Managing Game Dev As Side Project/Hobby

Hi guys,

I am working on and off on a game and struggling to keep consistent progress. I have a 40Hr/week job and I also have anxiety. Some days/weeks are worse than others and slows down my progress to a crawl.

I am curious if you guys have any tips and what you do to help in similar situations?

Thanks.

 

Hi,

On the one hand, remember that it's a hobby. If you're not feeling it one day, skip it. Don't force yourself to do something that you'll feel resentful about.

On the other hand, consistency when you are feeling it is important. It's what builds up the habit and enthusiasm for the project. Set a time limit and stop when the time's up. This helps prevent burnout and keeps you eager to pick up the project the next day.

And post to the work in progress forum section, or screenshot Saturday, or Feedback Friday in the Game Design section, or any place where you can get supportive feedback. Knowing that other people think your project is interesting does a lot to ease anxiety about it.

 

I agree with @TonyLi. I'm in your shoes, full-time job, have 4 kids (age 6-16) and one on the way, so time is precious. Some days I just don't feel it and take a break, but continuing at a steady pace forms a good project work habit.

I need to take his advice and post in the work in progress or something for extra encouragement, but I'm really OCD and it's hard knowing it's not perfect.

When I feel in a rut about my project I try to work on something small to feel like I've accomplished something.

Hang in there!

 

Thanks guys, all good points. Trying to hang in there haha.

 

I like making a list of all of the different things that need to be done. That way, if I'm board or stuck with one thing, I can look at the list and find something else to do. This type of list is most effective when you can break it down into small pieces- things that can be done in a single day, or even a few hours. It's encouraging to cross items off of the list when you finish them too.

In between serious things, I occasionally like to go and do some frivolous things that are less-important but keep my interest up. These are things like going to Google Fonts and choosing the perfect font for my game's style, or finding images for my "inspiration" folder, or finding the perfect free skybox texture for a particular scene, or writing music for the game.

 

I keep a rough routine. I work on my game every day during my lunch break, and in the evenings when time is available. I put in work on the weekend when the baby sleeps. Been keeping pretty steady progress.

When I complete some major addition successfully, I'll skip a couple days while I consider my next steps. Often that is just me playing the game thinking about it.

 

Do you know what a Kanban board is? I recommend starting there. Also, using something like Agile Scrum with short "sprints" where you plan to meet some achievable goals. Breaking stuff down into bite-sized chunks is helpful, and means it's easier to pick the next task to do. Also, having "sprint meetings" (even if they're just with yourself) where you plan the next set of little tasks means you're splitting the planning work out from the implementation work, which means you can be more focused when you sit down to do a task.

All of that aside... as others have said, if it's a hobby then don't get upset about missing arbitrary deadlines or productivity goals. Do you get upset at yourself if playing through a video game takes longer than you thought? Of course not! You just play it for fun and it's done when it's done. Same applies here. Don't hold yourself to professional standards unless you're trying to do it professionally.

 

Hobbyist myself. I highly encourage people to treat it as an actual hobby, not as a side business.

Sidenote: Do these forums have a table feature? That alignment is horrible.

Code (CSharp):

1. Business                     Hobby
2. Expect to make money         Expect to spend money
3. Need to work                 Work when its interesting or fun
4. Finish projects              Have dozens of interesting incomplete projects on the go
5. Grind through boring bits    Skip doing the boring bits
6. Work on salable projects     Work on whatever you feel like
7. Is a priority                Competes with Netflix and video gaming time

This means there are some weeks where I'm on fire and spend all weekend and hours each night working on game development. It also means I have months go by where my focus is exclusively on completing an Factorio play through. Or binge watching Netflix. Some months I spend more time talking about game development than actually doing game development.

You aren't going to make it rich off of doing game dev on the side. You also aren't going to make the next mine craft or world of warcraft. At best you will come up with something small you can show off to a few mates when the occasion arises. So just ride with it.

Edit: It also appears to destroy excess spaces! Boooooo

Edit2: Code appears to fix it. Still looks ugly.

 

BBCode for generating tables doesn't appear to be enabled/supported.

[TABLE][TR][TD]This is a standard cell in a table.[/TD][/TR][/TABLE]

Since that's out of the picture you could just set the font family to Courier New (a fixed font).

 

That's me 100%.

 

Thanks all, helping seeing how you guys put things in perspective.

When I'm in a "down" or rut, I tend to binge horror movies. Not all lost as my game is a horror game so I take notes for ideas and atmosphere. Also while at work I can work on some low poly stuff and take a lot of references and work on story and stuff like that. It's more the in engine things I tend to not get as much time to squeeze in. I want to get a laptop to be able to do more intensive work whenever possible.

 

I'm about 80% through a game that's been taking me about 3 years to build. I often go long stretches where nothing gets done, quick bursts of huge developments, and a steady trickle of progress. I actually find that it helps because while I'm working on one thing, I often neglect other things, so I may actually not even play my game for a month, which means I lose my muscle memory and have to play it again like a new player. This has helped me fine tune the quality of life parameters and make my controls as perfect as possible.