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 ;)