Hey! Epic - "I'm staring a game" - thread...

Soooo... You've come here, you've downloaded Unity, it's shiny and new and like a montage of game nostalgia, you can play the highlight reel of your glorious gaming experience right there across the interface. But But But...you say, those were other people’s games, and I was merely an Actor in their play.


I want to be the screenwriter, the director, the deity of my universe!


First of all, let me applaud your ambition. While I’m quite certain you have no idea what you’re in store for, there are many people that walk through life with no inkling of changing their experience into ownership of that experience, the fact that you’re here says you’ve already done that. It also says a little more about who you are statistically, like being a 1 man shop and being new to game development…But we won’t go into that. None of that matters to YOU and this is YOUR show right? Your ambition, your game, your universe manifesto.

Let me introduce myself. Cause this is the internet right? Am I some random guy preaching fiction, or is there fact buried in what you're about to read. Is it of value to you? Maybe...maybe my experiences translate into something you'll go through, or maybe they won't. Interpretation is powerful, and it's also a cruel mistress.

I've been around a while. I've been a gamer as long as I can remember. I've been playing since the original Atari release, and I've owned every major game console since; to date. I've also played nearly every single player, multi-player, and MMO I could get my hands on that had any decent level of following. Is that enough to listen to me? Probably not, that describes most of you as well right?

In the mid 90's I was approached to do something extraordinary, We were going to create a persistent 3d digital world. The first (kinda). People, real people, were going to exist by proxy in this world, create relationships, develop social and economic systems, create an economy of scale that was measured in the real world...but most of all, kill monsters and get lewt! You see, I'm a huge fan of RPG's, I have been since we played them in our heads with dice, and making that come to life was nothing short of extraordinary. I won't mention titles specifically, but I've been big part of 3 major MMO releases, two of which were crazy successful, and 1 of which failed miserably. I have experience on both sides of the fence to share.

So...you, your dream of putting whats in your head, into that little box in front of you and playing it! Lets take a step back and talk about why I'm writing this. I've been a lurker on the Unity forums for a little while, quite a bit longer than I've been any sort of contributing member which has only started recently. In my past experience we've rolled our own everything (more on that later); but I always enjoyed keeping an eye on what was happening around these parts.

Me and a couple of buddies of mine recently went looking down that long winding road of game development and started looking at the tech landscape for our next title. Of course we came through the unity plains and I was astonished to see a phenomenon happening here (and elsewhere too!) that disappointed me. In a word: Naysayers!

So you came looking for advice, you were excited, you have your tools, your idea, your computer fans are whirring and while the progress bar of unity ticks towards completion you come out to the forums to start to plan and share your excitement for making your dreams come true, and...Someone immediately tells you that you'll never accomplish what you're setting out to do. Then someone else agree's with that person, then someone else attempts to change your idea entirely of what you should build, and 2 pages in, you have no idea what happened, but your ambitious, the hard truths being presented to you don't matter to you right!? You intend to trudge forward....heck, you made it 9 paragraphs into this long winded post with no value to your end goal...you just might make it right?

Let me give you a simple comparison statement. We did more things WRONG in our release of our first big MMO than we did right. How did it ever make it? How did people keep playing? Honestly in some cases we were just lucky we were the pioneers. Some of our mistakes would not be tolerated today, they'd be exploited into mass extinction of our player base, and we'd be broke and writing stop light change code for local government. Back then though...we didn't know what we didn't know. Nobody had done it, so there was nobody to tell us we couldn't do it. And that was probably the most powerful thing we had working in our favor. If even one credible person at our time of inception had come out with major doubts, the entire beginning of MMO's might have been much different.

Lets be clear. I personally did not pioneer MMO's, nobody did really. I got the pleasure of sitting on the shoulders of giants while they envisioned greatness in 1's and 0's. My job was make that into technology. We were an all hands on deck, all hats team - but the visions were bigger than any one person could claim.

So what makes these naysayers think to tell you to stop, to quit, to change your scope, your vision, your DREAM!? Experience, either personal or by proxy. Many of them are telling you the truth because they think you need to hear it, and many of them are reflecting their own experience and understandably how difficult it is to accomplish things in this space. Unfortunately, and I say unfortunately with specific meaning...we're VERY educated in the space of games these days, the landscape has been developed, examined, extrapolated, metric'ed, monitored and monetized in 9500 ways, and rinse; repeat until it's really hard to compete. This is reality and truth...but this is not your story, nor your destiny. Your destiny is to create a game, because your story being told years from now includes you overcoming the odds knowing how difficult it was, or there isn't a story to tell right? If your story is worth telling, make it a good one.

So let me clear the air a little bit and lighten the atmosphere. Games are what? Games are what to you? Games are entertainment at their heart. They are meant to take you away from what you know, believe or understand and recreate an experience you couldn't otherwise have. Games are meant to be fun, and if someone is having fun at your game, you succeeded, even if the only person doing that is YOU.

I think this has gotten long enough. I'll have many in the comments agree with me, I'll have many disagree strongly, but everyone coming here to set out on their own journey; remember this. This is YOUR journey, and nobody can move your feet but you.

To the naysayers I ask you this. What does it cost you to change from shutting them down, to being supportive. Do you think I disagree that the 15 year old kid that shows up here wanting to recreate the 50 million dollar game title probably won't ever make it? I couldn't possibly disagree with that. What do you get for telling him that? Is there a cookie or prize for being right? Is there any satisfaction every time you tell someone they won't accomplish what they're setting out to do, and then they don't?

I'd challenge this entire community, if you've made it to the end of this inappropriately long post, to shift to a 100% support standpoint. You don't have to be right, or disillusioned. When JoeBob456 shows up and wants to make the next Skyrim, why not just say "Great, how can we help?" - what can we do, how are you starting, what point are you at, where are you stuck?

If someone doesn't know that they can fail, then they don't fail. They may "stop" - but they don't fail.

Thanks for reading, I'm making a commitment myself to be that person, and to help any way I can. Unity is new tech for me as well as the subsystems supporting Unity, but it's all the same when the game is on the table right? Lets all get what we want, it's just better that way.

 

Did you have a particular negative experience here? I hope I wasn't part of it. That's certainly never my intent.

I do, however, try to help newbies scope their first projects appropriately. And this is being supportive; the goal is to avoid the all-too-common failure mode where they bite off far more than they can chew, since they have no idea what's involved, and then get discouraged when they discover the vast gulf between what they had in mind versus what they can actually accomplish in the near term. The hope is that if they scope appropriately and set some goals they can achieve, then they will get that success, feel the thrill of accomplishment, and keep on learning and growing. And I always end it with something along the lines of "...and after you've done some smaller projects and leveled up your skills, then return to your dream game, and you'll be better equipped to tackle that."

It's like I show up in a construction forum, having just bought a shiny new hammer and saw, and gush about my plans to build a skyscraper. I don't know the first thing about building skyscrapers, and have only a vague awareness that most skyscrapers are built by a team of many dozens of people and cost many millions of dollars. But I have a clear vision in my head of what I want to build, and I know it'll be a long road, but I'm pretty sure that with my hammer and saw, and maybe some other stuff I'll pick up along the way, I can do it.

So what should the experienced builders tell me? In reality, they would laugh me right out of the forum. But we're a kinder bunch here, so I would hope they would say something like: You need to build a few birdhouses first. Learn how to use that hammer and saw. Maybe invest in a couple of power tools, and learn how to use those. Then let's talk about building skyscrapers.

I don't see how telling me "Awesome plan, grab that hammer and start building!" would be doing me a service... I would soon discover that I can't do it, but then it would feel like a failure. I'd wonder why nobody warned me in the beginning.

 

Nope, no negative experience.
No, you haven't offended me in any way.
No...this wasn't directed at anyone in particular

In fact, as far as I can tell you're quite helpful and knowledgable. I'm approaching this from the standpoint of "I've been where they're trying to get to".

Nobody disagrees that there is honesty in the approach. But to what end? I must disagree with your methods.

While building a skyscraper had real world impacts and monetary and possible physical downsides to attempt and fail, it costs the indie developer very little or nothing to push on forward.

Why in the world would we discourage them from building the game they WANT to build, would be driven and passionate and excited to build, and steer them towards something that feels like someone else's project defined for them?

 

Well, what it can cost the aspiring indie developer is any hope of success. I'm defining success here as "accomplishing some goal," rather than accomplishing the goal. I may not care much about birdhouses, but if somebody suggests that's a good way to learn how to use a hammer and saw, and I choose to spend a weekend working on one, then if I manage to build it, I will feel I've achieved something, and be motivated to do more.

The alternative, I suppose, is to say "Good plan — stick with it — but let's focus on step 1." In the skyscraper analogy, I guess that would be acquiring a big enough piece of land to build on, and getting the necessary permits. But I'm likely to fail at this stage already.

But maybe software is more forgiving... you can start almost anywhere in a big project; any piece of it you can get your arms around can come first, even if it's going to ultimately get refactored or replaced entirely. So perhaps we could encourage people to work on their dream game, but focus on whatever tiny piece of it looks most doable.

I dunno, though... it just doesn't seem like a very effective way to learn to me. If you look at any successful developer's hard drive, it is filled with half-written (as well as a few completed) small projects. They were done because the developer was trying out some new tech, or playing around with an idea, or just for the sheer joy of creating. The fastest road to building that skyscraper really is to start with birdhouses. Why not steer a new developer in this direction, rather than let them thrash around hopelessly in a giant project they are ill-equipped to tackle?

It reminds me of my experience in another hobby, robotics. How do you build an 8-foot tall humanoid robot? Do you start with the left foot? The power system? The armor? No. You start by building a 1-foot tall humanoid robot. Then you leverage your experience with that to build a 2-foot tall one. Then you build a 4-foot robot. THEN you tackle the 8-foot tall monster. This path costs only a little more than just building the 8-foot robot (since cost in this arena scales with the 3rd or 4th power of linear size), but the difference is, you may actually succeed with this approach. If you go straight for the 8-foot robot as your first project, you will fail.

Sure, software is easier than robotics... but I think the same principle applies.

 

In a lot of ways your not wrong, and this is a great discussion to be sure, but here's all I'm saying:

To be honest with each of these developers getting started, we have to be honest ABOUT them, and when we go down that road, we have to be honest with ourselves as well.

Every one of us (them) would like to believe we are building the next big thing, but lets face it, if we're part of that kind of team we are well aware. This is a hobby, these games are to learn, to enjoy building as much as playing, to showcase to our friends or our online communities. If as the indie developer you are disillusioned about that...then that's your own hurdle, nothing we can say is going to change their mind, and it's really not our place.

So here's the thing. If you'd told Me and my team in 1996 to build birdhouses rather than skyscrapers, we might have. And trust me, we did a LOT of prototyping, but all of it was direct game systems that eventually made it into, or were thrown out from our larger picture. Suggesting that someone break their large project up into smaller pieces is not only smart, but very mentor like and will help them in the long run with a repeatable skill. Suggesting they change their scope entirely is just silly.

Birdhouses might be the best way YOU know how to start a big project, bird houses might even work for me, and the next guy...but thats YOUR idea of how to start. And while I fully concede that they are here asking for help and guidance, so giving them exactly that is on-point...I believe in empowering THEIR decisions rather than making the decisions for them. Make sense?

The way you're helping is wrong, and honestly the only reason I'm hashing this with you is because you responded. You would in no way be the type I was speaking about in my OP. It's the "I want to build an open world game" -> Post number 1, you'll fail, start with a 2d platformer. Wait what?

See what I mean?

 

Yep, I see your point, and you've given me much to think about. I certainly don't want to be a dream-crusher! Thanks for raising this, and I'll try to keep it in mind in the future.

 

As chief naysayer this post hasn't changed my mind one bit. Let me tell you my story.

I started messing with game develompment and unity a couple of years ago. The first game I attempted was a massive life simulator. Think spore, but biologically accurate. I got a couple of months into the project before I realised the scope was impossible for me at the time.

I've messed with other big projects, RTS, RPG, MMO. All of them ended up in the same state, sitting on my hard drive less then 10% done.

I've also done plenty of small stuff. I built and released a small arcade game Pond Wars. I've had various other small games played at various points.

I much prefer small games that people play, rather then large games that never get finished.

If you want to work on big games, the answer is not to stubbornly bang your head against them on your own. The answer is to seek out work with an established studio. Work on their projects with their team.

Encouraging the noob to start building Skyrim on his own is just crazy.

 

But you see @BoredMormon, you were the driving factor in those decisions. You started your large games...think of how much you learned and the skills you gained! You made the decision to work on smaller stuff... And release what YOU wanted too. There's a lot of self discovery there and education you can't teach.

What makes you think that whatever advise you give to Mr Day One is the best possible advise for them?

What if you actually stopped someone that would have succeeded?

 

My advice is as valid as anyone else's. I could easily turn that question around and ask what makes you qualified to say it's not the best possible advice.

You are not actually serious with this question are you? You really think a random piece of advice on the Internet will break someone's career?

But let's consider it for a second. Suppose my advice is the only thing they hear. And they follow it to a t. In six weeks they have a viable game up on Kongregate. It's a portfolio piece. They also have been through the entire game dev process from start to finish. Give them another year and they will have several games out, and might have turned this into a living.

On the other hand if they work of a Skyrim clone for six weeks they have nothing. After a year they are still likely to only have the bare bones of a game. And it might be non viable.

Starting with a small project is good advice in any field.

 

The real fact when someone just starting out wants to build the next "GTA but better" or next "WoW but Realistic" game is... The fact is, they aren't scoping too big. Their scope is too small!

If the guy has no ambition to build a few prototypes and small games before he goes into multiplayer, open world etc, well, that guy is lazy. It won't take too many years to build those small games and gather experience so then he start work on the real important multiplayer dream game. No need to rush and work on it right now, grow experience first.
If he is certain this is what he want to do, he have to try things first, fail and keep going; then someday he realises 'he is ready' to start that one true game.
"-Oh but I want to make my dream game right now!"... Well, you won't succed. You will remake the same game again and again and never finish anything until you quit, because that is how a lazy person act and giving-up is always what the lazy person does. People use harsh words, but actually they are trying to say "-Don't do it this way, because you'll burnout and quit! Let me help you not quit!"

This very community right here helped me with harsh words. Back in 2007 I didn't know a single line of C# code and C++ was like old egyptian symbols to me; now I've worked on 14 games, some S***ty games I've worked alone and some as a job for companies. If I kept going the lazy thinking of "-I will only work on the best game ever made or not make anything!", what would I have created by now? Nothing, maybe would've stayed in the 3D-art land as a hobby.

Naysayers just want you (the new guy) to prove them wrong; go and do it.
If you feel like you can't do it right now, listen to them; they can help you to find the path to stay afloat and keep trying.

 

Sorry, but this is just nonsense. There have been multiple occasions where I've had the opportunity to meet people online who were working on projects with massive scope. One very clear factor set them apart from all those who have tried similarly scoped projects only to fail. They were intensely motivated.

Yes, to a degree you do need to know what you're doing but more than that you need to have that motivation. If the words of advice about being more realistic until you've become an accomplished developer are enough to permanently stop you from trying to make your project... then you were doomed to begin with. You clearly were not motivated enough.

 

You AWESOMELY proved my point, and this is the logic I started this post over. Their burning desire to make a game, to produce something that is THEIRS, to forge ahead despite all odds. Why should these people be met with someone who is going to tell them to stop making what they want to make, and go make what WE think they should make because they are more likely to succeed at that?

 

I'm going to be following this up with a part 2 (I'll start a new thread) and actually giving positive decision making advice for those that are either starting or in process making their game right now. We all struggle to understand if we are making the right decisions or not. The above post is my opinion and my commitment to be helpful towards peoples goals without feeling the need to shape or change them (it's none of our place really), but it's mostly fluff that doesn't help new developers, make their game or their process any better. Part 2 will focus on helping, backed by 20 years of experience.

 

Most of us are not suggesting they permanently stop development of their project. Rather we're simply suggesting they put it on hiatus until they have become knowledgeable enough to understand how to properly implement their vision.

Which if you examine other similarly-sized projects you'll find that many of those with substantial progress are being developed by people who have done exactly this. They became capable developers and then they started their projects.

 

Its often a case of spending the first three minutes sharpening your axe. I strongly believe that spending your first six weeks to make and release a small game will cut the dev time of your large game by more then six weeks.

So far nothing in this thread, or any of the other threads complaining about the advice to new devs to scope small, has convinced me to change my tune.

 

I wish I had started my own MMORPG instead of reading this thread, I would have finished it by now.

 

We didn't all do that. I have spent a lot of time encouraging people to make whatever game they want, including MMO's, even giving my own experiences to help.

So..yeah, lots of naysayers, but not all of us. Give the rest of us a little credit. Sometimes, if you only see the negative, you miss out on all the good stuff.

 

Most forum posters here (i cant quote em all due to troll blocking, by me) that say's: "Don't build large projects. Haven't really built a large project them-self's . It all come downs to your own resource in the office. Do you have 3D guys with you? programmer? Sound designer? Concept designer? Mony/time. If you have all that, nobody should tell you on this forum that you shouldn't start with a "skyscraper". Hell if you have the tools to do it and resources... just start with the foundation and build your way up. Not all skyscrapers are perfect.. Don't let the trolls here get to you.. Drive by your dream and rock on.. The impossible is just a mental illusion .

 

I actually love the mixed opinions in this thread. Please also keep in mind, that while pointing this out as left of 0,0 - I fully get and respect that right of 0,0 there's a whole camp of people being very helpful and supportive. In fact in a lot of circumstances it's many of the same people. None of that is lost on me.

 

I like this guy ^

 

I like to help people here, because i know that one day, they might build something greater than any of my projects, even so they might be on a lower knowledge level than me at this time.. That's how i respect people here, i love to see people build there projects based on there ideas, no matter how big there concept is. We can all inspire from each other no matter what level of knowledge we are on.

I want to tell a little story at my office.. I just hired this young talent guy that is doing game design as study at the moment. It was just a coincidence how i meet him. He told me it would impossible do the design i was doing in 3D, then i teach him how to do it, and connected to what he already knew. He said..i cant build 3D models like blizzard does.. etc. Then i showed him the tools blizzard uses to do build models, and that not every blizzard models are perfect . Now he builds really high quality models for my project, and for his school projects. Sometimes.. fate is all it takes.. and fate can be crushed..

One of my older teacher told me this wise advice: If you want to reach the top of the stairs when you jump, aim at the highest step. there's a pretty good chance that you will land pretty high up, even if its not the top step.

Where do you want to jump?

 

Just leaving this here for reference.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/is-this-just-my-pessimism-or-what.390799/

 

I am going to make a game where you hit things and it's satisfying. I plan on spending 6 months on it.

 

We make the MMO office supplies themed and all the players are rubber bands, done.

 

Thanks for linking that thread on burnout and pessimism. We've all been there, even on products we've released. There's been plenty of times I've opened a codebase up, and thought to myself...this whole thing could use a ground up rewrite, but it's so....DIFFICULT to start over.

The advise I have for that feeling which can all but magic bullet solve it, is Agile / Scrum / iteration development. While it's not going to reduce a massive scope into a 1 man job, it WILL allow everyone to make progress and accomplish goals. It's saved companies and software projects on every single level.

If you don't know what iterative development is, and really fundamentally understand why it's vitally necessary to ever release decent software...go read up on it and ask questions here...I love to talk about iteration, and I'm an expert in the area in using it to develop games, websites, databases...you name it.

 

Let's put things into perspective. If overcoming naysayers on a message board is a problem, you do not have the drive to make a mid or large scale game solo.

The real challenges involved are really tremendous and if you're really going to execute on that (and it's possible) the unity forum is not something that's going to stop you.

 

I absolutely agree, crashing and burning is a valuable experience and I don't get what people have invested in naysaying. That said, people who are obviously green post here looking for feedback or encouragement, but all I would do is say "OK cool, let me know when it's playable".

 

There's lots of talented people out there. Early in the thread one of the things I mentioned was keeping it in perspective.

I made a point in this thread to be real about the challenges individuals or small teams would face when trying to create anything large scale. I'm not trying to burst anyone's bubble, but I'm not trying to fill them with false hope either. You wont find me in the cheering section telling someone that they should ignore those that are experienced enough to know better. But I also know a few things from years and years of experience:
1.) People and their innovation can surprise you. There ARE the exceptions that make it against all odds.
2.) You CAN dash someones hopes, though you'd hate to think that was a real barrier to someone that intends to succeed, try not to think of it as "you can convince someone to stop" - and think of it more along the lines of refusing to help them with the type of game THEY want to make almost forces them to make something someone else feels is "reasonable" or they can't proceed at the early stages. That's pretty convincing to a n00b early on the in the learning curve. Not so much a little later in the plateau.

 

Yep, nothing wrong with that response at all. I really wasn't even saying it was bad to educate them on the difficulty and challenges. I just think it's wrong to completely change their direction and tell them to go make an entirely different type of game.

 

I was reading this article about naysayers that had Asperger's syndrome. That they have a burning desire to talk down on other people without a speck of constructiveness or basing things on reality. Because many of them have there own view on the world around them. Maybe something to take in to consideration next time you find a naysayer on a forum. I dealt with many over the past 10 years.

But if any one tell you in a constructive way, that maybe your goals are unrealistically high compered to what you can produce, then this is something to listen to. "Frosted" has a point here. You must be able to face critics from others, and most importantly have a very critical vision on your own work, at all times. Inn order to make something big/great.

People who test my games, i tell them to only find bad things, if they only say its nice and fun, i start worrying. I call it healthy self-criticism. But naysayers are not healthy, because they are not basing there "critics" on criticism, its more about "controlling you" specifically if that naysayer has Asperger's syndrome..
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"We eat on the level of our vision".

Here is some real truth about naysayers

 

Alternatively you can simply discuss the processes they will have to go through to develop their game. It's not unheard of to run into people who have concluded that their idea really was out of their league as a first time project and opted instead to start with the route of learning the development tools and getting experience before pursuing their dream game.

Sometimes the most effective way for them to understand this is when they make the conclusion themselves.

 

Is it really up to others that don't know you, to tell you what your limits are? No, its not. And the other problem is that many of them are not really on that level of experience them self's to make that type of conclusion on others..

 

Well first off, I don't think I've ever seen anyone here tell someone to just outright forget their dream. More like set the dream project to the side for a bit while you practice, and then get back to it when you know what you're doing. In that way I see "learn on simple projects" advice as saving them from ruining their dream project.

Yes I realize that everyone is different, but we can't magically know which random stranger is the exception. Instead we give the advice that's best for 99% of beginners.

Note that the people on this forum are hardly the only ones advising beginners to scope small. For example, watch the Extra Credits videos embedded in a thread at the top.

Finally, I'm giving advice based on my experience when I was starting out, because I work as a professional game programmer so why wouldn't I base it off that experience? It's great that things clicked right out of the gate for you, but for me I tried and failed multiple times trying to build bigger games, and then I finally sold my first commercial game once I learned to scope smaller.

---

Incidentally, in your long spiel about creating an MMO for your first game, you didn't mention if it was a paid job or unpaid project, or how many people you were working with. I'm wondering about those details because they make a big difference; it's a lot easier to slog through the frustrating parts when you are being paid to.

Come to think of it, were all your team members making their first game? That too makes a big difference; being mentored by someone with hard-bitten experience is almost as good as getting the hard-bitten experience yourself.

 

As a brand new game programmer (I've written lots of command-line apps, and worked for a major company, but have never done anything with a GUI until about 3 weeks ago), I actually agree with the common approach here on this forum. Sure, I'd love to eventually make a totally awesome game that is going to sell tons and make me famous and all that. But, I'm currently working on (and nearly done with) a basic Tetris clone. I'm not really *that* big of a tetris fan, and I'm not even particularly good at the game. But, it's what I'm making.

Why?
1) I have no skills with graphics yet. I can make a box, though.
2) I don't have much experience with writing games. Tetris is a moderately simple game (although there is quite a bit to figure out and play with)
3) I don't have much experience working with Unity yet. Tetris allows me to play with some of the features that Unity has, and see how they work and mess around with them.

Does this mean that I'm never going to get to my big crazy project? Does it mean that I have to give up my dreams? Nope. But it means that when I sit down to work on a big crazy project, I will have a bit more experience on game development, particularly within Unity, under my belt. It means that I won't mess things up with my big crazy project and make it take 10 times as long because I didn't know what I was doing when I started.

Now, as for the lack of graphics skills, that's something I'm trying to work on on the side in my free time. Hopefully eventually I will figure out how to do in at least a slightly competent way. But, for now, I'm happy that I'm not spending all of my programming time slamming my head against graphics software!

 

When I started it was a major breaktrough in skills to be able to draw a pixel on screen (let alone finding out how to change into graphics display mode). I had my "too big" game idea BEFORE I could even draw that pixel.

The Joy of accomplishment when first pixel was glowing in middle of the screen. White! White Pixel! "Can I make it green?"

Continuous learning experience was based on learning to do things in order to make that "too big" game idea into reality. Learn to draw sprites, lines, boxes, circles, backgrounds, screen manipulations, blitting, doublebuffering, ... Writing my first routine to wait for display vertical retrace in assembly language was one major milestone too.

Would internet have existed back then, so that I could have joined a Forum to be told to make Pong Clone instead of my "too big" game idea, the course of my life would probably have been different. But oh internet did not exist so I could not ask about making my game in any forum so I just kept working on it, learning new things as I progressed.

I do advocate the "Proof of Concept" approach, which means that for a big game project, whatever I can envision/imagined in it should be possible to implement in small "POC projects" which code could then be reused in the "too big game project". But that is simply because it being the way it worked for me. Also starting separate library projects, well the heck... its just from where I am coming form... back then there was no game engines like Unity which offer you so many gizmos and whistles it takes oh-so-long to properly exploit even half the possibilities...

So I do agree with the OP on this one. I did not need anyone to teach me to "properly scope" my idea back then and surely do not be needing it now. So it is questionable if anyone really needs that. The hard reality of "programming" alone is proven to make people humble. So yeah, the HarryNorris1234 can come on the forum with advertising his new MMO game project which consists only him as member, and he only knows how to come up with ideas... and asking for help... I do not need to tell him naynays because pure reality is that its beyond anything in my power to even remotely help him. So I stay out of his thread, making very very sure I dont waste his time by posting reply.

And yes, I figured alot myself too. So can so many other people. Their success do not rely on my effort to help. But dragging them down from their dreams just seems like instead asking myself why I am being such a horrible person.

 

Perhaps you should point out specific examples of the naysaying you are talking about, because I don't see much difference between how you say you started by drawing a pixel, and the advice to start by making a small game. "Start by making Pong" is just the Unity version of "start by drawing a pixel".

 

Right, I believe that's true for many developers, but the difference is most of us don't show up on a forum and create an announcement message as our first post. That's not the real cause of the "nay-saying" in many of these sorts of threads though.

I feel like the real cause of the "nay-saying", based on my experience from spending entirely too much time reading and commenting on threads, is that almost no one has actually produced anything substantial after announcing their project.

Rather many of them will announce it... and promptly disappear. This has happened both in threads that have had "nay-say" comments and in threads where they only received positive feedback and assistance.

Naturally many of us have become jaded towards threads of that nature by this point.

 

Part of why I'm thinking I just need to see specific examples of this naysaying is because maybe I'm just misunderstanding the tone of these messages. Reading raybarg's message, I'm thinking the issue is more about tone than the specific advice being given. After all, the difference between "give up your dream and do Pong instead" and "in order to eventually make your dream game you should start by learning how to make a small game" is mostly tone.

 

Wait a minute, are you naysaying the non-naysayers naysaying of naysayers?

 

While becoming jaded is natural, that doesn't make it right. Maybe being jaded is the problem here...

 

You'll find people who come on and say "I've made a few games, now I'm moving bigger" get more support then people that come on with "I just downloaded the editor, I want to make Skyrim".

 

Yea, you get it...and we have very similar backgrounds....

:\> mode 80

We didn't know what we couldn't do when we produced the start of this genre.

 

I cannot point at specific naysaying. I have been a lurker within Unity community and recently 'over-the-shoulder' lurker. Finally I made a post. My anti-naysaying is based on the amount of effort from my side to tap on that shoulder I've been looking over at Unity community and try my best to deflect the negative impact of naysaying that I did not read myself.

Those naysayings had very negative impact.

Those naysayings were completely out of place and rarely even addressed the OP question (if there was any.) (Check the end statement of this post.)

Unity version of "drawing a pixel" is more likely something like programmatically spawning cubes and make them change color based on how many times they collided with raytrace/others/a random other object... or something to "prove" the most rudimentary concept is achieved. Its far from darn "Pong clone". Also, it can be anything that resembles some basic functionality needed for that 'too big game' project.

So here goes what I think; Making Pong sucks, Making Tetris sucks, making [insert your suggestion] sucks. If someone wants to make next WoW-Killer, they first need to... say, draw 2D sprite in Unity interface which is needed for inventory management or skill bars or... If someones scope is too big, it makes no sense to tell them to reduce the WoW-Killer into a Pong Clone, help them slice a chewable chunk out of the WoW-Killer to work on.

But what do I know? There are several professional programmers working happily and surpassing me with their skills, who I helped to take their baby steps when they begun. It was consistent they had big dreams, so I pointed them how important drawing a pixel is in order to draw a line which is important to draw wireframe 3D object... Even my economist friend who was studying had some programming classes who was 100x better at math than me, and I just show him what programming skills he needs to make the "final study project" which was also a big dream (and difficult math.) He was awesome at programming and finished the study with good rating, but did not become a programmer.

So what do you answer when Mikey14y comes along asking "How I make MMO?"
If you do not know how 14y old can make MMO singlehandedly... Then you have nothing to answer to that question.

 

Little kids like to move around. They love to check out everything in their world as they grow up. If one of them were to ask you how to run, would you tell them that they don't need to learn how to properly control their muscles, how to properly maintain their balance, and properly steer themselves in order to run?

Newcomers to game development are a bit like little kids. They need to learn the basics of the profession before they will be capable of succeeding at the complex projects being worked on by the big kids.

 

I randomly picked a forum user and went back through the last five pages of posts. Grabbed a few of the most naysaying and negative ones here.

Apparently this guy is not as negative as I thought. But this is the sort of 'You should start small' attitude that exists on this forum.

 

The problem that i see on this forum almost every day, is that majority of the people on this forum are not kids or new to development. Many have a pretty solid background, education or programming experience. Yet they are faced with naysayers because they are new to the forum and that it is important that they start "small" and pretending they know them. Something they clearly do not ...Such behavior should really be dealt with by the moderators if we want a forum community that is not a place where you get threatened.. Example i reported a post where a person wants to start a RTS but getting warnings that he will be "attacked" by others om this forum etc.. a general threat ..

 

You know something occurred to me skimming over this thread again. Both you and the OP are not newcomers to these forums. Yet I don't recall seeing either of you take part in these sorts of threads. Why are you not setting an example by taking part in those threads? Why are you only just now posting?

 

There are a couple that fall into this boat. Teila and ShadowK typically jump in on threads saying that big games are possible for single devs. Although ShadowK did meet his limit on that last thread where a single dev was going to do AAA on his own.

This guy probably needs some encouragement. Why not go over there and tell him he can make his big game? It would certainly help balance out the rest of us on the thread.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/how-to-make-an-aaa-game-in-unity-or-fail-badly.390947/

 

Here an example i edit out the name, but that person have been camping almost every new post from new members on this forum..

Get massive on you..?? .no wonder allot of people don't dare to make posts here. with this types of threats.

 

I don't see any indication that the OP became discouraged in that thread (linked below). If anything he displayed a realistic attitude and understands that it may be outside of his reach. I don't see how that quote or any of the responses in that thread are indications of "nay-saying".

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/need-features-for-my-rts-ai-asset.391395/