There was a time in my life in which I was the loneliest I had ever been. I was only working a part time job(20 hours/week) and absolutely nothing else. No friends, no family, no girl friend, and no college. This was the most productive time in my life. I was able to get so much done in a very short time frame. Now, however, I work full time, have friends, go to college, and have a girl friend who is constantly demanding my time.

Now it seems to me that the more "normal" I get the less time I have to work on any of my personal projects. With student loan debt and car payments I feel like life is sucking away any hope for the dreams I once had. It would appear to me that the only way to be truly successful as an indie game developer would be to live in your mother's basement until you are 30, never go to college, never get in a relationship, and never work or only work part time.

I keep hearing people say that you can be normal and still be a successful indie game developer but this always comes from the people who have never actually completed anything worth wild or who only casually contributed to a project with other individuals taking most of the work load. Seriously, if you are about to reply to this post and tell me I am wrong then please show me a successful game you developed solo and or predominantly. Now one developer posting a successful game might not completely change my opinion but it would at least give me hope that it is possible.

I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, it's really tough, and I wouldn't describe my position as 'normal', nor have I released an indie game yet. That said, I do think that in most situations you can find a little bit of free time, and if you keep your goals sensible enough, then it's possible to get something worthwhile finished.

My position is that I'm married with two kids, and due to my wife dealing with some pretty serious health issues, I'm in the position of juggling a full-time job, doing the vast majority of the work in raising two young kids and also looking after my wife. Even in that position I manage to find a little time to keep my indie dream going. It's not released yet but it's finally getting close. Hopefully we can get to the point of submitting to Apple within the next few weeks (http://www.tundragames.com/)

That's not to say it's easy, and it's only really possible because I have an employer who has been very flexible, some very supportive family nearby, and to be honest, pretty much zero social life (largely a result of my caring responsibilities rather than my indie endeavours).

I quite like this piece, http://joyreactor.com/post/597716, I agree that in the majority of situations creative people will find a way to create because it's not really a choice. If life deals you a hand where you can only be someone who "casually contributed to a project with other individuals taking most of the work load", then I still think that can be a valuable contribution (as long as you're up-front and honest and fair about the level of contribution to your teammates). Or maybe you don't get stuff finished, which is always a shame, but it's still making time to do something creative.

It's about making time. Can you devote X amount of time a week, every week? Even if it's just two hours every Wednesday, you'll make progress, albeit less than the guy who can devote 40 hours a week. Though being in college and a full time job, you certainly have your hands full. But College isn't forever, either.

I agree that it is almost impossible.

You can try to make sure you commit as little as possible everywhere else and try to set some time aside.

I am one of those guys who postponed (gave up on) actually living a social life ... because I simply can't.

So I use a SCRUM backlog for my 1-person-projects (sometimes even plan sprints, but not very often).

That helps with remembering what your plans are and gives you an idea of what lied ahead of and behind you.

Many people have that problem, though ... most of them choose not to be productive.

I personally hope that technology will step in here, once people get over the stupid conviction that computer aided development is crap and will always be crap. So far, abstraction and automation has a bad reputation. That will hopefully change.

I hope exponential technology will eventually lead to virtual assistants that can use services ... and that we will be able to develop a lot faster and a lot more complex things without having to invest as much time in mastering skills and doing research (think Iron Man).

That is the kind of thinking that keeps me going (plus the hope that virtual lifes will be really cool in 10 or so years).

EDIT:

oh yeah, consider reading (or rereading) "The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People". The part about how interdependence helps more with efficiency than independence could also be inspirational ... and you might want to go for team projects as a result.

Maybe you shouldn't work on "grand" video games projects. It is sure that if you want to marry social life, love life, college with a regular job on top of that, you won't build the next WoW killer (random example) all by yourself, but many small studios have proven that a good (or popular) game isn't necessarily a complex one. I'd even say, in this era of android phones and cheap tablets that simpler games are a fairly solid choice.

You don't define success either, that doesn't help. Is "success" earning tons of money ? Is it getting downloads ? Is it being happy with what you achieved ?

My college years are long gone, but I manage to have a social life, a part time job (repairing broken computers, installing basic networks) as an independent, my own (small) place, and still manage to find 2 to 4 hours a week to work on some of my projects. I only produce freewares, but if download counts are an acceptable estimate for you, I made AWPunk a popular server browser for Half-Life 1 and its mods (including counterstrike) before the STEAM era, and was still a student at that time. It had around 80k downloads total.

More recently, I made a very popular series of mods for X3:Reunion and X3: Terran Conflict which ended up in their Collector edition (no money, but it looks good in my curriculum vitae), not counting around 25-50k downloads a piece on my websites. And before saying "it's only a mod", you should look at their scripting language, the amount of code i put into them is quite massive especially when you take their IDE into account.

I did other stuff, less successful, but I learnt a lot from those projects, so I don't consider that a loss either as it help me write faster for newer games I intend to get a (small) income from.

On the other hand, and depending on the country you live in, It can be hard, sure. I don't own a car, live cheaply and vacations are often out of the question. I could (probably) find a regular job relatively easily, but I made a choice to favor friends and free time over money so I can code what I want instead of debugging database applications. I don't regret it, but that's not for everyone.

Imho, It's about you and the goals you set for your life. If you're still at college, it's probably a bit early to be sure about such matters.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/01/02/how-to-live-on-24-hours-a-day/

Now, however, I work full time, have friends, go to college, and have a girl friend who is constantly demanding my time.