Do you ever feel like the difficulty of gamedev is underestimated?

I certainly do... Obviously for someone who makes games they understand how complicated it is and everything, but for the average person they just think its as easy as learning to play a trumpet or something. Atleast that's what I've observed. For example, my family is one of those people. "Michael, stop playing games and do homework or something productive." No matter how many times I've tried to explain to them what I'm actually doing, it just won't get to their heads. Another kind of those people are my friends. I show them some of my projects and they just laugh and ask what I'm doing with my life, and they they start talking about how if they knew how to code how good their games would be compared to mine, lol. Sometimes this gets me kinda frustrated, but I atleast I can always get a good laugh whenever one of them tries to learn and then quits after the first week. hahha.

So do you guys experience a similar situation? If so, in what ways? Although no one realizes that there is a genius behind every project, at the end of the day we're all learning something new everyday, which is much more valuable than the lack of exposure our intelligence gets.

Edit: Also I just wanted to add that I'm no genius at all I've only been using Unity for a year, I am mostly talking about all the professional and more experienced developers.

 

With exceptions, that's true for most professions

 

Not really. Game dev is relatively simple as professions go. Witness the flood of available games out there.

When you can reliably live off your games expect and demand respect. When you make games people have heard of then you are accomplishing something.

Otherwise it's no more significant then me saying I'm a mechanic because I can do an oil change.

 

I'm confused.

Oil change -> flooding the markets with bad games.

So they are not game devs.

Being bad at a profession is easy. I am assuming he is talking about doing a professional and being good at it.

 

In my experience if you are good at it respect is not hard to come by. Simply show off your work, tell them how many downloads you've had, or reveal how much money you are making. Same goes for most skills.

If your parents are still telling you to do homework... If other people are convinced they could do better... Well that probably means you aren't that good yet.

 

I think that generally you shouldn't ever expect other people to understand anything about what you're doing, unless they have same profession.

Regarding parents, I believe if you'll start paying your share of household bills with money you earned, they most likely will leave you alone.

 

Well, to back what the original poster said a bit, yes you can earn respect if you do those extra steps you mentioned, while in other professions you just say what you do.

"I'm a doctor"

vs

"I'm a game dev. No, it's not my hobby, it's my profession. No, really. My game has x downloads per day. I mean I make x$ per month! I'm doing pretty good!"

(Edit: As proof, in my social life, when I don't feel like talking about myself and I don't want to lie either, when people ask me what I do I say "Software Development".)

 

True. That is one difference with game dev. The entrance barrier is very low, meaning the title earns no inherent respect. And nor should it, not unless you have done something with it.

In my social life I get plenty of respect for saying "I'm a biochemical engineer". But in my work life everyone is an engineer, so I tell people "I run a side business making games".

 

Well, it's the job of engine developers these days to sell to game developers. That does include attracting would-be game developers.

Difficulty is based on ambition if you ask me. There's a reason AAA games aren't done by one person using a laptop.

 

I feel like I could have made a funny response to that. I'm just one guy developing on a laptop.

 

I think all depends on your background.

Game dev is full of noob programmers, thinking they are actually good, and not even admitting they are pre-juniors. And I can continue. Sorry guys if anyone of you feels hurt, but that's the truth.

Speaking strictly at Unity, Unity devs delivered a tool, super easy to use and powerful, but most of peoples coming here have no idea how to program in C# and maybe zero game dev background.

Oh.. shall I continue with so called "gfx" artists who put 3-4 million triangles in a chair or table?

Edited "gfx" part for @Ryiah

 

Yup. Try marketing your game after finishing it.

 

Reading the part about programmers brought to mind those artists who submit a low quality asset and then create a thread wondering why the Asset Store rejected their entry. We haven't had one of those in a while...

 

I will modify for you, I will put 3-4 instead one, just to make it clear.

 

I thought the decision was unfair. That single chair was totally ready to be textured for use in a game.

 

To get back to @DugelStudios question:
I totally get what you're saying!
My brother always asks me why I haven't published any games yet and why I always start a new project ... as if it were that easy to create a great game out of nothing

 

Because a lot a you are superficial and jump over learning to production, and think is the same thing. Is not.

 

Publish something. Anything. The experience is invaluable.

 

While I do agree that game development isnt any harder than any other profession, say an accountant, if you tell someone your an accountant they won't think much except acknowledge you have a good job. But if you tell them your a game developer, they'll give you a puzzled look and think to themselves "I thought everyone stopped playing video games in middle school?" Just what I think anyways

 

Depending on the task, programming is considerably more problematic than accounting. Accounting always has answers, while programming involves a fair bit of inventing problems to solve.

 

I think you underestimate how hard it is to play trumpet.

 

A trumpet is indeed easy to play, just not easy to play with any kind of decent sound! Lets face it, it's a crap analogy.

 

A lot of those games use pre-made assets which they've fitted together with the minimum of effort. To that I would say it's like putting together Ikea furniture vs carving your own furniture from wood. One undeniably requires skill, the other can be done by almost anyone.

Middleware like Unity does take away a lot of the most technically challenging aspects of creating games, such as the process flow of importing and using assets, and the rendering, physics and AI etc. This makes it possible for people with even a rudimentary knowledge of programming to create SOMETHING, even if its buggy and not fun to play.

Ultimately, programming games is still one of the more complex undertakings you can try, but Unity and engines like it significantly lower the barrier to entry. There's nothing wrong with that

 

lol when I say I made games one of my friend said "So what's the big deal? I have also made a game. I also know Java/C#"
When I showed them a simple program and asked what it does. He once even said let's make a game together
"I haven't used it for quite some time so I can't remember"
Oh and anyone I show my game to says its bad when I ask them make it in the days I made without using readymade material they are all become quite.

 

Only logged to reply to the bad trumped analogy but you all already went and did the job.

The irony almost propelled me to make a thread called:
"Do you feel the difficulty of playing a musical instrument is underestimated?"

 

Indeed. Mainly those two bolded ones.
Even if you could get one the code for rendering in the past/old days, good luck with the physics one.
Industry would have 1/10000th the amount of current developers if 'selling game engine' was prohibited or extremely restricted like back in the 90s and their $20k Renderware licenses.

But today they complain 'Game dev is hard!' when they have f***ing documentation even in Ads when browsing Facebook.

 

I feel like the answers to the op's question is going into extremely opposing directions
I get the arguments that every job can be hard but I feel like one topic isn't talked about yet.
Namely that, in my opinion, game development requires a lot more passion than any other job out there.

For example you can decide you want to become a lawyer and then you go to university and learn everything you need to know and eventually you're a lawyer. This applies to almost every job out there, I feel like, except for game development. I also have some experience in that because I am studying media computer science right now and we learn nothing. Sure, we learn how to program or how mathematical functions work (in "Design" we just look at logos for 3 hours a week ), but none of that helps me to make a great game or even a decent game.

While you can learn all the theoretical stuff, you can't learn how to become a game developer.

I make mods and games now for a couple of years (never released a game though because I never finish them ) and a friend of mine (who also studies media computer science) always looks at me like "how the f*ck do you do this?".
This is really funny because I don't have an answer for that.
I remember asking in several forums on how to become a game developer and always getting the response
"just do something".
Now here I am on the other side of the table and I haven't even noticed the change I went through because in this industry there's always something new you have to adapt to and that's where the passion kicks in.

If you aren't passionate about it you will quit being a game developer after a short time but with other jobs I feel like you don't have to have fun doing it (like everyone hates his job right?).
You just wake up regularly and go to your job to earn money ... but as a game dev you are happy to make your games, even if you don't release them. Or you just play around just to learn something. A lot of my friends from school got right to work after finishing school and didn't go to university because they were done with all that learning and just want to do their repeating work (which can also be fun ... but I guess you get what I'm trying to say here).

Game Development isn't the hardest job in the world arguably, but you certainly have to be more passionate about it than in any other job.

 

Try NASA.

 

As usual, I started writing my post to disagree, only ending up agreeing AND disagreeing...

The problem with OP's definition is that the level of quality of game development can vary greatly, while other "respected" trades have defined, measurable successes. You either passed the bar or you haven't. You either successfully performed surgery or you haven't. You either balanced the books (or cooked them) or you haven't. Its possible to make and publish a S*** game and say you've made a game. If games are art (and we agree it's art, right?), the end product is highly subjective. Compare it to movies, music and fiction books. I understand that there are plenty of technical aspects involved in making a game: advanced mathematical algorithms, performance and optimization techniques, and generally constructing complex systems from nothing, it's software, after all. But ultimately, games are made to be fun, which means it's entertainment, which results in the confused looks and doubts when a game is not completely "finished", because it's not entertaining to them. If you made a game that made craploads of money, I can imagine that your respect will increase within your close circle, because that's all they see, or even care about sometimes.

So, I do agree, in that after 10 years in the AAA industry, I'm qualified for senior software engineer positions, yet my dad still thinks I do "animation" <shakes his head>. No offense to animators, it's just that that's what my dad thinks what I do. But I disagree, in that I think there are definitely more respected jobs that have a different level of difficulty that non-game industry folk understand.

 

Yes, by most people posting on many Early Access titles such as Blockscape or Vox.

 

Last year I had a go at writing my own game engine from scratch in Java using LWJGL (since there are few engines other than JMonkeyEngine written in it). Due to the lack of mature libraries, I ended up having to write my own maths library for matrix and quaternion transformations, parser for PNG and TGA files, a library to parse and load OBJ and FBX files as well as the renderer itself, using raw OpenGL bindings.

It sounds complex, but individually each of these components weren't overly challenging. The renderer was the most difficult as I don't have a mathematical background so understanding the formulae behind parallax occlusion mapping and light attenuation took a bit of research. The rest was mostly reading up on file formats and standard high-school level maths and implementing it.

The real challenge is integrating all of these into a seamless and highly-scalable system like Unity has, and establishing a good workflow for your art assets. This is where the men are separated from the boys, so to speak. My renderer was a naïve one that was ok for doing a single scene such as the famous Sponza cathedral but would not have scaled to a full game, or remained performant when combined with the physics, networking, AI etc. That would require significant redesigning and highly efficient structuring of systems to achieve the kind of performance you need for games.

I guess that's where the true test of skill lies, and middleware like Unity/UE4/CryEngine kind of removes a lot of that. You still need to structure your game code efficiently to get the most out of it (just look at the botched Arkham Knight PC port, which was built on middleware, UE3), but it's a lot more forgiving than when you're building the foundations of an engine where poor design can cripple it completely. I guess this is also why your solution architects tend to be paid a lot more than your standard programmers.

 

Agreed. Yet family and friends around you could care less, unless you were making some good $$ from it, or they are also into software.

 

Ummmm. No. I was always acknowledged as the best artist in any school I went to and my old man still threw out all my drawings and made me give away my Marvel comics collection when moving back from Europe rather than pay the 5 bucks shipping. That collection, last time I valued them, was worth a few hundred thousand bucks. I am now a well known artist with record holding sculptures under my belt and my oils are acknowledged as outstanding works that drop jaws. He is doing more than his homework. It takes logical brains and mind flow to code and create art assets that work with the code. It is a profession with multiple facets.. If you are good at it it will eventually pay off. The folks I work for now who put on the classic car shows in the US have made a game company and are bringing in a major investor next month..based on ....a quiz I made for them..elementary.. Now they have seen the rest of my work they keep telling me how glad they are to have met me. I have starved, been ripped off over and over, tried to switch professions but nobody would hire me for manual labor even though I built some big stuff way more complex than a house..but I get my needs met. Overqualified is the word I was given. My one caveat is that had I been a better business man I would already be rich from the talents God bestowed on me and the drive he gave me in those fields. The same is probably true of the OP. It is inherent and not the result of wannabe rock star BS. You gotta do what you have to do or you may be thwarting God's will and your eventual reward for diligence.

 

Why do you guys even CARE about someone else's respect?

It is a good way to waste your life trying very hard to please people you don't even like.

>_<

The lesson here is: don't skip math, and don't skip dealing with invisible surface removal/collision detection.

The true skill is when you start with incorrect solution and then you can redesign it to match desired architecture without breaking it.

 

You mean the only skill.
Or the real skill.

 

One skill to rule them all

 

Utter nonsense. Ever worked as an environmentalist or a doctor or a teacher? Heck, I worked with an electrician who had been turning up for work five years past retirement just because he loved the place.

I don't. Not really. But that's what the OP was asking for. For me as long as I've got the respect of my wife and kids I'm good.

 

I don't want to argue with you but I have to disagree with you.
I never worked as either of those because I'm still a student.
Also, because of that I can promise you that there are a lot of teachers out there who have zero passion about their job.
I am not saying that no one is passionate about what they do ... I am simply saying that you will earn no money in the game industry if you are not passionate about it, unlike in other jobs.

 

I personally don't consider programming work - for me it is just a meta-game which I gain from - both in entertainment and understanding - that some people make a lot of $$$ from it - fair enough - but I know a lot of really good code is open source; and donations are normally scarce... like a lot of people - including myself - they do it for challenge and entertainment purposes...
EDIT: I tend to agree though - people do think making a AAA game like GW2 or W3, or BF4 etc.. is a walk in the ball park - I feel it a walk in the ball park - just a very big one - people don't build high-rise building from middle school - they have to study a long time or they have a tight rope with the baus - just like precision engineering - programming takes more then 3-4 years to do the job right - you spend 4-12 just learning before then... with many many investments in sometimes not so cheap tools and assets...

 

Yeah, but with a strict business deadline and plenty of investors waiting for you to succeed by that deadline.
Any activity can be fun as long as you aren't pressured to finish it.

 

Then you probably want to get some more experience before you make grand sweeping statements. Game dev isn't particularly special as a profession.

 

Then it stands to reason that you wouldn't actually know first hand would you?

Yes, but this applies to every single field. The opposite is true too. There are teachers who are very passionate about their jobs. After all when you're being paid very little you have to either want the job or have no choice.

Sorry, but that's just plain wrong. Just like there are people who are passionate, there are also people who are doing it solely for the money. Whether they were enticed into the field by the runaway success some games have had or they have no other choice it doesn't really matter.

Or did you think all of those shovelware games were produced by people who enjoy releasing trash games? If there wasn't some chance to be successful, no one would actually be producing the trash that literally floods some gaming markets.

 

In my local it is customary to work for nothing - i.e. volunteer - to show you are willing to work in the hope that an employer will hire you I tend to agree with Ryiah's closing statement....
The simple truth remains - if its easy money - its already been made and we are mostly just soaking up the scraps - computer programming is not just a matter of skill imo - it is that - but other elements play into it - such as social contacts and to a certain extent luck plays its part too - just looking at the steam community - I'm not game to ask for money until I personally am certain people will be at least partially happy with the product they paid say $5 or more for - because it often gets ugly - even for people who have bled to get that game in the best state possible with deadlines, bosses, and shareholders threatening to pull the plugs....
Recently I've been learning other aspects of game design - I recommend it for anyone who thinks its all about one school of science; make a whole game by yourself - just for practice for example - get to see what other members of a would be team are going through - this way you'll understand the issues involved - and who knows - you might even be able to help others in the team both through their work and their understanding of how what they do fits in with the bigger picture - I've met many great artists that have no concept of asset importing to unity - or some with no experience in animation for example ...

 

I feel like the potential still remains but it has largely become dependent on whether or not your game goes viral.

 

Bloom and flares'll help.

 

Very true. While there are things unique to game development, the exact same can be said for every other profession.

 

yes - this is the matter of luck I spoke of precisely...

I'm not keen on bloom

 

Ugh. I hate lens flares. Last thing I want to be reminded of in a game is that I'm staring through a camera.

 

This.

And... 'Game development' is also an umbrella term that covers many unique and specific fields. I know and work with several passionate and highly skilled individuals who don't necessarily have a passion for game development in general.

 

indeed