I find it kind of odd that newbies are told to make games to improve their skills. Making a text game is pretty straightforward, but a game like pong? That's just a whole new level, which newbies don't have experience in. How're they expected to make games using graphics? I mean, I know there're tutorials, but some frameworks don't have many. For example, I had before attempted to make a pong clone in Monogame, only to be frustrated and not understand how it was meant to work.

Just curious about this.

It's because it is so much better to concentrate on small, really small, practical projects that you can actually stand a chance to complete than diving head first into making a game engine or a MMO.

If Pong seems like too much, then it would probably make sense to set the bar lower and pick a simpler project. :)

You learn more from finishing your projects, no matter how small/trivial they are.

Make games, not engines.

I try to tell Newbies to do that.

The simpler the game, the better.

I find it kind of odd that newbies are told to make games to improve their skills. Making a text game is pretty straightforward, but a game like pong? That's just a whole new level, which newbies don't have experience in. How're they expected to make games using graphics? I mean, I know there're tutorials, but some frameworks don't have many. For example, I had before attempted to make a pong clone in Monogame, only to be frustrated and not understand how it was meant to work.

Just curious about this.

The bolded is the key part. People learn by doing. Only so much can be gained from reading a book or looking at tutorials. It may be frustrating at times but its by far the best way to learn. Learning is such an iterative process. There is no point when you go from not knowing to knowing something. You have to practice it and get better. And as people probably want to get into game development, the easiest way to learn by doing is to make a game. Sure it can be frustrating, but if it wasn't what would you be learning from it?

There's a lot of things I have learned by just making random programs/games and over time I got better. For example I made a bunch of simple XNA games a few years ago. With each one I learned the concepts of using the XNA framework and got better. And this was all from trying something new and when I came across something I didn't know how to do, a quick google usually showed me the answer.

It's because it is so much better to concentrate on small, really small, practical projects that you can actually stand a chance to complete than diving head first into making a game engine or a MMO.

If Pong seems like too much, then it would probably make sense to set the bar lower and pick a simpler project.

You learn more from finishing your projects, no matter how small/trivial they are.

Make games, not engines.

I try to tell Newbies to do that.

The simpler the game, the better.

No, I'm just saying that it's hard if you have no knowledge of a framework, and if there are no good tutorials :P

I agree, but it is much better to be focused than blindly trying to do things.

Small game projects are really focused.

Not saying that it should be the very first step that a 'Newbie' should take, but as soon as possible.

First you just learn how to create a project in the first place: open a window, paint it magenta, load a model, rotate a triangle, etc.

When you have done that, you can move the model using the keyboard, and you are well underway to recreate Pong.

I think small projects, and actually finishing them, is great for building confidence.

Instead of constantly hitting a wall because you are trying to do things that you are not ready for (yet).

No Silver Bullet, though.

In some ways many game engines/frameworks available today are simply too high-level to write games like Pong or Tetris in their most basic form, with their 3D-oriented abstractions (cameras, projections, models), interactive physics systems, node-based programming and whatnot, and they are most likely to confuse and discourage you than teach you anything.

If you are starting out just moving up from text-based games, all you really want is an event loop and a canvas, so that's what I'd recommend.

It's because it is so much better to concentrate on small, really small, practical projects that you can actually stand a chance to complete than diving head first into making a game engine or a MMO.

If Pong seems like too much, then it would probably make sense to set the bar lower and pick a simpler project.

You learn more from finishing your projects, no matter how small/trivial they are.

Make games, not engines.

I try to tell Newbies to do that.

The simpler the game, the better.

No, I'm just saying that it's hard if you have no knowledge of a framework, and if there are no good tutorials

Well, telling people to make games bares no influence on their choice of framework. Of course, the person giving this advice also has the option of suggesting frameworks with good and reliable resources. Besides, what else are you going to do? If you have no experience in doing something, what would you suggest a newbie should do to gain that experience? If you ask me, making a simple games gives fantastic insight and serves as a great stepping stone in the right direction.

I tell them to make small games as a compromise.

If I tell them to continue learning the basics, they say 'screw you, I know the basics!' and frolic off to go start recruiting for their WoW-killer MMO.

Telling them to make pong shows them how hard even a basic game can be, gives them experience solving problems and introductory experience in architecture (though it'll be awhile yet before they really begin to design architecture up-front instead of winging it as they go), forces them to return and ask specific questions ("how do I handle collision between the ball and the paddle?", instead of "how do I make a game?"), and at the same time lets them see visual non-text progress which is a great motivator.

*gets his old man slippers and puts them on...*

When I was a lad we didn't have engines. If you wanted to make a game, you learned the commands to draw lines and shapes on the screen (very easy 1 line affairs), then you learned and understood the concept of graphics coordinates (best explained as being like school graph paper), and then you just had a simple infinite loop drawing lines or something on the screen and the rest came from there. Back then a game loop with input and graphics was ten lines at most.

Things have changed with the onset of massive layers of abstractions, and for the newbie they maybe haven't changed for the better.

I think if I hasn't started gamedev back in the days of 8 bit, I would have struggled so much more grasping the concept now if I was a newbie in 2015. Solutions are aimed towards those who know what they are doing. Good news for us and bad news for newbies...

That is the reason why I don't usually recommend Unity or Unreal to newbies because 'they' have no way of appreciating or even comprehend what goes on under the hood.

And they get to spend too much energy on understanding the engine architecture when what they need to be focusing on is getting the basics down.