, people who have tastes that I respect and people who know enough about game design that they can actually offer helpful feedback.

I'm not going to show something flawed to a bunch of actual internet trolls. Obviously, I'm going to have to make sure it's flame-retardant, stands up to the severe beating it's going to take and that I can honestly say I am happy with it even if nobody likes it.

How is making a WIP thread going to help me achieve any of that?

Rhetorical question, btw.

 

Easier said than done.

When I get a chance to work, you can't pry me of the computer.

But 95% of the time I'm struggling to get to get on the computer.

I work ~60 hours a week. Have an hour commute up and back. Several friends and family obligations every week. And what little time I do have I need to spend ganking noobs in Smite to keep me sane.

The only reason I'm on the forums so much is because I work overnights at a job where all I do is make rounds and try to stay awake.

But, yes, making something every day would be grand.

And you damn kids with all your boredom and nothing-to-do's need to look at my situation and realize that this will be your life very soon!

 

I don't get this whole "wasting time" thing... I do what I want, when I want. I don't get "sucked in" to YouTube or "sucked in" to these forums, I just want to do this and so I do it. I have pretty much always done what I want, when I want. I just make bad choices because I've been operating from the wrong place. My priorities have always been in a state of flux. Since getting laid off and going on unemployment and only now just finding a job... I realized that, hey, I better have as many sources of income and as many avenues of opportunity as possible. If that means polishing up my programming abilities and getting some products out there, even better things that are making money (even if it is just small potatoes) it will help me. I have to be my own caretaker, provider, what have you. That means work. So, my priorities are rearranging. I have invested a lot into coding and video game development. I can't just throw that away, it is a wasted investment in a world where every stat point has to be maximized.

There is no respec in real life!

Quite honestly I'm scared of going broke. I'm terrified by the idea of losing everything just because nobody wants to hire anybody these days and nobody is paying anything, either. I look to the political system but they are so busy with meaningless b.s. that I don't trust them to address the issue of an ever increasingly lopsided cost-of-living:income ratio.

So what choice do I have? If my kid wants to take dance class, what do I tell her? We don't have the money even though daddy works so much that he never sees you?

No. HELL no. I have to take control. Now is the time.

Also understand, game development is not the #1 thing on my entrepreneurial to-do list. It is #3, if anything.

 

TL;DR the alternative to quitting is not quitting.

 

For The Win

 

Well that's a good approach to take with everything. Nearly every thing I am working toward I just try to do a little each day or just a tiny bit more than yesterday (the case with working out). My view is tiny consistent progress gets you where you want to be. And often can end up getting you where you want to be much faster than if you try to put hours and hours in each and every day. A lot of people put in long hours day after day and they end up just burning out and stopping for months, years and maybe forever. It's the tortoise and the hare lesson people should have learned as kids.

Of course, I don't stress over missing a day either. I think my current view for game dev has changed to as long as I am making progress each and every week that is all that is needed. There is no rush. No need to hurry.

 

Sounds great, problem is, before long you will become frustrated and bored that it is taking FOREVER to make meaningful progress. It's not much different to only doing it part time. You'll be like, ok, I've been here for 3 months and this is all I have to show for it? Why is it taking so dam long? I tried doing just a little bit each day and did make some progress but it was slow-going, which becomes demoralizing. I think if you're going to do game development properly you need at least a few hours each day available to work on it and the discipline to do so, otherwise you might as well not bother.

 

Its not easy making money from games but you can do it if you got enough games on steam and stuff on the asset store.

 

You know what would be good, if everyone here had a diary of progress that they updated, preferably daily, then we would sort out who has been spending the last 10 years just blowing wind on the forums ... I suspect that a few eminent people would topple a goodly distance...

 

Kinda like a forum signature? Most people update once they have completed something significant.

 

I remember the last time I tried setting up a blog for myself. I managed to only write one entry.

 

More like a daily diary, it's always a positive thing to see progress and it would help people feel accountable for it, which sounds strange but I think is a good thing. I know I waste a lot of time, if I had to write down at the end of the day a summary of what I completed, it would probably put a few things in perspective.

 

I was going to write a "daily" blog but then I started writing about steam and theres no way Id be able to do a daily blog post.

http://dailydevblog.blogspot.ca/2016/04/steam.html

 

My game development log is there for anyone who wants to see my latest experiment. I imagine many people around here have such a thing. It is a pain in the behind updating it though. I often spend as much or more time updating my log with the screenshots and converting videos to gifs and so forth as I do on the actual game dev stuff.

 

I'm going to start work on a mobile game in a few days, with a deadline of 2 months, and update the WIP for it every single day. It will appear in my sig for anyone interested.

 

Maybe if there were a pretty little progress bar with a link to a page, it would be fun.

 

Respect. Fight the trend... be accountable, finish things.

 

One word: 1GAM

Okay, more words:
I was pretty active on my blog all of last year, while I was developing my games. However, after shipping them, and porting to iOS, my blogging output has come to a crawl. Not because I don't have stuff to write about, but because I don't yet know what direction to take the blog.

Ideally, you want a blog to be a relatively coherent series, instead of just a brain dump. I want to write snippets of stuff that I learn, in an educational way, such that it #1 helps others and #2 aids me if I ever run into the problem again. I have stuff about the Indiepocalypse that I'd like to say, but didn't feel it would be coherent with more informational blog posts. I'd like to talk about my day-to-day development, but I don't necessarily feel that it would help anybody out (?). And then, there are the promotional/marketing posts, for my game releases.

Of course, blogging platforms have ways of tagging and categorizing, but is that enough? Would potential readers actually filter out what they want to read? I'd want to make it as easy for my readers to navigate as possible (This is an important business strategy). Ideally, I'd start separate blogs for each, but I know when I go to a blog, I don't typically "filter" for things. Posts usually just come up as a result of a google search.

 

@aer0ace - From what I can tell, most blogs have no readers. A few blogs have bombastic personalities writing them and they present a unique style of writing or the writer is a very photogenic person... and those get viewed at least. Definitely liked and shared.

For the rest of us mere mortals, a blog that people read is simply asking too much of people. There are countless entertaining vlogs out there covering a range of topics, presented by all sorts of qualified experts and people in-the-know or just celebrities. Even asking people to read is too much.

If you want attention, you can try being controversial or sensational. That's the last avenue for ordinary people. It can backfire easily.

I don't see another way, unless you are absolutely hilarious.

Having spent a lot of time studying the phenomenon of celebrity and the cult of personality... I can tell you that it is not as simple as being good at what you do. Or following the rules. Or having good meta tags on your page. It's about becoming a brand and selling yourself like a product. It's about manipulating the way you are perceived.

Nobody cares about what you, or me, or anyone has to say. They care about how they feel about the person saying it, and the image that person has in their mind. If you want a popular blog/anything, build up a public image.

 

A real alternative to game development is internet marketing, atleast for me anyways.

 

This is strikingly similar to an article I wrote about the same thing.

Interesting!

 

Regarding dev log / blog readership... it takes time to build the base. And depends on what your goals are. Personally, I don't want tens of thousands of bandwidth wasters visiting my dev log looking for memes and entertainment. I only care about reaching the people who have an actual real interest in what I am sharing. Those are the real fanbase or at least what I consider the valuable visitors.

I spent a few months active on Twitter last year and reached 300 followers.Just checked stats and my Website (mainly my game dev log and writings documenting testing different development tools) currently gets 1,000 unique visitors per month. For doing this stuff for fun very part time on an amateur looking site I am happy with that. I'd write what I write if I got 0 visitors per month because it is useful for me to look back on. But I thought heck someone out there should find it interesting.

 

Mine is called JIRA.

 

This is what I use as well(at work and for home), $10/month. It also auto updates my friends' slack channel when we make updates on it.

 

...I feel like this poster has literally lost their mind. Like, we should be concerned.