Hello all,

I hope this is the right place for me to seek help on my case; as I often find myself struggling with questions I ask myself and most of the time not really finding any concrete answer.. Am I really supposed to write a full game all by myself at my current stage? Graphics (actually creating nice ones) were never my strong point, should I invest in learning how to properly code and design them anyway? Can/Should Graphics and Game Logic really be fully decoupled? Can I simply be a Game Logic Developer? And a lot more of those general questions.. I know they may seem too broad or too unspecific and maybe very dependent on what I am trying to do, but I feel like I am never able to get a good answer, searching online doesn't help a lot since you get a lot of different perspectives on the same scale, I know in the end it might be more of a subjective approach, but I said to myself, let's ask these guys, maybe they would be able to help me! In case this is not the right place to ask these kind of advice, I would like to apologize in advance and there would be no need for you to continue ! ?

A little bit of background on my experience and what I would like to achieve next: I have a been a professional programmer for about 3 years now in a big company that produces Financial Software. I have been surrounded during those years by very experienced developers from which I learned a lot, as well as having company standards that always strive to have the best quality code. Having said that I can safely say that I am at least a “decent” developer, with good knowledge of the newest code features (mainly in C++) as well as best practices and code design architecture. Finance have never been my strong point of interest, and I have arrived to a point where I am getting bored of coding stuff that I do not really care about. However I have always been interested in games, playing them (I have been a gamer for a while now), and mainly how they were made. Now whenever I play a game, I can start imagining how the code is written behind it all, and that actually really excites me.. and I can easily start thinking about ways to even improve the game code and logic content wise (maybe I am being too confident on this one, but ultimately that is where I want to get!). So basically I want to shift to being a Game Programmer of some sort.

Now a little bit of what I have been doing regarding the Game Development; don't get too excited because it is really not much sadly. Since the day I have started learning about code architecture, on my free time I have started writing projects about small games with their full logic. And to be honest, I really enjoyed writing that Game Logic! For me it was way more meaningful than all that Finance Stuff that I have been coding during these years, I can so much more easily relate to that, and it is actually really fun to write! Sadly those projects were never really completed as I never created any GUI content to have the full game ready. Ugly command line manual play and mostly unit testing were the only way for me to make sure the game logic were correct. However I also had a proper interface to my game assuming a GUI project would eventually be using my game to construct on top of it, and actually using it as a library. After writing few games, I decided that it was time for me to learn a bit more about graphics and look at the options to maybe one day finalize one game. I decided to learn how to use Unreal Engine (C++ being my main programming language). At first it was very interesting, I learned about how engines work in general, how graphics are actually made and coded, I actually learned a lot, and it wasn't so bad. I then decided to build my first graphics for a small board game I had implemented. As it was a small game, it wasn't so hard to do. However, this is where I realized that there might be no way for me to actually make a nice looking game :( It was working fine, however it was not nice to watch, and to be honest, I did not really enjoy the whole coding graphics part. This is where the struggle started. This is where I started asking myself, should I really be a Game Developer if I am unable to do proper and nice graphics? Will I be able to work in the domain without those skills? Will i ever be able to create my own proper game?

So here I am now, asking myself if I should invest in something I really not enjoying that much (Graphics), where what I really want to do is really not that far (building Game Logic). Sadly I really struggle in continuing those small projects because of that. I have been developing a small Mobile game on Unreal Engine, the idea is cool, however the graphics are really stopping me and demotivating to finalize it. I know that you cannot always do things you like, and especially when working on your own on small projects, you kind of have to do a little bit of everything; meaning that sometimes you will have to do stuff you don;t really enjoy.

So this is my little story, I hoped I haven't bored a lot of you. What I am actually looking for are some tips from more experienced game developer on what you think I should do, or invest my time on right now. I am also assuming that I am not the only having theses preferences in this domain (I am not that special after all). I am actually looking for potential jobs where you actually work on Game Logic mainly. Is this a good idea?

It took me some time to actually convince myself to write this post, in the end I told myself that the best place to get actual answers is to actually ask people that have more experience than me, and stop wasting my time in my own head. So here I am, I am sure that anything from the most basic to most complex ideas would actually help me a lot! I am really excited to see what you guys think!

Thanks a lot if you read it all through!

@LittleKing

Yep these are lots of questions so I'll try to simply answer them as they come.

Am I really supposed to write a full game all by myself at my current stage?

If you are referring to creating everything (code, graphics, music, design, etc.) the answer is no, you're not supposed to do all of that. Probably you've heard some successful stories about solo devs creating the next world hit. Surely these guys got talent, but they also needed 10x more luck than talent to pull out something like that. (and a lot of hard work). Working like this is not fun at all though.

But still, you should be able, at least for learning purposes, to create a full game by yourself. Use free sprites, free sound/music. Ask for advices, read, learn, try things. That's the only way to learn. And if you get the opportunity, do it with other people.

Should I invest in learning how to properly code and design them (graphics) anyway?

Do it if you like it but again, you're not supposed to.

Can/Should Graphics and Game Logic really be fully decoupled?

Yes, always. Think of rendering/graphics as a visual representation of a game's current state. Logic doesn't need to know anything about how it's represented. For example, you should be able to create both a 2D and 3D versions of your game maintaining the same logic for both. If the game is well designed (or any other piece of software for that matter), you'd arrive to this decoupling in a natural way.

Can I simply be a Game Logic Developer?

The way I see it there are two big groups of programmers: generalists and specialists. Specialists are easy to spot, they work almost exclusively (and sometimes make a career out of it) in a single problem domain (typically IA, rendering, physics, audio, etc.). These guys are highly technically skilled in their domain. Generalists don't require such a high level of specialization on a specific domain, but still they need to know (a lot) about a much much wider group of disciplines, being game logic one of them. Maybe you can get to work as ‘game logic' programmer for a single project, but most of the time you'll be also doing dozens of different things.

Should I really be a Game Developer if I am unable to do proper and nice graphics?

I don't know how to draw and I've been programming games for the past 22 years (several AAA titles included)

Will I be able to work in the domain without those skills?

Will i ever be able to create my own proper game?

I am actually looking for potential jobs where you actually work on Game Logic mainly. Is this a good idea?

At this point you should already know the answers.

Littleking, you don't have to make games all by yourself. If you are working at a professional game company, you are part of a team of specialists. If you are making games all by yourself, then you have to do what you can, and hire contractors to do the rest for you. I wrote https://sloperama.com/advice/lesson7.htm to explain about the different types of jobs in the game industry. Since you're already in another industry, all you have to do is find the job type that's closest to what you're doing now. I wrote https://sloperama.com/advice/lesson41.htm about switching into games from another industry.

And I have lots of other articles that go to the kind of questions you are asking. If you think you'd like to go solo, I recommend you get a job in the game industry first, so you can learn and prepare.

@trapazza Thank you so much for taking the time to write this very detailed answer! It surely helps a lot!

trapazza said:
Can/Should Graphics and Game Logic really be fully decoupled?

I still am a bit confused over this question though. I understand that the ultimate/ideal answer would be a full yes, however is that actually possible?

I take my case where I had a written a small game logic in a separate library. This was easy as my game did not contain any big movement logic (on a map for example), and physics for example; it was really a simple board game design. Thinking about bigger games, I feel like there would be a need to take advantage of everything that the Game Engines provides, and for me (my current knowledge/point of view, this would mean adding some coupling between Logic and GUI. Of course creating proper interfaces for these communications between the two modules would be possible, but I have a feeling like that might be overdoing it maybe? I am really not sure on what the best practice would be, and how to set limits.

My biggest personal issue is sometimes overworking designs, which, first makes me loose a lot of time, second sometimes makes me feel like my project is not written well enough, and sadly would make me abandon. My problem is that I do not have references to compare to, in order to know where to stop, and the confusion I get into sometimes brings down my motivation to continue.

Anyway, again thank you so much, your answer will really help me find the best path for my future right now. I will work on that!

@Tom Sloper Thank you so much for your answer! I will definitely check out your links and take my time with them! I think this would help me a lot in understanding what I am really searching for in the Gaming industry!

Getting into a gaming company is definitely my next step, I am just trying to discovering the opportunities and trying to find the spot that interests me the most!