Many of us took up game development with the goal of creating our own game, unaware of how long and difficult it could be.  After many years we discover we gravitate towards certain areas and distance ourselves from others.

What were your goals when you first took up games development, and where are you now? 

Originally: Trippy mathemativs, all kinds of equation visualization and emergent game behavior, duuuude!

Now: Business meetings on financing, presentation development of game concepts and backstory.

Thank you for sharing. Sounds like you've had quite a journey!

I started out graphics programming with Directx and desktop stuff. Despised the hipster mobile scene and stubbornly stuck to hardcoding game demos in C for the PC master race...

...now I spend my time programming Android and taking giddy steps towards mobile VR. Please don't tell anyone I've gone the way of the hipster!

For me its very difficult. I started out '99 playing around with tons of delphi opengl based samples, modified them and "tried" to make games out of them. Later i have written a ton of own opengl tech stuff - and always had the goal of making games out of that. Of course, only a tiny amount of demos had actually gameplay elements in it. Since them i was constantly learning, building stuff - but it seems i was never serious about making games. I just did technology stuff and enjoyed it.

But in the last couple of years i had a lot of motivation and tried much harder in making games, with the goal of actually finishing at least one game - completely by myself, on a very small scale. But guess what... i never got further than playable prototypes, even though tech stuff is not my problem ?

Nowadays i totally lost the motivation to do any game development at all... But i really hope to get my daugther to start liking programming as well, so we may code a game together or something.

Finalspace, its great that you are trying to pass on your knowledge to you daughter.  The beginnings of an indie studio, perhaps?  ?

Do you think you might be more interested in showcasing software technology rather than making games? The demo scene produces some very respectable talent - the "graffiti artists of the computing world", so to speak.

That said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPkC4oQbe04

...that is very good work!  Seeing the potential of your skill, maybe have three stages that can be visited like in the Megaman games but what you do in one will affect another.  Have another - much smaller - stage as a "home base" for the player( teleport between stages, like in Star Trek! ), and then a final stage for when the three main stages have been completed and so the player can visit the mysterious bad guy and give them a good sorting out! Hurrah!

Anyway, keep up the good work!?

I am everything. I mostly work alone so i have yo do everything myself.

I wanted to be an environment artist when I got into a 3d modeling school, and after graduating, I didn't get to do that for the longest time. I was mostly stuck doing general prop and vehicle modeling. But after years of that, I did get hired as an environment artist, and it's been lots of fun. I don't think I'll be changing my area of focus anytime soon.

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After many years we discover we gravitate towards certain areas and distance ourselves from others.

I actually found that when I entered school, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and the areas of focus to avoid, which at the time was character model, rigging, animation, etc. But, as I work on more teams, I find it very interesting to see how the other disciplines work and the fun things they are able to create, and sometimes I find myself wondering if eventually I might try to make my own character, build my own rig, or do a complex animation, etc. I do find my discipline very satisfying, but instead of pushing the others away, I find I am developing interests in things I would have otherwise ignored.

Writing, managing admin stuff, some marketing, a lot of the design stuff that does not involve actual drawing. 

Well I started game dev type stuff when I was a young teenager, using Alice 2.0 to make basic tank combat games. I slowly learned programming and ultimately transitioned from Alice to darkbasic, then left that behind and started using unity3d to make some very basic world explorers. After that I lost interest and focused more on pure AI and machine learning, did a degree in computer science at university. My senior year I picked up an interest in 3D art after taking 1 year of 3D art classes. That’s mainly what I focus on lately. Some examples:

I made a whole webcomic in 3D, it’s posted at dreamingengine.com

I am thinking of building a small game. Not sure if it will happen though. Let’s see.

EDIT: I should add that I’m a software developer now as well.

great thread, interesting reads.

I've always enjoyed playing and making games.  Started as a daydreamer, when I was lad I learned to program on a PET2000.  It was an old hand-me-down and I didn't have a disk drive so anything I programmed was lost as soon as I powered down the machine.  But some of the stuff my buddies and I came up with in our text-adventures are still laughed about to this day.  After that I discovered the randomizer function and made any sort of simple gambling game I could think of. Nothing fancy though, just half baked ideas.  I think one of them had colored lines.  As I've gotten older though I've become more interested in economics and global affairs and always had 'wouldn't it be cool if' game ideas. I've got a handle on programming but by no means am I any good at it.  Apart from games I am always thinking up stuff for art pieces, short animations and movies.  But apart from the occasional art piece none of my other idea's ever came to fruition. [ speaking of art ideas, this summer some of my more artistic acquaintances and I are getting together and each are going to contribute one piece to a fire.  The Idea being absolutely no record of the creation, you make to bake. No pictures of any of the pieces or recordings allowed ] 

And to this day I'm still a daydreamer and hopefully always will be.