Dealing with failure

After years of working towards my goal of becoming a successful game developer, I'm starting to doubt my capabilities. I am a solo amateur developer with lots of passion for the art of game development. However, things have not been going my way. Today, I have 0 completed projects, instead I have a dozen of incomplete ones, I've been told countless times to commit to a single project only, but here's the thing, they suck. They all suck. In the moment of development, I always have a vision of the finished product, but after months of working towards the vision, its just, no words to describe how far off the game is from the goal.
I went back and played through every single one of my past projects, and I just didn't like any of them. At the beginning of the project I am usually able to put in the work, but after seeing the result I get discouraged and just don't see the possibility of creating a decent game anymore, so I start over, again and again and again.


I do not know if I am being hard on myself, or if I'm being lazy, or if I'm just dumb, however, it's becoming quite discouraging and more difficult to keep perusing my dreams.

Opinions? How do you deal with failure? What is your philosophy concerning game development in general?

 

If you have passion for the art, you should be already aware how usually learning/training process goes.

First, you create things that suck. Few hundred metric tons of them. Then you look at them, learn from them, and slowly improve. Then eventually you'll start creating things that suck less.

It is important to understand that in the beginning your project will not look very good.

For example, here's drawing video.

Compare picture at the beginning of the video to the picture at the end of the video.

When you are in "everything is horrible" phase, you have skeleton of your project, similar to the picture at the beginning of the video. So, you need to keep polishing the project, adding meat to it to completion instead of abandoning it. That's why people recommend to stick with one project and see it to completion - a nice property of digital medium is that if you made a mess, you can always fix it and improve it. So, it is important to go over that phase where everything is horrible - because you usually can fix it.

Also you may have made a mistake of trying to do everything by yourself. It is not recommended to do that, you could try teaming up with someone.

 

Thanks for the reply, you make some really good points.

 

This is coming from strictly a Hobbyist Game Developer so keep that in mind...

It's completely understandable for you to start out on one project after another and never complete them. That's just a normal part of the learning process. Personally, I'd rather see you take this approach then to throw everything you are doing (your learning projects) out on the marketplaces.

Completion is a skill in itself. So is scoping. It is also important to have realistic expectations and goals. With all of that in mind I'd recommend scoping much smaller. Keep scoping smaller until you reach the point where you can complete your game at least taking it to a playable form where the game can be won and the game can be lost.

When you reach that point where you can tackle a project of a certain size and complete it you've found where you should be at this current time. There is no one size fits all. So you need to find out for yourself what size project is right for you right now.

That may be a game with the scope of Space Invaders or it may be a game with the scope of Castlevania (take their 3D equivalents if you are most interested in 3D). It doesn't really matter what that "right size" of project is it only matters that you find what the right size is for you at this time. Then you start building games at that scale and completing them. And that project size will increase over time. As you gain more experience you will be able to tackle bigger and bigger projects.

You've got to figure out where you are right now and what is right for you right now. And you need to get into the habit of completing games. This doesn't mean you can no longer do projects as learning experiences just to figure out how to do something or better do something. You can still do that and have learning projects that are never completed. Just be sure that for every one or two or three of those that you choose to do a game project for the sake of the actual game itself and not as learning. And that is the project you complete.

 

I agree with GarBenjamin, try to come up with a project of a smaller scale. The smaller the project, the higher is your chance to complete it. It's crucial to keep your development times short and your backlog small, otherwise you'll quickly be overwhelmed by the amount of work you still have left and you'll lose all motivation.

Start with a simple game, where you roughly know how to implement every aspect: main gameplay, controls, camera, sound, ui and menu system, etc. Implementing each of these systems quickly due to their simplicity and seeing you progress will motivate you to move further.

 

What is your definition of "suck"?

If your games "suck" but are still playable (i.e bad graphics, plot, etc), finish one, any one. Doesn't matter how badly it sucks. Just force yourself to finish it.

If they suck because they simply don't work (i.e. bad scripting) then you are probably not ready to release a game anyway so keep learning and improving until they do work.

And if they suck because you are trying too much too quickly, take it slower and a smaller one as suggested by others.

 

Great replies! Glad to see some activity going on!
I suppose lowering the scale and scope of my games would be a good way to handle things.
Currently I do not have any plans to put my games on any stores or anything, I just want to be happy with the product for now.

By suck, I mean they are usually fully functional, just not fun/engaging as I would like them to be.
In terms of technical skills, I have made a lot of progress, and there is a lot more to practice and learn for me.
But I also struggle with game design in general, especially when creating areas and levels, perhaps it will come with experience, I have tried to look up level designing tutorials, but most of them weren't very useful for my needs.

Thanks again for the replies!

 

You are at the same place as many of us. Watch this and reconsider your thoughts about the past games you've made. This came to me at a very important time in my career and it saved me from dropping it completely.

 

You fail only when you give up... or maybe if you die all of a sudden before reaching your goal... maybe a giant eagle could snatch you and take you to its nest, that's a terrible way to die. hmm. But anyway, as long as you're alive and kicking, you shouldn't fear failure, failure is only what makes success so special, so you need failure in order to really succeed. If it was easy, people would have done it already. Although, be smart when you set yourself a goal, don't set the bar too high, nor too low. And like what you do as honestly as you can.

 

There is a whole wide world of not games out there. If you can't do games, or find games not to be enjoyable, then go do something else.

There is no shame in changing direction if you are on the wrong path.

 

This is an extremely good point that is rarely made. @BoredMormon is so correct. There seem to be a lot of people struggling trying to make games because they "want to make games for a living". Maybe making games isn't your thing. There is no reason why people should feel like they have to make games. There are tons of other businesses even in software development that people can do. Much easier businesses too! And maybe even running your own business is not your thing. There are tons of different professions out there. All of these things should be kept in mind.

 

Well, i find your comments very interesting. My recommendation would be to decide on a simple project and make sure you really finishing it. For me, when i saw my own game on Apple Appstore it was a real and big ego boost that truly made me understand that I could do it.

 

The game I have had the most success on so far was one where I clearly knew exactly what I wanted to make. Not every detail but all the major mechanics and story I had in my head for a long time before I ever created the project.

Honestly the "idea guys" on here get a lot of flack but there is some definite value in being able to articulate ahead of time exactly what you are striving to create in detail. The projects I've undertaken where I have some vague ideas I want to try out and "fill in as I go" never seem to get far. I think it is because we underestimate how much work it really is and putting it down on paper is actually fairly mentally taxing and makes you think about it as much as the coding does.

 

It is very common to feel burnout on projects, and specially your first ones. Thing is that it is always fun to play around with ideas and concepts, but that is sadly only a very small part of it. Making games is much more bug fixing, reiterating bad code, finding your limitations in skills, limitation in time and a limitation in budgets - and from there making the best possible product.

The most important part is to be honest with one self. Do you do it as a hobby or do you want to make a living of it? Do you have the experience and skills to finish your project? Do you do your project to learn or create an actual product? Do you have time enough to finish your project?

 

A way to test if your project is way over your head can be to:

1. Create a GDD for you game. It is always a good idea to have, so you have clear goals and can part your project into chunks.
2. Now create a TDD based on the GDD. If you have problems to describe how to handle parts of the GDD from a technical point of view in detail in your TDD, you might be over your head.
3. If you had problems in number 2, then research, research, research or start a more simple project.

 

Hard to make a game alone because as much as we would like it be untrue, we are not all good at everything. Maybe you are not good with the ideas but good at the coding and implementation.

 

Thanks for all the replies people!
I do feel like making games is what I want to do, regardless if I make money off of them or not, I suppose it would be good to take a step back and get a bit more organized.

 

It also helps to describe what "years of working towards my goal" means. Many if not all game developers go through years of learning before making anything that they would call good. Another avenue to look at is, if you don't have others looking at your work to give you some feedback, start doing that. Put up some WIP on the forums and ask people for some constructive criticism. You can sometimes get technical advice this way, along with the opinions. Read anywhere and everywhere to try and find techniques and practices that will make you better and more efficient. And if you can, find someone to mentor you. It actually sucks to read the "mentor" advice, because I bet a lot of solo devs, including myself, have never officially been mentored, but I believe having this can improve your skills much faster than trying to figure it out on your own.

The advice in this thread is great all around, but I think it's difficult to provide the advice you really need without knowing if your problem is technical, aesthetic, motivational, or all of it. Because identifying the problem is the first step to improving on it. And if it's all of it, then well, take one step at a time.

As for @BoredMormon's advice, if you feel that you haven't improved over the "years of working towards [your] goal", it probably would be worth exploring other activities that can unlock that sense of euphoria that a hobby can provide. And I'm not talking about illicit substances. I mean, like fishing, or stamp collecting. But if you feel like your real passion is game development, keep digging (with some of the advice above), and eventually you will get there.

 

Aww I resonate so strongly with this post. Sometimes its really easy to sit at your desk and think "what the eff am I doing?" Community is the utmost importance during those moments/days/weeks. <3!

The game dev life is an emotional roller coaster. Ups and Downs. The downs are pretty low and rough, but oh my gosh, those highs <3 Keep at it

We're all in this together - Red Green

 

There is a lot of truth in this, yet I fundamentally disagree with the video. This "gap" is a real thing for creative people, but you will never cross it. As you get better, your taste gets more refined. You become more critical, maybe more jaded. Imho it is more a question of personality whether or not you are satisfied with what you do. Many people hailed as world elite in their field still think everything they do sucks when they look at it again after a month or two. The point is how people handle that. Some feel driven and motivated to work hard and get better at what they are doing. Others get discouraged, depressed and feel like all energy is being sucked out of them. Naturally those that make it to the top fall under the group that gets motivated by personal "failure".

I have once read something from an audio engineer / music producer. He said that at the beginning of his career all he made sounded like crap to him and what other people did sounded amazing. With experience and better understanding of the craft he started to find more and more mixes from other people that sounded like crap to him too, and his understanding as to why things didn't sound good became more refined. He said that was when he realized he was getting better at it.


Admiring your own work and thinking "Wow, this is everything I hoped and dreamed." will in my humble opinion rarely or never happen for people with excellent analytical skills and knowledge of their craft...

I have the impression they usually get flack because the in detail part is lacking.

 

Failure doesn't really exist; neither does success. Everything you ever do will be a struggle, and that's okay.

 

Sent you a pm OP.

For anyone else who struggles with this, I highly recommend you find a development buddy to chat on skype and share stories on the regular. I do this with my cousin and it keeps us very motivated. We also play steam games together by the end of our "work day" as a mental reward.

 

I had to deal with alot of failure through my life. As a child I was negglected by my parents and I gained a appreciation defeciency. Suffering from that I always lift the bar so high I could never reach it. The way I dealt and dealing with failure is to create the base I missed in my childhood. It helps me alot to create (very) small victories (for you do smaller projects) to cope with the failure ahead. Learn to not overstep my boundaries by miles but get close to the boundary and cross it step by step. This way the number of failures will be far less and easier to deal with. Also don't forgot to reward yourself after a small victory and don't punish yourself after a failure.

This might not help you in any way but I just wanted to share my story and maybe help others if it does not help you.

 

Bundle all your complete projects into a single project and label it as art. Call it "Incomplete" and sell it for 2.99.

 

That's evil. I like the idea.

 

You are not wrong. But I don't think overcoming the gap is the point. I think it's shrinking the gap that is important. Especially for those who are stating out.

I think you are touching on the other side of the conversation about how we handle our creativity and success and failure. Check this out, I think you might enjoy it: https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius?language=en

 

That's not the point.

Let's say you decided to learn drawing as adult.
The gap he refers to is soul-destroying voice that will keep telling you that you suck and are hopeless and should give up and that you're too old for this. It is when you see your first drawing and see complete abomination. THAT is the "gap". The solution is to choke that inner voice for not being helpful and keep practicing (because drawing is a learnable skill, and as long as you sink enough hours in it, you'll learn to draw).

The minor dissatisfaction with your job as professional (when people might go wow about something you did, you are unsure what the big deal is and are mildly upset about minor mishap nobody else noticed) is entirely different thing. Frankly, you are supposed to get some satisfaction from your work, because otherwise you'll just eventually abandon it. So, yeah, you're supposed to occasionaly stop, look back, and realize, "yeah, that what I wanted to be able to do as a kid".

 

I'm not sure I've ever seen any evidence where a lot of back slapping and "you can do it!" ever worked. Ever. I'd love to see the evidence that it did though.

The fact is you need backbone and be prepared to sacrifice. You need to work hard and most people won't. They'd rather constantly seek short cuts or an easier way. That's fine except for when there aren't any short cuts or easier ways. Then you need balls of infinite titanium, which men and women can have.

 

You know, I struggle with this myself. I am consistently learning, reading game dev books, experimenting with code, etc. but rarely finishing anything of value. And I have some great ideas too, maybe too great, since they would take Hollywood level budgets to complete (with way more people than just me). But the important thing is to actually finish something, I guess. It's easy to lose sight of the goal, or get discouraged after minor setbacks. Writing things down also helps (though I do this less than I should). When you have concrete steps to take and a clear direction, I think it makes it easier. But don't just give up without giving it a shot, that's the worst thing.

 

Aaa.. this kind of thread again. I really don't have that problem, because, I make stuff for fun/hobby, and I have zero expectations from anything. This is how I deal. Some times I get surprised in the nice way If things goes more that I've expected in the good way, so be it Basically, be moderate with expectations, because real life model is so complicated.

Oh one more thing, I am an optimist!

 

Yeah I can agree with that. You're doing your own thing.

 

Well, there is a big difference between doing things because you like or is your hobby than be forced to do. I never seen any passion from peoples doing things mostly forced by end of the month check, in any company. That's why there are lot's of "supervisors", to get things done.

OP said "deal with failure"? Maybe not, maybe is just experience gained. Or, maybe this is not for you, maybe game development is not your hobby or passion, and is never to late to rediscover yourself.

 

Wow so many heartwarming replies.
I'm glad I made this thread, and I must say I didn't expect so many people to reach out, a great community no doubt.

As for the hobby/profession discussion, for me, I think it's a bit of both. We all know how difficult it is to make game development a full career, and I would probably be able to find a much easier job that would pay better. But if I wasn't able to make games for a living, then I probably wouldn't have time to make games at all.

Ever since I was a kid, video games would cheer me up. If I had a bad day, I would be excited to go back home and play some Tony Hawk Underground, or some Crash Bandicoot. I've been in situations where I felt completely emotionally destroyed, and games were able to flip that upside down.

I strongly believe that a video game is the pinnacle of art, and if done right can be life-changing to the player.

Glad to be apart of this wonderful community.

Keep Creating,

Markzi.

 

I somewhat disagree. I see "the gap" purely as the discrepancy between analytical skill and ability to create something of a certain quality. Since "knowing is half the battle" it is a prerequisite to have that discrepancy, if you want to get better. It is not a bad thing in itself. Whether you feel this as a soul crushing, depressing voice that tells you to quit or as a deligthful insight on how you could improve is something different. Imho that is attitude and/or personality and not part of the "gap-concept". I find it more helpful to think of it this way, than to anticipate one day you'll find everything you do amazing.

I agree. And I regret that I seem to struggle to feel that way :-/.

 

If you want it to be a profession then maybe try and get an education that can guide you. A computer science degree with focus on games or something like that.

 

I've been doing this for 6, approaching 7, years now, and I've never finished a thing. Most of the time because I come up with a better idea and go off to work on that.
And yet, despite years of doing this, Im just as optimistic as ever. Just ask yourself, are you enjoying game dev? Try to quit for a week, if your like me you'll get back into it out of the fact you have nothing else you really do.

 

You can always quit and do something different. That option is always on the table.

 

In many ways I kind of see this as the purest approach to game development. You're having fun just building game engines, trying out ideas, gaining a lot of experience and improving skills in the process.

You're continually striving to do a "better" project. You could continue like this for the rest of your life and never release anything. No money but you'd have all of the satisfaction gained from working on this stuff. Some would say you spent all of that time and "have nothing to show for it" but only when measuring everything solely by "releases" and money. People cannot see the satisfaction you get just from "doing" nor the experience and skills you have gained.

At some point you may just naturally end up with a game that you really believe in and take all the way to the market. It won't have been done for money and instead resulted from passion.

 

I disagree. I think it is part of the gap concept and it will hit you very hard if you try to master new skill as adult, regardless of your personality. It is also probably the reason why many people never learn to draw.

 

I've managed to find a market for a lot of the byproduct of my development efforts (as some publishers here do I'd imagine). Also the many of the skills I've learned tend to move fluidly between game production and other areas like video production. I've used renders from half made levels in print ads, animated characters recorded in-engine in video, and skills like using Maya and Photoshop work for everything from product visualisations to graphics for 2d web banners. I'd suggest sticking with it while trying to find a niche that pays you a wage for using the tools. Not always possible I know, it has been a decade of plugging away at it for me personally but it's starting to pay off and I finally believe I can realised 90% of my vision on my own (with the not-insignificant support from the tool creators and the high quality assets that are cheaply available these days of course). From there its a matter of seducing the financial support needed to be successful commercially, that gets easier as you continue to produce 'stuff' and start meeting the right people...

 

Start with an easy game, pong, tictactoe add some polish and juice okay thats was an easy game done. Woo now try a bigger game keep the scope small enough that you can finish it in 2 (or whatever) weeks and another for polish juice, move onto to something else. Rinse and repeat

 

What failure? You mean avoiding to fail, because that's what you're doing. Avoiding finishing things is avoiding passing final judgement on them (by you or other people) and hence deeming them a success or failure.

So you're preemptively deeming them unworthy of what you think you should be capable of.

 

Ok I will attempt to distill as succinctly as I can some wisdom learned by going through the exact same hell that you are going through (and I still am to a degree).

1) Stop listening to everyone else's advice about what you need to do to be successful. They don't know what the hell they are talking about. What you are going through is a lesson so that you can learn through your own experience what works for you.

2) Stop listening to pressure generated by immense competition, competition with yourself, or putting pressure on yourself to succeed. You will only react to this pressure by attempting to do what everyone else is doing, or by making sure you fail. What if they are all insane? Stop following them and be a leader.

3) Stop trying to be successful. Trying to be successful leads to failure. Trying to hold onto something ensures you will lose it. As you take away from others you take away from yourself. As you try to grasp at success it will be snatched away from you.

4) Stop pressuring yourself to finish the entire thing today. Choose for yourself 1 or 2 other significant projects which have absolutely nothing to do with game development. Maybe art, or music, or some other hobby, whatever. Decide that you will spend a given percentage of your time to work on these other projects and you will NOT attempt to spend 100% of your time working on game development. Stop expecting yourself to 'do as much as possible'. You will only make yourself resent the project and hate it and quit. Instead, remind yourself every day that you will DELIBERATELY limit how much time you spend working on your game. And you will let go of attempting to cram as much progress as possible into that time. You must stop putting pressure on yourself or reacting to pressure. Make it be okay that you deliberately do a SMALL amount of progress today, and that this is ENOUGH, and then be okay with deliberately stopping. And don't let this mean that you spend all of your free time doing this. You MUST intentionally switch gears/hats and give your full attention to other projects/hobbies as an act of discipline, and to remind the project that YOU are the boss and that it does not have the power to snowball into a massive failure.

5) Stop wearing all hats all of the time. Most people are constantly wired into everything they have to do, at all times, and this makes you unfocused and distracted. Maybe even literally go buy some hats so that you can switch hats. When you put on your game developer hat, you take off the hat from your other hobbies. Then you focus on it. Then you take the dam hat off and you let it go, so that there is a boundary between you and the game. You put the new hat on and give your full attention to whatever else you do. And remember that one of the most important hats is - manager of time.

6) Stop working in your business, work on your business. This was a huge revelation to me. I have always worked IN my business. Even if it's not a business, this means you are always wearing a 'worker' hat, which likely carries over from the fact that most of us has been 'workers' working for some other company, following someone else's dream. You have to break out of being a worker bee. You NEED time management. This means a radical shift in goals. Stop having the goal of maximum success. Stop having the goal of working as hard as possible to be successful. Who wants that? It sucks. Get out of the ratrace. Your new goal is this: to not have to work at all. Think about it. Look at how you are obsessed with working. Look at how you spend all your precious time lost in work. Instead, your goal should be to automate as much as possible, to do as little work as possible for a larger amount of return on your time investment, and to not get lost in the work. You do not want to become a big company, or to have a big job, or the most ideal job, or to work as hard as possible, or to put in as many hours as you can on your game. You want to get to where you do not have to work at all.

7) Stop abusing your time. This doesn't mean being more productive or working harder. It means, you stop letting your project run your life. Stop letting it take over your time. It is not in charge. You are. You are the boss. You get to decide how you use your precious time. Your time is a commodity and you should be focusing on how to FREE UP your time so that you can enjoy life, not how you can use your time to work even more. Your time is more valuable than anything. Your time is more important than anything you use your time to do. Always keep that in mind, because your project is a vicious selfish animal which will attempt to suck up and dictate how you use your time (especially when you find a bug ;-). You need to be constantly stepping back, cutting off all commitment to any given thing you are doing, and asking yourself, is this really the best use of my time? How can I save time not spend it? How can I automate some things or implement this in a much more basic and less-ideal way? This will also entail having to lose your obsession with sticking to the ideas. But realize this has to do with how you execute and implement stuff... do you write that long-winded super amazing tool/editor or do your just hack together something that WORKS in a much shorter space of time. You are managing your time so that your time is working for you, not the other way around. You have to constantly keep tabs on yourself and step back, get back into the managerial seat, and keep asking yourself to question whether `this` is really necessary or whether you should focus on some other more important feature or content or time better spend elsewhere. Stop spending your time so frivolously and focus on what is really important - what's really important isn't ANYTHING you do with your time, what's really important is that you conserve time. Keeping having meetings with yourself to re-evaluate where you're spending your time and whether that's really a wise decision going forward.

8) Stop ignoring your signals. When you are feeling frustrated or disillusioned or like you're failing or aren't getting enough done, stop listening to what those things appear to be saying and ask yourself WHY they're saying it. If you are getting into the failure trap it means you are already deciding that you're failing, which means you're already getting lost in WORK, which means you're already forgetting to place LIMITS on the time you use for your game development, and it also means that your project is out of control. Step back, get back to being the boss. Your feelings about what you're experiencing are trying to tell you something. Don't just react to them, listen. They're trying to help. They want to tell you that something you are doing is the wrong attitude. This all stems from you putting pressure on yourself to succeed, to be super amazing, to get it all done in 1 second flat, to compete with everyone else's insanity, or that you're spending too much time committed to a feature or part of the project that is a total time sink. You need to re-evaluate. If you are feeling the pressure, you have the wrong attitude, and that pressure will make you terribly guilty when you aren't meeting those expectations, and then understandably some other project will glow with its harmless appeal and you'll quit, proving once again how much of a failure you are.

9) Stop avoiding your fear of failure. Your belief in failing will stem from all previous beliefs that you failed and thus labelled yourself a failure. You already believe in failure going into the project. What chances does it have? The trick is you need to admit that you are afraid and ask yourself why and work on overcoming that 'why' constructively. Encourage and reassure yourself. And be careful not to take success personally. Part of you wants to be super successful which means your ego is all caught up in the bullshit fantasy that YOU are a success. You are more than any game or project or success. If you use it to define who you are or what your value is, not only are you valuing success too highly but you are also simultaneously valuing failure. The more intensely you believe in success the more you emphasize an aversion to failure and you will draw it to yourself. Seeking success is seeking to fail. You are afraid of failing because you are afraid you will be guilty, punished, not good enough, just like all those other times when you were punished or punished yourself instead of forgiving yourself. Once you stop being afraid of punishment you will be less afraid to fail and then you will really succeed. Success is a side-effect of not being afraid to fail.

10) Don't be afraid to go against the grain or be different. You are you. Other people are already busy doing themselves and each other. You do not need to be them. You have your own gifts and talents and ideas. Nobody else is going to do you for you. Nobody is going to save you for you. Nobody is going to contribute what needs to come from inside yourself. How are you going to be an artist if you copy everyone else or follow the herd? You need to make a loud statement and make sure you are heard. And you won't be afraid of it because you'll have confronted your fear of failure/punishment, and you won't keep getting sidetracked because you won't be obsessed with success, and you won't keep failing because you won't be trying to succeed all the time. Now you are free to be yourself.

 

I want to add one more opinion here. People keep suggesting the basic formula of `do a smaller project`. This usually turns into do an even smaller one, and an even smaller one than that. Been there done that. It doesn't work. It doesn't work because I still have the same attitude and approach with a small project as a big one. Granted there are less possible reasons to fail on a smaller project, and it may be more achievable, but big projects are achievable too. It's not the project ITSELF that defines whether or not you will complete it or succeed at it. Its YOU. It's your attitude. It's whether you are managing time effectively. It's whether you're letting the project run your life or whether you run your project. It's whether you're working so dam hard running after the rat-race goal of maximum success, which is bullshit, or whether you have your priorities straight. Sure make a 'smaller' project if that will help to bring success sooner. But it's almost like saying, I'm going to suck at development so bad that I better do a small project so that I can avoid myself sucking as soon as possible... if I finish it sooner then maybe my moment of suckdom will not have a chance to rear its head. Crisis averted. How will I ever be able to do a bigger project if I suck so bad at small ones? But clearly I am the problem, not my project, and what many people don't want to do is CHANGE THEMSELVES which is why they think changing the project will bring the answer. If you aren't using your game development to further your personal development then what's the point?

 

So you're teaching him to be unsuccessful, or that you want him to stop listening to you?

 

I am speaking from my own personal experience, there are no other rules as to whether what I said is right or valid. Take what you like, leave the rest. Yes, to not need to listen to any of it would be to graduate the class, but it seems like the OP has need of some advice at this point.

And yes I am teaching how to not be successful, so that you can be successful. There are so many deceptions at play which so many people including myself have fallen for. Not any more. I did the 'try to succeed' game for a long time, it failed, I saw through it. Now I have a strategy that 'will succeed' because I am not trying to. It becomes effortless once you understand the paradox.

 

I see it this way as well. I have two daughters who are artists. One is 15 and very confident in her skills. It shows in her artwork. The other is very much a thinking 17 year old and she never feels her stuff is good enough, even though everyone else does.

I showed them the video. The "Gap" to me means that you know what you need to do to make something amazing but the gap is the difference between "knowing" and "doing". Practice allows you to do what your mind sees, match your ability to your taste.

For the past 10 years, I have seen this happen with my girls. The younger one doesn't think about it and it has simply flowed through her. Her taste and ability match very well. The older one thinks about it far too much. She struggles to match her work to what her head tells her she should be seeing. It is harder for her. This past weekend, they both participated in an art show and the response from strangers and other artists were amazing, for both girls.

I have also learned from them. I see my "taste" and my "ability" coming together every day. When I receive positive responses from the community to a screenshot I post or an idea I have, it lifts me up, makes me more willing to stay the course. Unlike my girls, I am not a youngster but yet I see my own creativity growing every day. I saw this years ago with my writing.

So that gap, in my opinion, is something that can be closed as long as you have the perseverance and mindset to continue, everyday, throwing out the bad stuff, working on the mediocre stuff to make it better and never falling to that voice in your head that says you should give up.

The video was extremely inspiring to my daughters and I, and came at a time when I think we all really needed it.

 

Before even reading this I was feeling better and more motivated, just by seeing that someone took all this time and effort to help me out, thank you.
A lot what you said made sense and I agree that in a way, I am forcing myself into some situations and habits. Interestingly enough, I have been thinking of taking a vacation (no phone/computer etc) to help clear my mind. Perhaps a change of pace is what is needed, I've been stuck in a loop for the last few years and I've felt exhausted throughout those years, and I wasn't even productive at the time. Most of that time was me giving a small percentage of my concentration because I didn't have any energy left.
A good eye-opener, and as always, great to see all these wonderful replies

 

Spoiler: Sick of this image yet?

 

To echo Holliebuckets..it is lovely to see people come together to help someone.