Unrealistic ambitions

Why do so many people seem to have unrealistic ambitions in the collaborations forum? I've been wading through "I wanna make bigga dan skyrim rpg 3D wiht NEX GEN " and "lets mak free mmo", amongst the "i wanna mak zombi ROBOT NINJA survival gam " and "i hav no x-perience pleez mak gam 4 miii "

Does anyone actually realize anything bigger than Pong is probably an unrealistic idea for a team that doesn't know each other and lacks the experience?

 

Because people are idiots.

 

I have never entered the Collab forums before. Now I know not to.

 

How did you find a good team then, kittik? If you're on one.

 

No they're not idiots, they are just inexperienced and don't realize what's involved.

 

Nothing wrong with crazy ambition, it's better than most people that have no ambition or goal in their life. Yes they will probably fail, but it's a learning experience and will make you a better person / programmer. Fail a few years making your first noob "MMORPG" and who knows the second one you make might actually work! They can be as noob as they want...just do proper research, be intelligent and use your resources properly and anyone can attempt to make one.

 

Many of them are young. It is so easy to forget what you were like back then, isn't it? I remember walking with a friend at 19 in a beautiful rose garden and talking of how we were were going to change the world. I look back and smile at how naive we were. Not that one can't change the world, but we usually do it in the little ways that still make an impact but certainly are not as "ambitious" as the plans we had when we were young.

Now that we are older and wiser, it is best to allow the younger generations to dream big because sooner or later, that real job, bills, mortgage and all that jazz will come around. Funny thing, when you are young, you can dream and even try to create all sorts of those ambitious projects and if you fail, you won't fall too hard. And the stuff you learn when you fail, like many of us did in our lives, will be very useful as you grow older and wiser.

Of course, I do wonder if those who are truly bothered by the ambition of the young and inexperienced are not yet at the older and wiser stage. At that point, you can smile and not be bothered....because you know that person will grow and learn and be wiser some day.

 

youth and... the blaze of WYSISYG editors + asset store...

 

Simple answer? "Dunning–Kruger effect"

 

@imaginaryhuman, @Teila and @Socrates pretty much nailed it. It's a mix of of various factors:

• Overestimating their own abilities
• Underestimating the scale of a project
  
• Lack of experience
• Being young (and naïve)

Probably even more.

However, @Azmar has made a very important point: It's better to have great ambitions and fail, than to not even try. The thing is that, unless your livelihood depends on it, there's no way tying can be a waste of time.
The process of creating a game itself is practice. Not only will you gain general experience and knowledge that will help you gage the amount of work future projects will require better, but you'll also improve the individual skills and might even learn new ones.

 

I really wish some of the more experienced folks would realize this. The negativity that is directed toward some newcomers is really sad and that, in my opinion, is a waste of time. Not that I think anyone will listen to me..maybe it takes having an adult child to figure it all out.

 

yes sad it is really.
but having been newbie myself , i'm grateful to those who warned me and gave me advise, this saved me lots of waste of time and frustration.
listening to advices doesn't make you waste your time, it does make you want to learn more
a good advise does not to crush dreams, it make you sort what is good in your dream and what is not so..imo

(but sadly you, sometimes, have to hear that creating a mmorpg from scratch with quite no xp is a no)

 

[QUOTE="antislash, post: 2277587, member: 825917"
a good advise does not to crush dreams, it make you sort what is good in your dream and what is not so..imo

(but sadly you, sometimes, have to hear that creating a mmorpg from scratch with quite no xp is a no)[/QUOTE]

Good advice is great. But calling people "idiot" and other such things is not good advice. And when the person continues to want to do an MMO even after he is warned how difficult it is? Then they tend to continue. Leave the kid alone and let him fail. That is how he learns.

Again, I find it so odd that some folks just can't do that.

 

It is easy to underestimate the work required to make a polished game if you are new to making games in my personal experience.

I think I first got involved in Unity back in 2009 and after playing with some sample scenes and assets it seemed fairly straightforward to build a MMORPG as I already felt confident in my networking abilities and here was Unity that let me slap wall prefabs and all the rest of my world and levels together super fast in the editor.

It is not until you really dig into the 3D aspect that you start to realize there are entire professions of people who just do modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, etc. that the scope hits you as to what is needed for a full game with nice assets.

It is a noob thing to think your first game project can be an MMO, but that is OK as long as you learn and move on afterwards to realistic projects. I am very close to releasing my 2nd game since then and the massive braindump I engaged in over the last few years had to start with that initial MMO project that got me interested in developing games in the first place.

 

I think it's kind of fun and cute they have those ambitions. I only wish they had friends in their own neighborhoods that had similar interests. They could really have a lot of fun.

 

I've given up on telling people they can't make an MMO. Nobody listens anyway. Those who would listen already figured it out from google.

Instead I'm encouraging people to try the hardest aspect and fail fast. That way they can move on.

 

How do they know it's unrealistic until they try it? Some can't, some can, some will just dream about it..

Let's take a turn, I hope they can do it.. It might take them 5 years to get to a position where it could be even a glimmer of a chance, but who knows? Thing is, for some games like large RPG's and MMO(inset prefix here).. Then the real answer is come back in 1 - 3 years and you tell me if you can make (insert awesome game here).

Some stuff I've seen coming about gives me real hope for the Indie community, so improbable sure. Unrealistic maybe not so much..

 

Youth, & the realisation that the young can't change the world but might be able to create one

 

@tedthebug that is quite poetic.

 

I keep going in waves, where at times I try to be encouraging, and at other times I just shake my head in disbelief. Got my own demons to battle, I know, and sometimes I take those battles to the forum, which is something I'm trying to work on.

I would never discourage anyone from trying to create something way bigger than possible. That is what people need to do, to learn. What I try to discourage is the idea that taking three days to learn Unity and then putting your clone games up on the market is a good thing. That is the wrong way to go about it, and I find myself getting more and more frustrated that people think it's the answer. I would much rather see people trying to make an insane MMO as their first game than cloning a mobile game in two days and wondering why they aren't successful.

 

Couldn't agree more.

Better a ambitious goal than no goal at all.
I was in the "start small and forget your huge game ideas" camp for years.
But I changed my mind, because you have people here in this forum who work on some fantastic games for 4 years and more. And some of my clients have been working on single games for years too. You simply shouldn't give up too easy and push yourself to the limits.

Of course starting small might be a good advice. But you probably learn a lot more when starting big and over ambitious, than with a boring pong clone (is this still a thing?)

 

Either works but you need to be really driven to start on your big game & continue with no visible product for years. I subscribe to the start small & add as you have a finished product you can show people instead of bits & pieces that will one day form a coherent whole. Each win gives you a base to progress from, increment in towards the end.

 

I picked up Unity in 2013, back then I tried following people's advice to start small. I made a space invader clone, it had one level with 3 waves of enemies. Then I got bored and tried to make a tower defense game, again I got bored very quickly and abandoned the project.

The reason I did abandon those project was because they weren't games I actually wanted to make. As far as I can remember my favorite genre has always been the city management games (SimCity, Caesar 3, Black & White, Populous). I found a tutorial online on how to make procedural mesh roads (they're actually procedural quads). So I started from there and then I started making an AI. I had a capsule which was my villager, a green box which was a food source, a blue box which was a home and a yellow box which was a "workplace".

Remember, back then I had no idea what polymorphism or inheritance was. I didn't know what OOP meant nor did I know about data structures such as Dictionary or Heap. The very first few iterations of the game were not only awful to look at but they were so badly coded that even an overclocked i7 would be grinded into submission.

But I kept reading and learning. Reading every day on the forums, on stack overflow, etc and refining the game as I was building it. I also started learning Blender, watching tutorials on youtube at half the speed. Started learning photoshop and my modeling skills have started improving as well.

All in all it's been two years about 1-2 days a week. Now looking back on it there are a few reasons why I'm "succesful" (as in I didn't quit yet) in this endeavor:

• I'm not waiting on the game to be finished to pay my bills. I have a day job that provides for me.
• I'm only working on the game on my days off, I don't know if I'd have this kind of resilience if I was working on it full time.
• I really really really enjoy working on this project. Overcoming an issue or implementing something new is really one of the best feelings in the world.
• Google exists.

For all you overly ambitious noobs out there (btw I still consider myself a noob): Don't let people discourage you. You want to make an MMO? Go ahead! Just remember it might take a long time, it might be very upsetting at times, but unless you need to sell a game in order to eat it's not wasted time. The only thing is if you don't know how to access a variable from another script, you might not be ready.

It's important to take things in steps, don't bite more than you can chew and just keep at it. You'll get there eventually.

 

My mix of of various factors:

• Overestimating my own abilities; Yet not afraid to truly dig in and accomplish as much as possible, even if to no avail..
• Underestimating the scale of a project; There may be some things that I may have overlooked, but it doesn't mean that I let it discourage me. I simply bring in some extra muscle to help truly grasp the broader picture and help me achieve it.
• Lack of experience with unity; Haha, yeah you bet! But hey everyone has to start off somewhere no? Besides I'm a pretty quick learner + I'm not a noob when it comes to programming languages their all pretty straight forward usually..
• Being young (and naïve); Being 21 yeah most likely, but this just makes my ambitions that much more duable! Because let's face it, I've got nothing but time!

If anyone want's know about the book I am writing or about the game based off of the book I am writing. Then please let me know, so you can feel free to leave your opinions on the matter for me.

 

We all do this all the time with anything we aren't experienced with but think we might want to do. Musical instruments, sports, money, careers, all of it.

Everyone wants to play "The Tropper" on the guitar, but first they need to learn a couple chords, rhythm and be able to switch between them.

 

I have to say in favor of the newbies who may not know what the heck they are doing or what's involved.... that at least many of them have a major drive and enthusiasm to create and actually end up finishing a whole bunch of games, even if they are not very good, which is more than can be said for a great many more seasoned developers including myself.

 

Not knowing is part of the fun, once you understand you have X to do and understand how long it'll take you. Motivation seems to drop like a brick in water.

 

I am loving this thread! I am glad that some of you realize that taking on more than you can chew is not always a bad thing. Years ago, on a whim I decided to apply for a job as a writer on an Indie game, before they were called Indie. I had never written professionally, but I have always enjoyed writing. I was given a test, they liked what I wrote and I got the job. I eventually became Lead Writer, overseeing a team of writers.

My background was science and I worked as a geologist for years. But I threw myself into something new and exciting and I succeeded. I didn't become rich or famous, but I helped to create some great lore.

And trust me, this was very much unlike me. I am not one to usually jump into something I am not sure I can do, at least I wasn't in the past. Now I am doing 3d art and making levels for a game and having a blast. Our game is rather ambitious as well and while we do have some experience behind us, I can't imagine making any other game. Whether we fail or succeed in the end, at least we will have finished something.

Success is really in the eye of beholder. For me, it was learning new stuff and doing it well enough to be noticed and complimented. For some, it might be making money. For others, it may just be finishing a project.

Glad we are gradually beginning to realize the value of "doing" and "learning" rather than just measuring the success of these new, sometimes young, enthusiastic game developers by how much money they will make or whether they will hit Greenlight on Steam.

That depends on the persona, @ShadowK. Some folks are motivated by problem solving. Others are overwhelmed. Most of are overwhelmed at first but once we start breaking it down, testing our own solutions to the problem, we become motivated to solve the issue. Experience determines how long it takes you to get past the overwhelmed part.

 

I don't like the mentality of the Unity forums that push every new person or anyone to remake pong and simple games, before they can make any real games. As you said, people will get quickly bored on making pong and wonder why they are even here in the first place and lose all their motivation. People will especially lose their motivation when majority of the people on the forums tell them they will fail, I also don't understand this part. Just because the experienced developers couldn't do it doesn't mean everyone else can't either!

Everyone has different skills, I noticed some people can write amazing code in half the time of experienced coders, or maybe people coming here have 8 years of C/C++ experience and they really just don't know C# or Unity. In my case I have a huge ambition and 8 years of programming experience, just zero experience in Unity. The first line of code I wrote and my only project is my crazy ambitious project still to this day, and yes I had NO CLUE how to access another script but that took me 5min of research till I got beyond that hurdle. Still to this day I only spend maybe 5-10min on research to get me beyond any hurdle I come across ( I am still Unity noob that will continue to ask noob questions).

 

This reminds me of a free photo contest I entered this past July (not one of those paid contests). I have a 5 MP point & shoot camera from 2006. It was expensive then but even though I check the new cameras today (a6000 ) I can't seem to save up for a new one yet. My 10 year old camera is so lacking compared to what the other hobby photographers use I almost didn't enter. But I did as much because it gave be an excuse to hike to a place I had wanted to for 2 or 3 years now. And I somehow took a picture from the 3 contestants were allowed to enter that is now a finalist in the contest. I find out where I placed at a meet tomorrow where I was invited. And that meeting place is at another place I have wanted to hike for a while now but have failed to visit yet too. The winner, whoever that winds up being, doesn't get a thing but having the winning picture entered in the contest. Myself after I visit and hike the other place I will consider that what I wanted to accomplish although I used the contest to motivate me.

So sometimes there are people that never seem to get anything done or do anything because they always need to do something else to get their environment right or they think they must have the most powerful and latest equipment with which to try. All they real need is to be motivated to enjoy their hobby for the hobby's own sake.

 

When it comes to coding you either can or you can't. I've noticed fast coders make mistakes much more readily than slow coders. And let's be real - fast coders need to stop working 12 - 16 hours days - I've never seen a good coder that was actually substantially faster, they just work more hours. And their eagerness to produce code usually leads to suboptimal designs based on copying rote from their past experience.

A guy & I make remade pong years ago. Didn't release it, but I still laugh when I see those pong characters playing. Taking pong and doing an original take on it is not insulting or boring.

 

New developers can feel free to dream as big as they want as long as they realize they need to build a bunch of small projects to learn the skills to build the larger projects.

 

That is not always true. A large project, broken into parts, can be just as much a learning experience.

 

OMG, PEOPLE GET BORED MAKING SOMETHING THAT TAKES NO EFFORT?!

 

Everyone reacts differently, but I'm talking in response to experienced people.. If you're still getting overwhelmed you've still got a lot of learning to do.

Let's face it a lot of parts in games are monotonous, repetitive and boring. When you've done it 10,000 times, it's hard to stay motivated.. I don't see problems any more, I see more of the same over and over again..

I'd like it to still be a "problem" to solve, at least that's interesting.

 

true.... often creating concepts is exiting but working on make them is another thing... long, sometimes boring...
and that's that precise part that may miss some newcommers..... do just one finished polished model, then we talk...

 

Every journey is different. I hope, that by sharing my own stories, while avoiding words like, "Should", that I can help young devs as they travel. I've learned that by sharing what I did, from my own perspective, I am rarely wrong. Of course, your mileage may vary .

Gigi

 

There are different ways to look at this.

First is everything takes some effort. If an experienced developer sets out to make a plain ole ball and paddle game with the bare minimum possible it would be quite easy for them. For a beginner the same project may be very challenging. They need to learn about input, velocities, collisions, stat displays, game states (assuming they have a Title Screen, Gameplay, Game Won, Game Lost) and saving & loading data (possibly even some basic net programming) if they add a high score screen.

These kind of projects can scale with your experience. An experienced person can try to make THE ball & paddle game to beat all other ball & paddle games. That will make the scope a whole lot bigger.

Finally, on the other hand, yeah experienced people may well get bored making a very basic game because it is all "old hat" to them. No challenges to sort out. Like @ShadowK mentioned when you need to exercise your problem solving skills for some people that makes things interesting.

That all being said I agree if a newbie has a passion for games and their development and wants to make a MMORPG then do it. This stuff should be fun something done for enjoyment not a chore you dread.

 

Reality is a great ambition catalyst, either to let you know you can push yourself more, or to smack you down.
But it's all g00d.

Small realistic games that you CAN finish, will allow you to learn to macro-manage an ENTIRE game, from the game design as a whole, and have all the big parts work together.

Dealing with a big project, more than you can chew, trains your to deal with higher complexity, even if it means you hit your skills' limit, then at least you know what's your limit.

 

So wait, the idea is now to tell noobs to tackle MMOs and open world, procedural generate RPGs? I don't really buy it, but if people really think doing impossible projects is the way to learn I can suggest it.

 

I think the point is people are going to try to make the game they want to make, they come to the forums for help. Help them or not, but it is doubtful that telling them to go make something simple does anything other than train them not to post on these forums again.

 

If its not fun then why work on it? ( creating ping pong games, mario games etc).
I personally started my own road to game developing by creating a first person shooter little game ( basic mechanics , no fancy graphics).
Years have passed ( kept learning more and more) and here I am working on a first person shooter, slowly building it, but I enjoy it, because its what I like tto work on, its my dream to fully finish a first person shooter. It might take years and years of work, but I will not abandon this game type.

 

What kind of work? What are you really producing for all this work? Is this some boondoggle project?

Those who want advice will have already sought it... and there is much to find. Presumably, therefore, you would have better luck talking to the proverbial brick wall than keep doing what we've been doing and saying what we've been saying... start small, work up, etc.

I think the real question in my mind at this stage is why does it bug people so much when people have unrealistic expectations?

Maybe people shouldn't start small. Have them start big and then never finish. That way the app store congestion will be alleviated to a degree.

Start a trend in social media that tiny little games are for novices, that they are embarrassing and uncool... encourage people to aim high. Sky's the limit.

Similar somesuch nonsense, etc.

 

That comment triggered off a set of insights for me. I'm more of an engineering type. I get more excited and motivated by the process and challenges of building a game then the thought of having an awesome game.

If the fun is in having an awesome game, then scoping big is valid. But if the fun is in building a game, then a small scope is just as motivating as a big scope.

 

I don't know, how about that Legend of Zelda 64? That was a lot more compelling than Angry Birds.

 

To me the interest is in finding an interesting mechanic & then trying to find out if I can make a fun game around it without the need for other flash bang stuff to keep it interesting. Probably why I am aiming small at this stage.
I do have concepts/mechanics for much much bigger games but given my very rudimentary coding abilities I won't even start to try & code a prototype for a pitch for a few years at least. But... I am documenting it with sketches & base stats so if I can find someone willing & able to work with me then maybe it will get off the ground earlier than I could do it on my own.

The bit that bugs me though is not that they want to start big, it's the fact that when people suggest starting small so they can learn to code they don't want to do it but they then abuse people in the forums when no one will give them whole code to do everything they want (they get told what to look for or where their error is so they can go & work it out for themselves). I spent a while trying to help someone with answers that even I could work out, they posted lots of different script issues that other people eventually gave them whole scripts for & then 4 days after starting haranguing people for the scripts they posted that they had just put their first game up on the App Store.

It's fine for people to complain about all the dross in the App Store but to a degree, as was suggested above, are people like me, by encouraging others to start simple so they can learn, just making that issue worse? Should we be driving home the whole fail fast, fail often dogma in the hope that it applies a filter or is that just becoming elitist & defeating the purpose of all the free game engines that are out there encouraging kids to learn maths, science & programming etc?

 

No.

The idea is to encourage people to do what they want to do rather than constantly trying to parent every newcomer that comes to the forums. It is fine to let them know that an MMO or any other ambitious project is going to take a lot of work. But telling them it is "impossible" is really not necessary.

 

If you look at the finished product sure.

If you look at building the individual systems, not so much. The physics system for Angry Birds appears to be more involved then the system for Zelda. (Don't crucify me on this one, I'm not intimately familiar with either game, but you get the idea).

My own game Pond Wars is incredibly simple at the game level. But building the wave physics was incredibly engaging and fun. The engagement from building that sort of system can be independent of the complexity of game its finally installed in.

 

Then folks need to stop giving out code. Helping is one thing but handing out scripts teaches nothing. That is the fault of experienced people that know better. You are projecting your frustration onto the newcomers who probably do not know the process.

Ignore them, that is what I do.

 

Of course it is , J/K.. No, I just don't see the point in a pong style game if that's not what you want to do, I've never done a 2D game, a massive portion of game devs I've talked to over the years never touch 2D or ever will.. So if it's 3D you want to do, then start there..!

I'd say some of the Unity demo's are right to start with, like the stealth one or that other game thingy they did. Great way to learn.. Let's face it only beginners ask can I do an MMO or RPG, anyone with a years experience messing with art and coding will realise quickly what they need to do and / or improve.

Once you have experience, it's not hard to make ("insert game here") it's time consuming, VERY time consuming and repetitive. Let's for arguments sake you're at least ok in all areas and you're looking to make something big eventually it all becomes a battle of will.