No worries. When I showed him my mini game, he got the biggest grin and then asked me if I could show him how to make a game. He's most definitely interested. Even though he may not code for a living, he will at least have a basic understanding of some tools that will help him automate any kind of computer job.

He's also into dance, but I doubt that he'll dance for Madonna or anything like that.

i'm not certain that I'm new to game development. I made my first game (Blind Poker) like 10 years ago now. Getting older.

Genome75 said:

My main problem is that I work alone I talk with friends and family but no one I've met shares my passion for the ideas I want to create.

Welcome to my world. I just kind of keep chugging on in a do or die sort way ?. Sorry if that's not so helpful but I think your problem is not so unique. The only advice I can give, (which is probably also not so helpful) is try to get to the point where you create something impressive enough that it grabs people's attention. At least that's my plan.

@Genome75 Whatever excuses you have, another guy has it way worse. I was born in America and have lived abroad for 15 years. There is no game jams here, there is no dev community, there is a huge language barrier. Nobody around me shares any passion for game-dev or often seemingly anything at all. (I'd say the locals are pragmatic and down to Earth) But I don't count myself as having it that bad. Because I know there is some guy in bum-foo nowhere (maybe my neighbor) with a 20 year old computer somehow patched up enough to run some game-dev software with some guy using English as a second language somehow able to cope and just create.

For over a decade I did nothing about improving my “decent” college background in coding except a little bit of modding. My only regret will always be that I didn't bite the bullet and pick up Unity years ago and get to work sooner. It's utterly amazing what one person can do now with a few programs like Unity, Blender etc and/or a bit of assets for models and music.

Get to work!

dragonalumni said:
Whatever excuses you have, another guy has it way worse.

The thing is though, for every person, the worst thing that's happened to them is the worst thing that's happened to them. And there's always someone who has it worse than you on some metric. It's kind of a pointless exercise. The people you compare yourself to who seem to have it worse in one area may be better off in another that isn't obviously apparent.

People have different takes and attitude over this problem. I used to motivate people to start and finish, but I realize it's easier to just say what I'm doing and let people take it however they want.

I have enough amount of unfinished projects every year. Let's just say around 4 - 10. Most of the time it gets to the code without art assets. Most of them I have created the art assets but no code yet. Sometimes it's just an idea written to a notepad. One of the time I forced myself and managed to have one go through to the finish line, published, and luckily made money. How I did that, to be honest I don't know. There are times I feel like I am motivated to continue, and times I stopped completely, and a moment where I want to change myself to be disciplined and be like a zombie to finish one, regardless of how I hated the game during development that I was once so excited to make at first.

My vicious cycle is more or less like this:

1. Got an exciting game idea, loved it, believed that it is the best and no one does it
2. Start coding it and realizes how much work needed. Start warming up on other stuff for the assets or coding, found new stuff that maybe helps your idea come to life
3. Started to realize how overwhelming and impossible the project is (even though it's realistically small, experienced enough to know it's, say at least one-month dev time small), hated the project, and start thinking that there might be a better new idea
4. Start sharing on how overwhelming gamedev can be
5. Back to number one (or gave up entirely from the field… for a moment)

The only thing I am certain is, only discipline that breaks the cycle in the middle towards a productive cycle. It stops me to get to number 5, at best 4, and soldier through the number 3, as long as the scope of work is clear. Sometimes at that moment I miss the once irritating tight deadlines and peer pressures at work or freelance, cause being my own boss is unexpectedly harder than just being told/pressured on what to do. Some others that I know usually just enjoy the process a lot they don't even have to soldier through the process at all, therefore way more productive than I do.

Did I have team before? Yes I did. Fell apart? Yes, a few times. Not because of a fight or whatever, just going on different path as time goes by. Now I work alone, but that's because I know my projects and keep it as small as what one-man can realistically do, and still yet I can't finish most of them. I'd love to make a team again, but I'm just comfortable the way I am right now. More members mean that I want bigger projects, and bigger projects mean bigger risks, at least as a hobbyist like me. I want to, but not for a moment. Everything has a time and place.

I have a family who'd somehow let me babbling over geek stuff, even though they don't understand. At least this always teaches me to only talk at the level that they can hear and hopefully exciting enough. On the other side, having a community that can understand what I'm talking about isn't always a happy ending for me, especially on deeper topic. Though I can agree at least it's nice that there's a group that can connect to how we think or what we do.

taby said:
i'm not certain that I'm new to game development. I made my first game (Blind Poker) like 10 years ago now. Getting older.

Sorry about that.

In your post it sounded like you were making assumptions and saying that fun playing games = fun making games.

No problems. ?

Genome75 said:
I've been working in Unity. Any teams that I've joined in the past fell apart and did not stay focused.

instead of wasting time on losers who sit around some camp fire with their ,,unity engine'' because they were too dumb to compile an opengl tutorial and failed to write a bubblesort within a 3 month long timespan, you should learn real programming and then that might restores not just your passion but also your productivity.

Genome75 said:
unmotivated to complete a single game

make your hobby your job, and you will -n-e-v-e-r- -h-a-v-e- -to- -w-o-r-k- -a-g-a-i-n- -i-n- -y-o-u-r- -l-i-f-e- hate your hobby for the rest of your life.

Genome75 said:
Essentially looking for people to chat with to boost my motivation.

Beware what you are wishing for. Probably those fantastic unity people you were previously referring for, are the reason of your sorrow.

Approx 10-15 years ago, all of my friends were gamers, game developers, and sort of, as i have organized my friendship about my passion, which actually turned out not to be my passion after all.

This is how typical conversations went:

ohmygod the new mmorpgfpsbowelserver has been opened and it uses the new 16x antialiasing (r) geometryshader (tm) texture technology and they are earning monthly 100 million dollar i canot believe it its the new paradigm its the new future YOU ARE IDIOT AND YOU ARE LOSING OUT OF IT! BUT if you decide to reverse engineere it for me FOR FREE in the next 8 months of your life, then i will not just respect you but you will also be a hero BECAUSE THIS IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS OBSOLETE ARE YOU A FUCKIN 10 YEAR OLD NOT TO UNDERSTAND THIS AND NOT JOINING ME as the new 16x antialiasing (r) geometryshader (tm) texture technology MMORPG mmorpgfpsbowelserver is tryumphing over the universe and you dont even use a floating point frame buffer.

The thing is, nowadays if i know someone is a gamer, i only allow them in my circles if they are generating me profit, for example by buying some of my game engines or generating me profit indirectly.