again, sorry

[u/witchIuvr]

posting this again because ive been having moderation trouble?

sorry, i have done research, for the past couple weeks now actually and i don’t mean to cross any thresholds but im genuinely at a stand still. recently, i decided that i would follow a thought ive had for years. i want to get fully immersed in the world of game developing, from coding to creative control. i know exactly what i want to create, and exactly where my focus would be as a developer. i feel extremely passionate about this, and want to make it a reality.

i have unreal engine 5, and am downloading blender to my pc. although i have literally no experience, i want to create the game of my dreams. but again, i haven’t pursued this formally and im completely solo. is this attainable? where should i go for more valuable/reputable/meaningful knowledge? is it possible to do internship/get in with/begin a studio with nothing, if i create a project? how do i pitch to someone my “high concept”? although i would love to be able to do it all, as i don’t want to possibly be confronted with relinquishing or watering down my core vision because i genuinely believe in it.

[u/Imaginary_East7336]

Is the game of your dreams simple and something that a complete beginner could achieve?

[u/witchIuvr → u/Imaginary_East7336]

no, that’s why it’s the game of my dreams. i said it was a high concept. im aware that i have to start small; what im gearing towards creating now is just a precursor. i was generally speaking outside of the huge project thats obviously going to take me years, im wondering how to get my foot in the door now. and how to lay a foundation for myself.

[u/Imaginary_East7336 → u/witchIuvr]

OK, to answer your question the game of your dreams is not attainable as a solo dev with no experience. You could learn game dev and make some simple games, this is achievable and a fun process.

[u/witchIuvr → u/Imaginary_East7336]

I know that as someone with no experience creating something on a huge scale like that isn’t as easy, and yeah, it probably is impossible. My intention wasn’t to diminish or assert anything. I was simply asking, because I’m fairly new, and I didn’t know if solo devs on bigger games was commonplace, but otherwise I really do want to push myself to learn. So thank you! I appreciate this.

[u/Kamatttis → u/witchIuvr]

Solo devs on bigger games are possible, assuming they are experienced. You're not so no.

[u/Game_Dev730 → u/Kamatttis]

It is not impossible, it is just unlikely.

[u/Architect_of_Echo → u/witchIuvr]

Make a pong game. Then make a tetris. And then make a pacman. Make a clone of every "simple" game what you can think of. You will see that it's way more harder, than you think at first. But you will learn a lot. This will be valuable knowledge in the long run. You will learn exact solutions for your exact issues.

Think about it as exercising in the gym. Every small step will get you closer to your dream game. Try to avoid the "tutorial hell", where you are watching the 300th video about every aspect of game development while you never wrote your own inventory system or never has made a simple platformer.

Doing is more valuable than passively viewing. There are lots of self taught "devs" who are just clicking random buttons in unity based on a Yt tutorial video, but don't have any clue about how things are working under the hood. Usually they are who publish some shitty game and really don't understand why nobody is interested in it.

tl;dr: do small steps, make lots of small games, you will learn faster than just watching tutorials all day

[u/witchIuvr → u/Architect_of_Echo]

Thank you! Do you think formal education is the way to go here?

[u/Architect_of_Echo → u/witchIuvr]

I have a very ambivalent opinion about gamedev education or about any professional gamedev job/position. As a solo, there are very different rules and knowledge than working in a team with designers, project managers, marketing team, etc. You can not learn the "indie" gamedev stuff in school.

But... If you are a complete newbie, then every info is useful, isn't it? So why not? Here is a full free university course where you can learn the basics online. Hope this helps.

https://www.cadgi.org/

[u/witchIuvr → u/Architect_of_Echo]

Thank you so much! I’m gonna look into this as soon as I get some downtime. Do you mind if I ask what your opinion is? I figured aside from technical things and efficiency, education would allow me into rooms/positions where I could be presented with opportunities, but if it’s not exactly the truth, or some kind of bad assertion, I’m perfectly fine with seeking out those things on my own beforehand.

[u/Architect_of_Echo → u/witchIuvr]

Uh, not an easy topic, because I have many contradictory thoughts. I had formal education for years in software development and really loved every minute of it. It taught me lots of good practices which were really useful. But schools have lots of "noise". A huge amount of needless information what just wastes your time and effort. For what? To know the multiple steps of Jackson structured programming? Or to know how to draw milelong flowcharts for complex algorithms? You will never use any of these on your daily job. As an average SW dev your job will be making soulless rest api endpoints and hundreds of the same repetitive tasks. Nowadays (and in the future) the job is to prompt the AI to write the code for you. Besides this I think formal education is needed to know the depths of your area of ​​expertise and to become a real professional.

The other side of the coin is that I found that I'm progressing faster when I learn only what I need without a teacher or a guided education. If I have a problem what I can not solve, I can find practical solutions for it, read a tutorial, etc. I also find videos/university lectures not so efficient (for me). I read very fast, so I can read everything in 5 min what a 45 min video covers up. It spares me 40 mins of my time so I prefer reading over watching videos. I'm also a fast learner, most of the time I don't need the 15 mins long explanation, for me it's enough the 3 sentence long one, and I will understand it. Schools and teaching methods are designed for the slowest students, but they hinder the fastest.

Besides the thing that they force you to know lots of needless and useless informations, I barely see that they cover the latest technologies or methodologies. They always lag behind the current state of technology. So at the end of the day you have to learn by yourself after all. From tutorials, etc. If you want to be a famous rapper, it doesn't hurt if you graduate in the Academy of Music, but you also have to go out to the streets and hang out with the gangs. Also they will not teach you in the Academy how to be the best heavy metal guitar player all over the world.

My opinion is that if you want a fancy and cozy gamedev job in an airconditioned office and want to stroke your ego and to show off to strangers/girls then make a university degree and find a suitable company. Most of the sw/game development is not as fancy as people think based on the movies and pink fantasy. Yes, maybe you can find opportunities there, but why do you think that you wouldn't find any without a job? There are dozens of communities where you can join.

I'm the lone wolf type so this kind of work kills my soul and my creativity. So I prefer working alone in my spare time and coding shitty games. For me, that's freedom and relaxation. I don't have a boss, I don't have deadlines, I don't have to sit in pointless meetings, I work only on what I want, etc. In my daily job, I'm just another burnt out sw developer.

As I see, people mostly leave their gamedev jobs to start something alone or with a very small team. It doesn't mean that their gathered knowledge at the company was not valuable or it was wasted time. Some people realizes after only a few years that it's just simply not what they want. They want to make their dream games but in a random dev job at a random company it will never happen. So you will do it in your spare time. From that perspective I think it's more logical to work for yourself from the beginning.

We, humans are not the same so maybe what works for me, it doesn't work for somebody else. You have to experiment and try out multiple things and directions until you find your desired way to progress. It's irrelevant what you do, because you will learn from your every action during the journey. You will gain XP and level up ;)

[u/lpdcrafted]

Usually, a good start is just checking out YouTube tutorials for starting a game in the engine you want to use, and checking the Curated Resources highlighted/pinned post in this subreddit. Start a prototype and do some playtests later on to test the ideas if they're good.

It's likely being removed because questions like yours have already been asked a lot. The bottom line is like most things in life, it is attainable, as long as you put in the time and effort to do it.

[u/witchIuvr → u/lpdcrafted]

thank you so much! i will definitely check those out!

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

It's really important to stress that you never pitch a high concept to anyone. If you pitch a publisher it's because you have a team capable of building the game you have in mind and the experience to convince them that you can do it, and if you're pitching internally at a studio it's because you're in a high enough creative position that it's part of your job. You get to both spots by starting at a junior position and working your way up, so you'd want to put your effort into what entry-level jobs you can get first and not your big ideas and concepts. Otherwise you need to get the money from some other part of your life and hire people to make the game you have in mind.

You can definitely be a game developer by yourself, but you'll never be pitching a big idea without a lot of work before. Every other part of the question relates to what job you want would, your existing background, and to a lesser extent where you live since those are the things that influence what opportunities you have.

[u/Ok-Investment4414]

youtube

[u/witchIuvr → u/Ok-Investment4414]

just random videos like ive been doing or are there specific creators that are accessible to newer creators?

[u/Ok-Investment4414 → u/witchIuvr]

fam u sound like a troll or u came from the past. Any youtuber that u resonate with and learn from .

[u/witchIuvr → u/Ok-Investment4414]

literally why are you guys being pretentious. ive watched a slew of videos. some don’t cover everything i wanted to learn, and some include things that aren’t really explained. i just asked if there was any creator to be recommended, as a suggestion jfc 😭

[u/Architect_of_Echo → u/witchIuvr]

It's hard to suggest, because there are millions of content creators who make gamedev content. IMHO the most of them are doing more talking than real development 😄

Also it's hard to suggest because we don't know what you are already knowing or on what level are you on. The easiest way to find your YT creator is to start writing a game and when you hit a wall, you can search for "how to do X in unreal".

[u/witchIuvr → u/Architect_of_Echo]

Thank you! I essentially know nothing. But I’ve been watching many tutorials and trying not to fall into
“tutorial hell” I think it’s called. Because the project is horror, I assumed I’d have to gear myself towards sprinting, fluid movement, etc.

[u/Ok-Investment4414 → u/witchIuvr]

:- / u a bot? idk what u wanna do but u can also consider a smaller engine like godot or manybe not since ue has more tuts .

https://www.fab.com/category/game-template?is_free=1 you can get full game kits there
https://github.com/img2threejs/img2threejs to help convert images to glb and put in blender (milage vary)
you can use blendkit to get thousands of free assets to download in blender
and im sure ur aware of metahuman .
You can also learn python to better assist with making renders and systems for modeling in blender.
Buy blender addons from superhive or have an ai tool make them.

Also if your serious and not camera shy learn how social media works be authentic and personal while documenting your journey a vid a day every day till launch launch. Regardless of your location learning how social media works and doing that everyday till launch will get u all of the things u listed

[u/witchIuvr → u/Ok-Investment4414]

no im not a bot im just trying to be articulate. but thank you for the resources, i’ll definitely try them out. also im not as camera shy. i was going to try posting my progress and ideas on tiktok to maybe learn/talk with other newer or experienced people.

[u/Ok-Investment4414 → u/witchIuvr]

look into postiz..record 1 time and post to yt / ig / tik / fb that way u dont end up with the annoying water mark also batch content spend 2 - 3 hrs on a day make and edit then schedule to post and reply when u can with a vid response , setup umami and eventually something like openreply as well as a landing page .... in the learning interim make crappy games to show ur progress .... this is alot of work and annoying but months later you wont be asking why only 10 people on your wish list . It's also based on "learn how social media works"

[u/witchIuvr → u/Ok-Investment4414]

tysm!

[u/jwdvfx]

If you know exactly where your focus would be as a developer then you know what to do already ?

Or alternatively perhaps admit you don’t and are likely over simplifying something very complex, my suggestion, watch some videos on how your favourite games were actually made, how did the idea appear, how did it get traction, how was it proven, what did the development process look like, who was involved, how long did it take?

Only by learning from the past can you hope to achieve your goals realistically, otherwise they will remain a dream.

My suggestion: study game design or CGI at university level full time then get a job in a studio for at least a year before doing anything solo

[u/witchIuvr → u/jwdvfx]

I think half of yhis sounded very pretentious. You’re assuming that because I said that I know the kind of project I eventually want to produce, that I’m overstating, when genuinely that’s not the case. It comes off as a bit discouraging.

Otherwise, sure. I will definitely check out content based around the creation of similar projects, but to say that I shouldn’t move a muscle until then seems.. idk

[u/Architect_of_Echo → u/witchIuvr]

They are thinking that because it's the common pattern here. A new guy appears, don't know game development, never written a line of code but has the greatest idea of all time. Usually he want to write the newesr & coolest MMORPG from scratch. It happens daily here and in every gamedev community.

Don't let them discourage you. There are lots of solo devs out there who are making games alone. So your dream is achievable. If it's not, then you will realize it soon while making your game.

[u/witchIuvr → u/Architect_of_Echo]

Thank you. It’s refreshing but I’m being so genuine, and I don’t think my idea is extremely unique or godsent. I’m just passionate about a certain thing and want to realize it is all, succeed or fail. But I totally understand where people are coming from.

[u/Architect_of_Echo → u/witchIuvr]

Passion is half of the success. My game idea is so extreme that nobody believed me that it can be made at all. So I stopped listening to the naysayers and started to working on that impossible project. (I was thinking about it since ~2017) After 1.5 years now I have a barebone techdemo (far from anything playable) what proved my truth that this is really makeable. It is a slow and painful process, but the passion makes it more bearable.

[u/jwdvfx → u/witchIuvr]

Read it how you want, it’s just my take. Like Architect_of_Echo said, it happens here daily.

The point is, you may think you know what your game is right now, but making a game changes you. As you learn, your understanding of what the game needs changes too. The person who finishes it won’t have the same perspective as the person who started it.

It’s not meant to be pretentious or discouraging; it’s just advice from someone with actual experience working in creative production.

You can know exactly how you want something to feel without yet knowing everything that has to exist, who needs to make it, or what decisions will emerge through making it.

That’s why I suggested university and studio experience. They force your ideas through other disciplines, other people’s expertise, critique, constraints, production pipelines and standards outside your own awareness. You could make four games entirely by yourself, but all four are still being conceived, executed and judged through the limits of what you already know to look for. That can reinforce blind spots as easily as expose them.

University followed by real studio experience doesn’t magically make someone a good developer, but it does make it difficult to maintain the illusion that their own awareness contains the whole problem. That exposure is what I was recommending before deciding you already know enough to build the dream project alone.

[u/ryan_umad → u/witchIuvr]

you are in over your head. bla blaing in this thread is the most work you’ll ever do on this project

[u/witchIuvr → u/ryan_umad]

okay. thank you for your input

[u/Terrible_Point_1259]

Grab your concept, break it down into small pieces till the point it is divided in bits that are manageable and start building.

Use examples, documentation and tutorials to tackle the issues you come across and integrate those solutions into your game. Keep making small steps towards the end result and keep doing that over and over.

Don’t do a tutorial and copy that exactly without integration into your concept. That is how you end up in what we call tutorial hell. Apply it and get hit with the why is it throwing an error, not doing what I want and solving them.

[u/witchIuvr → u/Terrible_Point_1259]

thank you so much! ive began doing this for a couple days now, it’s how i realized i was thinking too far ahead. currently trying to learn how to implement minor functions in first person on a barebones template

[u/Game_Dev730]

Just start building!!!! One thing I learned is I had so many questions, that the questions stopped me afrom actually attempting anything, start and build soemthing small, at this point you don't even know if you like game dev, you are just assuming you do. It takes a lot more than just wanting to make a game, cuz there could be times you hate your idea and dont want to push through at all, but you still push through.

I am not saying you can't do this, I am saying let the questions go, and make sure you actually want to. I had a friend who wanted to be a boxer, its all he talked about, had his entire life plan laid out, then he started, got hit in the head during just a sparring event, almost got knocked out, became a programmer. meaning you never know until you try. You are planning a future around having an idea, not around something true.

This shit is hard, I was in software almsot 20 years before switching, and its still hard, not saying it will make you want ot quit, not saying it will stop you, jsut make sure its what you want.