Would you give up everything for a game?

[zuhane]

I've been thinking about the whole thing more and more recently. All I think about in my spare time is game ideas. I constantly see the world as something that could potentially look beautiful in a game, or hear music which could fit into the game, or when I'm free, I'm jotting down little ideas and stuff. It's always going over and over and I seem to have almost limitless imagination when it comes to game ideas.

However, it's just time. Life gets in the way. I need money, I have commitments and stuff, and there's just not enough time, so I'm always exhausted. If you could, would you give up your job or commitments to make the ultimate game? It could be ANYTHING!

[greenraven]

I suppose that would depend on your definition of "ultimate game". If you mean creating the next Tetris or Mario, (a game everyone will know about whether they're a gamer or not), then yeah I suppose I would.

But if you're talking about making just another RPG Maker/Game Maker game, then hell no. XD

[DragonBlaze]

There was a time when I was the exact same way and at that time, I would have gave anything to bring my idea to life (as a real game not an rpg maker game). Then I realized that it is basically impossible to make an RPG by myself, and trying to fund production on a game is also pretty much impossible on my budget. I'm also not a huge fan of simple games like Angry Birds or Temple Run, and while I have made some small indie games in the past, I don't have any desire to spend a lot of time developing one.

That being said, I am working on a game-ish side project that, while I would not give up my job for, I'll take a sick day here and there to work on the project. My ultimate goal is to turn my project into a start-up project/company so that it will be my job and I won't have to pick between one or the other ^^

[Prpl_Mage]

If you had asked me like 3 years ago then sure. But I didn't spend 3 years studying for giving up that path so yeah. It's more of a hobby than career for me.

[drenrin2120]

I'm the same way, except not so much in game dev. I find myself going through plot and story-dev constantly. Reworking character dev and going over key scenes in my head. Asking myself how and why certain characters are the way they are and what will happen to them? Why do certain things happen to them? Is there a point or moral to the story or events? What kind of symbolism, metaphors, references am I going to use?

It's because of all that I realized more or less the same thing Purp, DB, and Green Raven realized. I started making games for reasons outside of actually wanting to make a game. Do I want to make an epic RPG with all my own custom system, graphics, music, story, battle system, etc? Of course, but ultimately, when I was 14, I started making a game to tell a story with the added bonus of being able to use my own music to further that story.

With that in mind, I've heavily considered writing a novel. That's a goal that a single individual can do on their spare time. I also play guitar and write songs. I never imagined myself compromising on my life goals, because at one time in my life this was literally all that mattered. I guess you gotta ask yourself why you started making games in the first place. If you can narrow it down then you can maybe shift gears and find a satisfying hobby or career reaching for more realistic goals that an individual can do. That includes even studying game dev and working for a company where you specialize in whatever interested you most, whatever inspired you first to allot thousands of hours into rm2k3, as there's something that convinced us all to do that.

[SaiKar]

Having gotten far enough on some projects to release them, and being met with near complete uninterested silence, then no.

There are simply too many games out there period, and I'm competing against people with frankly more talent than I am. If I could get a position working on what seemed to be a serious project, then maybe I'd like to join that. But going it solo? Forget it.

[Cerebus]

I'll join the "No" train. I don't have enough knowledge to make a game outside of RPG Maker anyway, and I don,t have the motivation or time to learn anything.

I wanted to make a game to tell a story as well. But it takes too much efforts, since there's graphics, musics, gameplay, etc. etc.
A book would be a better solution, and even that is something I'd have a hard time coming up with, since I simply can't get myself to work on something that will take several months to complete.

[fruckert]

This is all that I have.

[Momeka]

I've been running a game development company full time for about two years with a friend now. Wouldn't really say we gave it all up for a game though. We had just finished school and we wanted to give it a try so we took the money we had left from our study loans and study grants and went for it.

The game we set out to do first we pretty fast realized was way to big and we would be out of cash long before it was done. After that we worked on a bunch of smaller projects. One that we released for mobile (didn't sell that well).

Since then we've been doing games for hire to bring in some cash to the company. We do have some side projects for our own games that we work on during slow and free times. Some point in the future we'll probably go back to work on them full time though.

[Dr. Ace]

No. Because the ultimate game doesn't exist. There is no perfect game, and even if there is, what's your audience? Yourself? You made the game so you wouldn't buy it, that's useless. Would other people even like your ultimate game?

Like Momeka, I'm also in game development, I'm finishing up college and just starting with my own company and even then I will work on games but I will never afford working on my ultimate game. It's about the customers, the clients, the need.

I wouldn't even work on it in my free time. I was considering saying that, but I know this path. I won't do it, I won't start it. I have too many hobbies as it is and creating the ultimate game for me would be difficult with a team, let alone impossible alone.

[Prpl_Mage]

Just want to point out that there is a reason why some people who had their projects back when I joined in 2005 are still working on them 8 years later. Regarding most of the posts above me.

Also, writing a novel would be all cool and fancy as well. But I'd like to think that it would be harder to acquire an audience for that than a game these days. Also, English is not the native language so I better stay off.

[zuhane]

Oh yeah, I take into account everything you guys are saying. Motivation is a difficult one, and it's really the key. Our worst enemies
are ourselves when it comes to game dev. Also, Ace, there is no "perfect" game, so you're right on that. Stuff like CoD has taken the
world by storm, by people who critically and open-mindedly embrace games may appreciate artistic or innovative games more, so it
depends on the audience.

However, a lot of the time I'll see a game that gets a lot of praise, and feel like saying "anyone could have thought of that". I understand
the entire development process is a huge one, but still, there seems to be a constant increase in scale and graphics, but little jumps
in terms of originality. I get more excited for indie releases than big-time studio releases nowadays.

Also, coding from scratch is HARD. REAL hard. I knew what I was getting myself in for when I started, but jeez! My problem is that I don't
particularly enjoy any other aspect of coding, but I absolutely love designing games. I seem to have a very over-active imagination and could
blurt out ideas and concepts all day - Not the typical "A game with LOADS of this and LOADS of that", because that's not really an idea, it's just
making something with loads of content, which is something others would have to do, but coming up with some good core game mechanics,
interesting worlds and stories.

[DragonBlaze]

Also, coding from scratch is HARD. REAL hard. I knew what I was getting myself in for when I started, but jeez! My problem is that I don't
particularly enjoy any other aspect of coding, but I absolutely love designing games.

True and false. Well pretty much all true, but there's light at the end of the tunnel. A really good exercise for people interested in game development is to make a bunch of games, and limit yourself to a week for each. The two key take aways is that you force yourself to come up with fun ideas and gameplay, and pretty much completely ignore the fluff (graphics, music, etc). The second BIG take away is that the more you do something, the better you get. When I look to my game engines from just last year, I think they are terrible, but at the time I thought they were great. Every time I start a new game engine, I learn from the mistakes I made the previous attempt, and come up with a better solution. In my case, I end up doing 2 -3 projects a year, doing a project every week will get you good much quicker.

Side note 1: Many gaming engines exist out there such as Unity or XNA that really simply the game making process and handle all the tedious aspects such as model loading, shadows, anti-aliasing, animation, etc and let you focus on the actual thing that matters, the game.

Side note 2: As a software engineer, I can confidently say that almost any aspect of coding can be applied to game making. I guess compilers, assembly language, and low level programming doesn't affect game making much, but most computer science techniques can be applied to game making. The trick is to recognize how they can be applied in order to make them interesting enough to learn. It's what got me through college ^^

[Dr. Ace]

Also, coding from scratch is HARD. REAL hard. I knew what I was getting myself in for when I started, but jeez! My problem is that I don't
particularly enjoy any other aspect of coding, but I absolutely love designing games. I seem to have a very over-active imagination and could
blurt out ideas and concepts all day - Not the typical "A game with LOADS of this and LOADS of that", because that's not really an idea, it's just
making something with loads of content, which is something others would have to do, but coming up with some good core game mechanics,
interesting worlds and stories.

That's a problem I'm facing often, it's called over-designing. You have an idea, you expand on the idea, and expand, and expand and expand. You already create tie-ins, sequels, spin-offs, different genres, stories, novel and film ideas. You work out a lot of game design, a thousand characters all connected, a hundred different game design ideas. In the end, you'll have too much design and no game. Would the design be fun to play? I dunno, there's no prototype to test it with. Is it possible? I dunno, I've been so busy designing I didn't look at the technical aspect. Limit yourself is the best advice I can give you.

And on the AAA games, there's a clear and obvious reason they lack originality. Money. There's an economic crisis, sales of AAA titles is dropping, graphics are expected of higher quality, production costs increase, bigger teams are needed, production length increases. A triple A title costs 50 million, takes 2 years and 30 to 50 people to work on. Producers can't afford to try something new with such big investments, it's the curse of getting big. They want to play it safe and invest their money in something that sells: a first person shooter with health regeneration in modern or post-modern warfare. Or something else they know will sell.

That isn't to say I don't agree with you. I'd prefer it if bigger companies would set the example by trimming down the graphics (honestly do they NEED to get better?) and improve on gameplay and originality. I do, however, disagree on the originality of a lot of indie games. I've played dozens of them and most of them aren't too original, they just seem original in the current light of the industry. I'd love if you could give some examples for me to, and I'll say it bluntly, debunk or agree on.

As for coding from scratch, don't. As Blaze said there's plenty of options that can help with initial stages. It'll still be a massive job to pull off, and coding is only a part of it. You need a solid design, you need good audio, you need art, you need to test your game for bugs. Ah, if only game development was as easy as "I have this idea, oh look, I suddenly have a game".

[Prpl_Mage]

Stuff

Amen to that ^.

Playing it safe is an issue these days now that games are so expensive to make based on player's expectation. Back in the days a garage of people could whip up a cool game for the home consoles. Now you really need a studio.

I've never understood the graphic hype. Sure, some games do get some credit for looking fancy as hell. But at the same time a graphic style like the manga-ish Tales of... cellshading or the stuff found in bioshock and borderlands still look awesome. When the GBA was released and could support graphics kinda equal to that of a SNES I was completely blown away. I think that one graphic style has been one of the best so far. Sure it might not look overly cool or badass or hardcore or whatever. But it looks great.

And no, lots of indie games these days seems to either be rehearsed "old school" ideas of the early industry that modern kiddos haven't played (because they're kiddos, duh) or just paid versions of stuff that used to be free Flash games.

And lastly, yes, engines are like that mentor you would need when getting into this. Lots of modern games like to use an already existing physics engine and animation stuff and whatnot. Creating those from scratch would be troublesome otherwise.

To follow what Zuhane said as well. It sounds like you would benefit from having a team if you're more of a concept, level-planner, story writer type of person and don't like the whole programming part. 'cuz when it comes down to it. That's probably what you will spend most(active) hours on.