how multi talented are you?

I am not saying that people don't have innate abilities or predilections. And certainly there are some core attributes that underly multiple skill sets. But even with that, actually achieving a notable level of talent or skill comes from application and drive. A student of programming, for example, may indeed "get it" more quickly than his peers, but becoming a truly talented engineer still will only come through applying and expanding that base aptitude. And you are correct, definitely some fields require base understandings/attributes that may be difficult or impossible to gain if you aren't geared that way already.

 

I do 3D art (modeling, texturing, animating) and 2D art. I do programming (not very good at it though, I feel most of it's beyond me) but just enough to get by. Absolutely no clue on sounds and music, as I rarely listen to music and I hate...well, sound. So basically I do everything but that.

I am not "good" at any of them, but it's a choice I was willing to make. Sure, my modeling edge flow has improved from 4 years ago, but not as much as it could have had I focused all my time on modeling. I could probably code a lot better too, but I decided to wing it in order to finish a product (still haven't done that yet...ah well).

 

Time is big bottleneck no matter how multi talented you are. There is so many little things to do in game, things that take 5 min to fix but when there is thousands of those it's weeks worth of work. Also if practice doesn't make you better it makes you faster. I have been playing with 3D softwares over 10 years and only now I begin to feel that my modeling speed is somehow bearable. And same goes for coding, now I have to write every script only ten times to get it work, before it was twenty.

Like renaissance painters had to made their paints and brushes and first movie makers made their cameras,so did first game makers make tools and engines them self. Now we have tools like Unity which is amazing and gives even individuals opportunity to make games alone. ( and cheap cameras and even cheaper pens and paper)

Another god thing is that you don't have to be in front line of technology any more. If game has good style, it can use years old technology and still look and feel good. I think if game released ten years ago would have used 5 years old tech, it would have been totally outdated. This enables longer production times so even individuals and small teams can put out stuff that doesn't feel outdated.

 

The wolf that plays viola. Awesome image.

 

Yeah, this pretty much sums up my thoughts. "Raw talent" is great for some things, but it's no replacement for practise and/or experience.

 

I suck at everything, but I've learned over time that if you hit enough buttons in the right sequence, stuff comes out the other end - and if I'm really lucky, it smells of roses.

 

Talent helps you learn and make things faster, and there are somethings that can't be achieved without certain talent. Like Perelman's proof of the poincaré conjecture: Even I do understand mathematics, I think no matter how hard I try to learn more, I would never be able to understand that proof. You need to have something special to make those kind of proofs and theorems, or master works of art.

In gamedev there are one invaluable talent: reading comprehension. And two invaluable skills: google search and copy&paste.

I say this a bit provoking in my mind, but I think in gamedev you need more talent in art department than coding. If you aren't doing anything truly new and unique, which is very rare, almost every code you need is coded already, just have to find those (over simplification). To make unique art you need to have some talent. There are limited amount of good ways to code example platformer controls and movement, but there is infinite possibilities to draw that character. I'm not saying that coding need less talent than art in general, but if you make basic game you don't need extraordinary coding talents, just that one talent mentioned above.