I have heard many aspiring game devs say “I’m not going to make a game I wouldn’t play” and even though I agree that you should work on games you like to play you need to keep your expectations in check. If you only play major AAA games like Fifa, Zelda, Uncharted or Halo you are probably not going to make a game like that as your personal project.
Start small and simple
I have heard many experienced game devs talks where their number one advice to aspiring devs is to start by doing small simple games which don’t take a lot of time to finish. This is not only to lower devs expectations, but to also make them understand that by completing personal projects you are gaining precious experience. The first game you complete probably won’t match your expectations but you need to keep in mind that these personal projects are stepping stones and that once you finish one the next one you create will be bigger and better than the previous one. Now just because you are doing a smaller game that doesn’t mean it can’t be a fun game, finding what makes a game “FUN” is great skill to have, and it can make want to play games you never thought before.
Sonic Maze – one of my first games circa 2009
Surpassing expectations over time
Like I mention in my previous post about lack of motivation I do believe personal projects are very useful to get into the gaming industry but like everything in life it takes time to make it right. I would like mention a game dev youtube channel I follow called Sebastian Lague, on the 1st of January 2020 he posted a video called My First 10 Years of Game Development. In the video you can see the progression of his projects over time and with each project they grow in size and quality, probably always surpassed his initial expectations.
Sebastian Lague Youtube video – My First 10 Years of Game Development
What I’m expecting from my game
I know its not going to win any awards but I’m making to game to understand how far have my game dev skills developed in the last 5 years, my expectations are that the game I create now is better than the one that came before it, to make something from start to finish that I can say I did it all and to display on my portfolio. While I wouldn’t say the original game has fun to play I think I found something this time, what I believe the “FUN” part of the original game should have been.
After sharing this blog on social media, I got some comments talking about the lack of motivation that some people felt while trying to do their own personal projects and I would like to address that from my experience with this project.
I immediately remembered a video I saw on youtube that tackles this issue from Toniko Pantoja called The Harsh Reality about Personal Projects in the Long Run , there is this misconception that creating games is easy and this couldn’t be farther from the truth, making a game requires a lot effort and specific skills, it is exactly like any other kind of project and when people find this out, that is usually when the motivation ends.
I have seen a lot of people talk about creating personal projects, how aspiring game devs should do them and how these projects can help you get a job in game dev and while I do think that it is true no one really talks about the enormous effort that it takes to do one of these projects outside of work, while still taking into account a healthy life style, having time for friends and family and also time for leisure and resting.
Toniko Pantoja – The Harsh Reality about Personal Projects in the Long Run
Decisions before starting
In the beginning of the project I had to think about that I would like to change in my process not to suffer from lack of motivation again, I have had multiple projects in the past where I start working on something and then quit after 1, 2 or 3 months due to lack of motivation.
One restriction that I had to keep in mind while creating this game was that I wouldn’t have much time to work on it, I’m currently working full time at a AAA studio and I have a family with the small child so usually I don’t have a lot of spare time, but I still wanted to create and finish a game. I started planning objectives I wanted to deliver first but I didn’t give them an end date because of the decision I took, I wanted to be flexible with myself and not feel pressured, I didn’t want to work on the game when I felt tired, I didn’t want to force myself to work on the game every day, I could just take a break without feeling about not reaching that weeks objectives.
One issue I now see with my decision is that because I don’t have end dates on my tasks (or official sprints) I don’t have information on how much time a task was overdue for delivery but I can get I rough idea from my GIT repository, of how many days I worked during a month, what did I work during that month and how many commits per day or per month I did in that time.
Tracking work tells a story
The development started on August last year and the first month had great promise, during the month of August I worked almost every day on the project. First interesting fact from the beginning of September till the 26th I didn’t do any work, I was on holidays and spent all my time with family, you may ask “why not keep working during that time to finish the game faster”, I didn’t want to feel pressured there is a time and place for everything, and it paid off, the next months October and November were great worked on the project almost every day, of course in December I noticed another drop in the amount of work but that was to be expected, as I was spending more time with family.
After New Year’s however I observed an interesting fact in January I didn’t work a lot on the game only 7 days and in February I didn’t do a single commit, I remember feeling tired at that time, I had to stop working on the project, instead I played a couple of games during that month I started and finished Moonlighter and Sparklite as homework for the game, I started feeling energetic again and in March I started working on the game again but I took it slowly only 9 days that month, and it worked yet again during April and May I worked almost every day during these two months.
No work done during February 2020 according to GIT
Conclusions
I’m pretty happy with progress of the game so far and I think there are 2 main reasons why I’m not feeling the lack of motivation on this development like other projects I had in the past, the decision that I took in the beginning not to have set dates for deliveries really helped me out through the development, I never felt pressured to do something, if I didn’t have time and if I had to take time for family I would just do it and then come back to work on the game again with more energy. I also didn’t try to force myself to work a specific amount of time each day, I would only work the time that I felt comfortable with, it could be 5 minutes or an hour but that would be it, no more.
These 2 decisions might seem to be the same but to me one is working to achieve a goal and the other is planning my life to schedule time to work, from my point of view they achieve different things and these 2 changes are there the biggest difference from other projects that I have done in the past and never finished.
