I find it extremely hard to believe that the same person could do quality programming, art, design and music.
Maybe our definitions of quality differ..

Note that i didnt say you cant make a fun game, I said you can''t make a quality game. Games can be fun even if they have lousy art and music.

Don''t forget you can do the development yourself and when it comes to music or art purchase quality material from professionals and amatures.

The problem is that alot of people think developing yourself means spending no money. But if you want to produce a quality marketable product that means your going have to spend money.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

Given the vast amount of resources, from books to web sites such as this one, all containing valueable information on game programming, art development and design, music and sound effect production....with low cost development tools like Blitzbasic, the Torque game engine, Darlbasic, Milkshape, etc. all available at your finger tips...With the history of the single person - to small team "demo scene" that dates back to the old Amiga PC...

Honestly, I find it hard to believe a single person couldn''t develop a high quality and fun game by themselves...with enough drive, intelligence, motivation, and talent...there is no reason a person couldn''t sucessfully develop a game on their own.

This isn''t to say that a one man "team" could develop "the next great GTA3 clone" for release next spring...that would be damn near impossable...but given a decade or two, there is no reason why a one-man team couldn''t develop such a game...

Given enough time a monkey could produce Hamlet from beating keys on a typewriter...

quote: Original post by Origin2052
You wanna do a while game yourself? And you want it to be a good game? Sorry but this just isn''t going to happen unless your game is on the level of simplicity of tetris.

everyone run, the possible police are here!!!

If you want to see a good example of game programed by 1 person, that was successful check out uplink(http://www.introversion.co.uk/uplink/index.html)

he has 2 partners who ran the buisness side but thats it.


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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

I, for one, would love to finish my game, but quite frankly, other things are more important. Like school. And sleep. And human company. Hence why it may be years before my game is complete, and even then, I'm sure as heck not going to be able to create good music or, in fact, draw at all, which is why I will attempt to enlist fellow human beings to aid me in my game-making struggle when I get serious.

[edited by - DuranStrife on November 7, 2003 1:20:25 AM]

http://koti.mbnet.fi/~bikez/

hey look at this guy....he codes himeself...he does his own art and his games pretty much rock.

It all just comes down to motivation as stated above....and being realistic.

[edited by - AcRiD_aCiD on November 7, 2003 7:30:20 PM]

I''m slowly going down this path, trying to get a few freeware games out and boy is it tough. If you don''t have the skills yet, you can get distracted trying to improve your skills at whatever it is you don''t have yet somewhat aimlessly (I do this with music a lot but recently have been trying to brush it off; I figure just find a tracker to do a few at this point). Even with the skills for the task, if the project isn''t mentally broken down to the right size of pieces(not insignificant, yet not unmanagable) you won''t want to go anywhere with it. I have *3* games now that are in a playable prototypish form, with shareware-level game resources made for them, but they aren''t finished because, I guess, I''m somewhat scared of how to complete the design, with the levels or plot or completing the enemy set or whatever.

It''s quite sad, too, that the saying is true; the last 5% IS the hardest. I feel like it''s more around 99% right now.

I am also developing a freeware game but my expectation are a bit high even though its only a 2D game. I''m also alone on that project but i will request help for art and sounds from friend.

Of course, like all of you said, the trick is being motivated. Even though its not always easy especially when developing the engine side and there is no visual to see (i know i stopped my project for 5 months) but if you dont have any schedule, just keep yourself motivated and cut the work into small tasks so you will advance more steadily.

I''ve found my motivation - figuring something out in a reasonably non-frustrating time frame. That was assisted by tools and help systems that didn''t hinder me more than help. Add that to good tutorials and I am feeling quite happy and excited over the progress thus far. Sadly most project development curves can be
represented by 1/x^2, with the stone at the bottom of the curve. I wonder when a project''s x value equals releasable???