9 Reasons Indie Game Devs FAIL at making games (and how NOT to let them end your Game Dev Journey)
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- Any game developers who are trying to bring their dream game to life (or really anyone that wants to make their dream of creating indie games a reality) have a lot going against them. There are a lot of ways that indie game devs fail and in this video I talk about the 9 most common reasons that they might end up giving up on their dreams.
For my own games, I primarily use Unity and Blender 3D but no matter what software you use to make games. this video will be useful for YOU!
I usually make indie game Devlog content or videos meant to help inspire other game developers to succeed, so LIKE and SUBSCRIBE for more content like this!
To watch my 'HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED AS AN INDIE GAME DEV" Video- Click here: • How to Stay MOTIVATED ...
Or to join my Discord- Click here: / discord - Hry
This is some of the greatest motivation. Yes, I agree I will repeat to myself and others whom endeavor to make games: You're not an "aspiring game dev". You ARE a game dev!!!
So the big problem I see with the first point is this exact description. I agree, everyone makes a huge game at first, but not in the way it’s described here. No one does that (well I guess you did but man, what a bad idea haha). Most people are super reasonable about their idea. But they don’t realize the scope. Simple turn based RPG. Easy. Until you think about all the ui and integrated systems. The problem is it is so hard to break your project into all the smallest parts until you have experience doing that. It isn’t that they are trying to make something huge, it’s that they arent considering every single factor of their project into the scope in their head
I am so glad I clicked on this video. I just started game dev and I am struggling so hard. I'm just making simple clones of arcade games and I was about to give up and just move on to another game... but you're so right. If I just skip around, I'm never going to learn the hard stuff that I'm avoiding.
I'm so glad it helped! And good luck on your journey!
Good video. Your comment about the "honey moon" phase is true. I've seen a lot of people start projects with a lot of motivation and energy and then slowly the enthusiasm wears off and they stop work on their project. IMO that's because the early phase of the project involves fun stuff like coming up with ideas and making cool concept art. But once things gets serious and it's time to solve problems and actually make the game, it becomes laborious and everything feels like work. So they lose interest and drop the project and start a fresh new project. I worked on my game found around 2-3 years and I too felt tired and was tempted to start afresh. But I pressed on until I finished my game.
I noticed if your a person that does art, like make things in Blender, a lot of coders assume when deciding to make something, that I have the same skill set as them, and they keep saying making things or model is to hard and say just download assets.
For full-time gamedevs, the struggle for sustainable development is the only reason they compare themselves to one another.
i just recently started trying to break out of my own self-isolation. i have many years of experience under my belt with game dev itself, but i haven’t been as focused on the community side of it. some things i’ve started trying are: subscribing/following other devs (whose content i enjoy) with a slightly bigger audience that me, creating a discord server, uploading demo reels/prototype recordings on youtube, and researching other ways devs are getting their name out there.
I'm pretty sure it's easier to fail than to succeed at just about anything. Good vid
True! And thanks!
I’m glad you mentioned coworkers. I want to start a game studio with a buddy of mine but I’m worried we might butt heads and have different ideas. He has also never made a game before while I have made almost an entire game from scratch that I’ll be releasing soon. We are both busy but it’s tough relying on other people when I feel in the back of my head that I can do it alone and I feel like I’d be the most driven out of everyone I’d work with.
11:20 As someone who went to (--a rather crappy..) school on game dev, the harsh reality is that you still need to go down the tutorial rabbit-hole because there's SO MUCH that you don't know, and school did NOT and does not cover all you need to know to make a game.
Did going to a game dev education give me a leg-up? absolutely, and during that time I worked with some of my fellow students and we made couple of small games, a few of which could possibly be put on public marketplaces.. but do I still need to look up lots of tutorials explaining stuff I do not know? absolutely. Game dev is a continuous learning experience. You never stop learning how to develop better games.
This is great to know! I know a couple people that went to school for it and still never ended up making games, so I figured it probably wasn't as cut and dry as they make it seem
Man, I struggle with project jumping. I get into a part I don't know how to do, then I'll start on a new project. I know I'm good enough, it's just hard sometimes, and I feel like I could go somewhere if I were to try and get better at every aspect of game development. I mean, I suck at art, and sometimes you have to find ways to get around your inabilities, and sometimes that is the hardest thing to do. I liked this video. It shows that, maybe if I try really hard, I'll find my way, and I'll actually finish a project, even if it isn't the best. Thank you.
Dude, you’re awesome!! Thank you for the encouragement and inspiration.
This is exactly what we need to hear! Thank you so much!
Thank you... so much, you won a new member in your community for sure, best motivation video I've ended upon, and the funny thing is, you kind of popped up out of nowhere, and I'm grateful for it.
I'm so glad it helped and you found my channel! Thank you so much!
@@3gnomesgames909 Thank YOU ! 😁👍
YES! These are all excellent points...#2 is so important imo and this happened to me as well. Right out of college...we all graduated as designers...and rather than delegating production roles to each person...all the chefs vied for control of the kitchen so to speak. It only took one person to completely implode our company. He would derail meetings with extremely long, rambling dialog or just straight up argue and become combative with people, mostly me and another member who ended up giving up our equity for rights to our original idea. They ended up closing the company last year because their leader was so awful. He got them all scammed lol
you inspire me a lot to keep walking the walk. and its amazing that you know what effect you have on people and the magnitude of it. it truly is enormous. Love your content and cant wait to play your game.
Thank you so much! That means so much to hear
Great video man. Inspiring to say the least. Can't wait to see your work!
Thanks so much!
Great video, I'm happy this video was recommended to me. I love to listen to genuine people discussing gamedev and its hardships.. I've been trying to make a game since 2017. I keep starting and I keep giving up and I don't know if my brain is wired the wrong way, because I can't blame ADHD for everything but... some of these points, where spot on.
Damn, alot of those points hit home. Definitely needed to hear this. Thanks! Subscribed.
Glad it helped
Omg!! Was in the middle of commenting when ⚠️ LIGHTHOOF SPOTTED ⚠️
So happy to be a part of this community with you!
That said I very much agree with your slightly hot take about going it alone. Collaboration often creates more challenges than learning the skill yourself. And learning is so intrinsically rewarding!
Cheers man I needed to hear this
My approach to avoid remaking my game assets is to not create polished 3d model or level 100% but start from blocking, and put in the game and leaving it there until I make all other stuff in the current stage, next phase I will refine everything little bit not to the polish state, and keep doing this way. By doing this, I can keep make small changes during the development stage and no rework required.
Hello there 3 gnomes. I must say i quite enjoy your video.
its always good to gain perspective on the road ahead, even if it hasn't been started.
i just have a question though now, specifically regarding the first pitfall, that being that if i am to attempt some kind of intense project based learning, how hard should it be to make the game before it becomes too much.
this of course would not be without structure and breaking up the game into certain parts.
Thank you fore reading, i apologize for the words you have read, but i appreciate your patience.
The problem is more that by the time you've been working on your game long enough to get better, the earlier stuff you made will hold back your project
So then we run into 8 again. Well then thank you for the feed back.
My biggest setback is that I am only good at programming and game design itself. I'm a terrible artist and I'm also awful at level design. So I spend weeks programming something, get to the art and level design part, then lose my motivation and stop the project permanently. I feel as a solo dev, if you aren't gifted in art at minimum, you can't finish a game. And artists are so expensive to hire.
Edit: I can do pixel art quite well, but I don't like 2d games and don't want to make 2d games.
That's valid
@@3gnomesgames909 you know what? your video motivated me. I am going to learn procedurial generation so I do not have to do level design. That would fix one of my issues. Thank you bro.
@@saltyman5603 that's AWESOME! I'm so glad 😊
kingdom of loathing, Minecraft, Getting over it, Thomas was alone.
It didn't stop these from making successful games, so can you! Keep making games, no matter if it's hand drawn or lots of assets!!
@PixelBlight tge style I am good at is minecraft, but it's really limiting and I don't want to be compared/sued for being similar in look and survival. Getting over it is bought assets and being an indie and using bought assets means I lose colustoners over being an asset flip even if my game is not an asset flip. I will figure something out one day I'm sure. I'm still learning procedural generation which makes level design easier on me.
Seeing this from Brazil man, needless to say it was a great video, thank for really saying those things, some things you say, people just doesn't have courage to assume, that's the point, and.. yes, we are gamedevs I guess, we make games, we are gamedev's at some point, just simple has that, thank you, I'm here until you have 1 million subscribers, you deserve it. Wish you the best.
Thank you so much!
Really nice video, growth in skills does make me constantly come back to old work but after months I have found what I am happy with :)
(also thanks for featuring me :) )
Thanks! And of course! You're such a great part of the community and I love seeing the updates you make on your game
Loved everything about this video,
Thank you!
Nice Vid, the last point is relateable xD
I just started on CZcams and hope we can revive the Game Dev Community.
Thanks for your help in doing that.
Thanks! And thanks for your help as well if you're working towards that goal!
you saved me from one dangeroud mistake from doing. I had this basic story and plot written for my game. Today I was reworking on story because I had this new game mechanic in mind and had another cool idea to fit in narratively. I even started working on new improved story. Now if I think about it. My previous story is flawless. I will simply refine it when it's needed but I have no need to add new mechanic or anything like that.
I always loved making board games as a kid and was fortunate enough to go to college to learn game dev. But now I'm just about 8 years out of college and have yet to release my first commercial game. I have a huge problem with starting/abandoning projects myself, but this definitely helped to keep me motivated and on track to finally finishing something.
I'm so glad! Good luck!
Thank you for this. Liked and subbed
Thanks for the sub! I'm glad it helped 😁
The ending about imposter syndrome and your perspective on it was fantastic. Thanks for the video.
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it
Some Blender advice
You can duplicate bones by using shift+D to speed up rigging
I think I learned that at one point 😂 I'm just set in my ways and do things slower than I need to
Think I have done every one of those and still do lol Great video
😂 thanks!
Yes. Shout out to number 8.
Took me 4 tries before I finally committed to the language, rendering engine, and technologies for my project.
At least I had the good sense to restart early on in the project, cause lord knows I'm too far into attempt 4 to start over now.
WOW this is such a good advice, take it from someone whose done all that you have mentioned. Listen to this guy!!!
Is it a good idea to upgrade a small game to be big and impressive? I have ambitions for this game I'm making, to make it a massive open-world rpg, but grown like a sequoia or redwood out of a tiny demo outlining only the basic mechanics -- and my initial game after the demo will be a single village area and perhaps a wood around it, with nothing else, but my plans are to grow it slowly based on the needs of multiple adventure-quests one after the other, very slowly writing a sort of saga. My question is whether or not it's a good idea to do this, to upgrade my game to these proportions?
If you've got a solid base that's not a bad idea at all
12:49
This is a good thing... Its a tool for improvement on yourself and your game...
Its only ever bad if your doing it to procrastinate doing something with a higher priority :( or you've gone insane and decided to completely throw away that system, art, sound, game engine, language, in order to remake it from scratch, just because you hate where your game is at that point in time :/
This thing of ALWAYS starting small is bad too because many times it forces people to just not like what they are doing and give it up.
The most important thing for real is to do what you love. Want to make a BIG OPEN WORLD game, yeah that is hard, but maybe instead of starting from zero, you could start by making a big mod in Skyrim or Fallout for example, the game Forgotten City was born from that, a mod from Skyrim. Pavonis that are working on a big game started working on Overhauls for XCOM. Even one of the best games from Stream, Enderal is a mod of Skyrim.
You can use that as your school and go on.
Starting small is good, but for many people, it just makes them go away because they just don't want to work on something they don't love.
I mean, to be entirely honest, if as an indie dev you're incapable of loving a project that is small enough to be within your grasp that's something you need to learn to get past as well. Small projects can still be innovative and exciting, and as a solo indie dev you will NEVER make Skyrim 2.0 from the ground-up. It is, practically speaking, impossible to do that as one person. If you want to make AAA size games you need to work in AAA. If you want to be Indie, you need to get over aspirations like that quickly and learn to love projects you can actually create.
@@pleasantvegetable I never said anything about you making skyrim by your own
I do agree that a lot of great game devs started in big mod communities and that's totally valid. I guess I was talking more about their first seperate game project
On game Dev community it's just as varied as individual game Devs, users choice, so to speak. I've yet to call any home, maybe something to do with the "imposter syndrome", just a bit different take than the generic definition. In the first part, mentioning partnering with those that can hold you back, which I would've perceived myself as the weight on that chain. Being I'm well versed in art, but computer graphics and the scientific disciplines that come with that field are very massive, Namely Computer Science as the umbrella, and other disciplines, math, art, coding, music/sound, system structuring, optimizing, and polish. So I learned what vectors, and vertices are, and other geometry, and calculus, touched up on algebra concepts, and started seeing the use in my art programs, but even more rewarding was seeing how it is manipulated by code, and that essence if you will of concept is relative. I'm no coder, and my programming skills are next to nil, even having experience with having made running error free examples, just not the most efficient, nor optimized, but did learn some things farting around, lol, including failure. Made things streamlined as far as learning. Yes still learning, but with solid foundation, it comes far easier, and sticks. Practice makes perfection. As far as avoiding the imposter syndrome I made it very easy for myself, until I made money, or gain notoriety on even a small level through game Dev specifically, I'm just a journeyman, enthusiast, entry-level. When the money is made, and/or notoriety, then can I say that word professional, and is how every other industry is judged. Saying that's the given goal, both are game Devs, motivations are different is all. The MMO obsession is a natural one. RPG's in general are designed robust systems, accounting for most every aspect found in a video game, (based off older games with data sheets that gave outputs based on whatever system of the given RPG, the oldest computers worked the very same way), and is in other media also, we just don't see the dice roll, or a function returning a value, just the result. Why so many get lost in that approach I think, It's not bad, but not a full scope either. So I could see the appeal of such leaning on this learning factor, being system design is a huge part of making any game, from scratch especially. Which brings me to my piece of advice, do a little research on the history of (any given aspect of struggle in learning), you'll find the fundamentals beyond helpful. More so than all the videos you can watch on game dev, unless advising this 😁
I've really been struggling to consider myself a game dev. I'm officially one year into my journey (as of this week) and don't really have much to show for it. I follow a course, made their game. Then recreated Pong. Then started recreating Space Invaders but dropped the project to focus on life stuff as I was unemployed and should be working towards things that'll help me get a job quickly. Then I did GMTK Jam, made a trash game where you "hunt" monsters but it was basically just horrible hide n seek, I struggle to even consider it a game tbh, it was made to just help me relearn Unity quickly. Then i started making a roguelike which I had been wanting to make for almost a year. Made pretty good progress on a weapon and bullet hell system but then the Unity drama slapped me in the face for 2 months straight until i finally decided to drop my project and learn Godot. Then i finally found a job and that meant i had to change my sleep schedule which sucks as I'm someone struggles to concentrate in which night time made it significantly easier for me to focus. Now 3 months later, I think I've adjusted and found a workflow that kinda works (not as well as my old one though) so throughout these 3 months, I've been trying to make a much simpler game than the roguelike I originally had planned... a short but sweet JRPG and Undertale inspired game (not a clone). However, writing story and characters is a lot harder than i thought and so ive been trying to do that for 3 months, with most of my progress being made this past week (like i said before, new workflow took a bit to adjust to).
So yeah... that's where I'm at... I'm proud that I still love game dev and haven't given up, disappointed at how much I procrastinate the only thing I genuinely want to do, it doesn't make sense. My first year anniversary of game dev and it hurts to consider myself a game dev :D
Regardless, If there's one thing I know... It's that I'm NEVER gonna stop trying to make video games! I CAN FAIL FOR ANOTHER 19 YEARS AND IT WON'T BE ENOUGH TO STOP ME AGHAHGAHGAHGH This is truly what I want to do with my life... I don't believe in purpose, but I do believe that this is what I want. If I can ever get paid to do this for a living, I may actually just start levitating.
i think that's the right mindset, but be careful not to put too much pressure on yourself, after a while it might make you scared of what you want. Try to be kind to yourself, if you had a bad day or are too tired, you'll make minimal progress or skip entirely. And that's ok, as you said, you'll still keep at it and just slow down or make pquses, but never give up :)
I'm glad you're sticking to it! It's so hard because no matter what you try and do it seems like there's always new opposition- but mindset really is what will make the difference
This advice applies to ALL disciplines, not just game development ;) I know because I've been through exactly all of these struggles in my industry (tech) and started to see rapid growth once I started knocking down each of these barriers.
Based
I think we need to show this to some AAA devs, Naughty Dog could certainly use #8
great video!
Thank you!
i liked that video and sub cuz it's really good and helpful
Thank you!
The discord link in the description wasn't working for me 😓
Anyone spare a link?
Ohhh nooo! My first game is soooo big! 😳
Solid video.
Game development is like a decently-calculatable lottery
Looking to work with a 2D designer for an indie game dev.
I have developed 12 games so far.
BUT I want to make an Open World RPG! is what I always hear from new game devs. Or just make lots of money. I do enjoy making games that are fun and if they profit great! if not I did learn a lot from the journey.
Cleo - A pirates Tale is an Indie game by 1 person that worked fine ..now he's working on his next game
Best advice ever: Make games that you want to play and that you're passionate about. Regardless of how small or niche you think it might be, it WILL find an audience.
I just want to make a 2d or 2.5d fighting game that looks old school but has modern controls and simulation boxing
Well as someone who went to school specifically to understand coding and game design for 8+ years with 2 degrees and high honors... I don't understand code.
I have yet to get it to click in my mind and I clearly am missing something to make it, which has hindered me from moving forward with game design and it is painful.
The tutorials I find are nice, but its still annoying to watch 1-2 hour vids to figure something out that should only take a couple of minutes.
I don't know why I'm saying this, maybe its just because I don't know how to learn form failure as discussed.
I had really cool idea of a rogue-lite game, I ended up not going forward with it because I haven't played that many such games and I do not like it either.
Use the Mirror modificator aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Also good pieces of advice, thanks
GOOD advice
Glad you think so!
Nice video
Thanks!
This vid was amazing thanks i relate to two of these❤❤
What's with the strawberry pie-der thing in the background?
It's just a recording of me modeling an enemy for the game I'm working on! You can check it out in the last devlog I made if you're interested
Bruh how did you know my first project was to make big mmorpg game xD
It's a right of passage 😂
Been failing for 20 years (43 now!). Life keeps getting in the way.
Based. All you can do is keep pushing forward 💪
Me too! I've made every possible mistake along the way and learned a ton during the process.
I think the most valuable advice I could give to newcomers is:
''Every shortcut you take will cost you way more time and make your life miserable''.
You use a game editor to avoid learning proper coding techniques and end up fighting against the limited possibilities, wasting hours to bypass artificial restrictions that would have been otherwise trivial on a ''real'' engine.
You choose to rely on the asset store to save time on learning making 2d or 3d stuff and end up burning a gazillion of hours trying to make all this mess fit together...
It applies to everything. There is no shortcut, unless you are willing to sacrifice most of what made your project unique in the first place.
❤
Eh, depends what you think failure is. Did you even set goals of success? Some Japanese studios set goals of "must sell 10 million copies." Then they only sell 6 million and explain "game is a failure."
Great video! Have a sub, a like and a comment from an imposter who can never accomplish anything :(
You can do it!
Someone wants to make a game with me😅
😢😢😢😊
I'm glad I watched this
Till 15 minutes mark it was awesome, after that.. Too cheesy bruh, like come on man, grow up! Be a man!😂
Pirate software one said, don’t compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself to you, last month, last year. How far have you come? I am paraphrasing, but yeah
That's great advice
👍👍