Worse things about game development?

So I thought this would be an interesting topic. What do you hate when it comes to developing games? I hate it when you're working with people, and they want to quit so they decide that they'll never answer your emails and drop all means of communication with you. I'd rather just be told then ignored.

 

I hate it when the boss does that. I'm like, "This is your game!!! Where are you? I need feedback!!"

I also, hate trying to freelance my game programming skills, the other guy is a complete and utter noob to game design... I want to scream, "Buy a book about this. Get "Level up!" game design book. Go to a local book store and just read it there!! Then come back and ask for help." Some don't even know to do a GDD, not on the Unity forums, of course!!

I dislike the menial stuff, like coding start screens, I like more gameplay mechanics.

 

When I find a tiny, insignificant bug and trying to fix it only makes things worse!

I also hate it when the person I am working with ignores me. Since I work with my wife, that makes things awkward.

 

Exactly. I'm the boss on my current one, but I make sure to reply as soon as I see a new email/PM.

 

Your wife is a developer? Wow, that must be the perfect life.

 

Just coming up with an idea has got to be the worst part! Roughly 10 months ago I graduated high-school with the intent of developing games. Almost 10 - 15 failed projects later I still haven't been able to think of a cool idea that keep my interest and provide entertainment for the player. Almost every point has been touched in the game industry which makes it impossible to come up with something new. It takes timing too.

You might have a brilliant idea but that doesn't mean people will want that right then and there. Its' like with minecraft. In 2009 many people wanted a true survival type game. Notch was just lucky to have his game in development at that time.If minecraft was released now, I bet it would be half as popular. Gaming is in a stand still. No new ideas and hardly any new hardware. My belief is that simulators will become the next big hit.

 

I would like to be a boss on one of my games, but I want to make sure I can devote a portion of my time to others before I do so. SEE, that's how much I care!!!! LOL.

 

eh, you're trying too hard, man... for get about making the money for now, and make what you love. I have about 10 games in dev that I started and stopped once I got the code finalized. All I need now is a team of artists and sound guys, and they're done. I have GDDs for almost all of them. Just relax and make something you like to play!!

 

WHAT? I have about 10 million ideas in my head (literally) that I would love to see as a game. I'm making a simulator DDDD.

 

I hate how one simple piece of code doesn't seem to work and, instead of trying to fix it, I stare at it for an hour explaining to my computer that it SHOULD work... and its usually solved with 3 keystrokes.

Time wasted.
I feel stupid.

 

I guess your right. I just have this "bug" or something implanted in my mind telling me that I just need to make something original.

"quit reinventing the wheel!".

 

Lol, I've had an experience where I was working on a script, I sat for literally 45 minutes trying to figure out the problem, and it didn't work because there weren't quotation marks in the right place.

 

If you need ideas, PM me, I have millions. Be specific with the genre, I can help, and even write you a GDD.

 

After a while, I'll go to sleep, and then wake up next morning with the answer. *click, click, click*, it works.... and I go, "Son of a...!"

 

Another thing, is when someone wants me to add a new feature off the top of their head, and are mad when it's not done in a minute. And it makes me angrier when they decide they don't want it. I just wanna kick 'em in the face.

 

Happens to me all the time

 

She's the creative team.

 

Awesome!

 

I hate it when you look for days for a solution and when you find the person with the answer you somehow know the answer before they say it. very weird but always happens to me.

 

Is she a gamer? When you get in fights, you must be like "You can't ignore me, this is our income!" lol. Prion, that happens to me, too, and not just in gaming.

 

This. I cannot count how many times I have done this...and it's always so simple! I don't even get the satisfaction of coming up with a complex answer for the problem. Instead, the answer is insanely easy and obvious, and I just spend forever on it. WHY?! Ah well, part of the job description I guess...

 

Another thing I hate is when I try to make a game for a friend and then when I'm done, he says the graphics aren't good, like I'm a AAA company -_-.

 

That feeling of dread that you have on the day you start your new project, knowing it's going to be at least 18 months of brain-melting work before you finish it.

Soon goes away though... just gotta take the plunge.

 

You have to just chop it into smaller jobs, don't worry about the size of it, just work with your immediate tasks, learn to tunnel vision it.

 

Trust me, that's a lesson I've learnt

I think that's what stops a lot of people from completing their projects - they can't stop staring at the big picture. You have to be aware of the big picture, but always focused just on what you're trying to do RIGHT NOW - the top 2 or 3 things on your list. You just have to trust that the list is going to get smaller and smaller on its own.

 

I'm actually the opposite. I'm originally aware of the big picture, but then I jump into the basics, adding on some of the cool features as I go. Its not until months later that I look at the project and think, "holy hell, if I had predicted the size of this pile of code, there is no way I would have started this".

 

What I hate: A long day of coding and nothing obvious on the screen has changed.

This may mean that there's more long days of coding and testing to come, or whatever it is I'm working on just isn't visible on the front end, but no matter how much I know intellectually that it was work that needed to be done, some part of me goes into player mode and thinks, "It doesn't look any different."

Had the same problem writing non-game code. Yeah, its more accurate or runs faster, but that's just intellect arguing with gamer visual impression again.

 

lol, true. Something else: Spending a long time modeling something, then realizing that it won't fit into your game XD.

 

Precisely.
(at least for me)

Anyway there are a lot of things that we could end hating in game development. This shouldn't be thought about
Just walk on the thin line, without looking down.

 

Working long and hard on something that sounds great on paper, but is actually terrible once it's implemented. Even if it's something small It drives me insane to drop something that I've worked on.

 

like what?! it seems most of my ideas work when I code it in. Is it that it wouldn't be a fun game?

 

I really hate that moment where I realize I have the skill to finish my project. Once I realize that it isn't fun anymore and I eventually stop working on it.

 

I hate when a add in a new feature or even a few lines of code and something completely unrelated just stops working. I also hate bugs with a passion.

 

Well, for me, is the lack of motivation and sometimes paying way too much attention to detail... Like I've been building a suit of armour for many weeks and now it is finally complete... but yeah, when u want something nice and detailed and u gotta cut it down a bit...

 

Fraud.

- Person claims that he is expert modeller, but then gives bait switch, gives us DexSoft models instead.

- Person claims that he is expert 2d artist, but his portfolio is full of other people's works.

- Person claims that he is expert website designer, but has no website himself and cannot design any website.

- Call that person's phone number, it's disconnected. Get someone to go his house, knock on his door, nobody lives there.

 

Continuing the tangent discussion going on about finishing things... There's a perk involved: once you get nearer to the end, excitement tends to rise again, but you have to be pretty close. It's exactly like the shawshank redemption.

 

When something works, then it just stops working for no known reason.

 

This. 100% THIS...

 

A faster solution is to simply turn of the monitor for 2 minutes or take a break .

 

I hate that my game is always ugly in my mind, because no matter how hard I fight it I always come to the fact that it doesn't like like an AAA title. That however is completely unrealistic as AAA titles have full 15+ person teams and dedicated professional arts.. me.. I'm just buying stuff off the asset store, lol.

For those with motivation issues.. I suggest investing into your project.. for example I'm about to buy Unity Pro and for me it'll be extremely hard to turn my back on the fact that I just spent $1,500. Add in all the assets I have and will be purchasing I am easily pushing $2,000. That's a big investment and good enough motivation for me to release at least 1 commercial game to earn it back. I also try to take a lot of breaks. I'll work for 1-3 hours then take a 30min-1hr break then come back to it. That gives me a good "refresh" of the mind and re-interest in the project. This however isn't my source of income (professional web developer) so my advise may not help those who are doing this as main source of income, lol.

 

The fact that games are not stable enough to really live off of .

Yeah you can intern and jump from company to company, but once you hit your mid 20's thats really , really REALLY lame

 

The most painful part for me is...waiting for the day I'll actually have something ready to show others.
The second most painful part: Trying to figure things out in Blender, Zbrush, and knowing if I could just have 30 minutes to an hour with an artist who has been there, on skype or whatever, I could save myself DAYS of searching the net. I probably should have just gone to collaboration and offered to pay someone.

 

For me, it's when an artist has a beautiful portfolio, but then everything the artist do to your game s*cks. It happened just once, but it was a pain to politely get rid of him... I wouldn't ignore him, and I also didn't want to be rude.

 

*Most Painful for me is being an Indie Game Designer (with little to no programming skills) and a small budget, having to hire out for help to complete the programming of your game. I believe that if someone is serious about their game idea they will invest the money needed to make it happen, and I have done it and continue to do it... but at some point I will run out of money to pay others to do what I can't do... so thus I started this thread about Unity Community Contributing to a Possible OpenSource Game Template/Project that everyone can use to help build their commercial games. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/168955-Unity-OpenSource-Game-Template-Project

 

Spending 3 hours struggling on a problem that really only needed 2 lines of code.

Other than that, level creation. I like DESIGNING levels, but I hate actually snapping all the prefabs together, placing props, readjusting, placing lights, adding particles effects, making the AI map, then waiting for about 3 hours for the lightmaps to bake. Still, it's worth it!

 

I used to hate that too, so I started writing various things to automate a lot of that process for me. For a couple hours of effort I managed to set up a system that saves me dozens of hours of effort.

 

I hate when I bake a light map and it takes ages and then I dislike a part of the scene -.- and have to redo it.

 

What can really mess up my day is trying to mix javascript and C# and COMPILING ORDER. It's very tricky to organize them so they compile correctly. sometimes I'm left with reconstructing scripts in C# because they need to be accessed by a C# script. But then THAT script also needs to access another script witch is in javascript, so another script needs to be rewritten in C#. Its a domino effect.

Also, while trying to move scripts around to the different folders attempting to get compilation to work, the prefabs in the project start to loose reference to the scripts, which I just found out today. Its horrible what it can do to a project. I've lost a whole day's work today to frustration and stress.

 

The bill comes for ordering licenses. 5 digit figure to pay -.-

End of month, have to pay wages.

Check work at end of day. Sometimes have to re-write, re-do the thing next morning.

 

this. I have sometimes just erased a block of code, only to rewrite it exactly how it was before (at least to my knowledge) only to have it work...