Indie Game Development and You!
A novice solo developer‘s thoughts on getting started, staying involved, burning out, and starting again
So you’ve decided to become an indie game developer. Congratulations! You have just taken your first step into a world of stress, burnout, depression, and anxiety.
Wait, what? What kind of an introduction is that? It almost sounds as though I am trying to dissuade you from pursuing game development. I promise I’m not. Perhaps I should have started this out differently. I’ll try again.
Congratulations! You have just taken your first step into an exciting world of interactive entertainment in one of the most artistic mediums available.
Is that better? I hope so. I am not here to vent negativity. I am actually incredibly passionate about game design and development and pursuing it is one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made. I’d be remiss, though, if I didn’t acknowledge the incredible dedication and perseverance it takes to make games and the difficulties involved.
My experiences with game development are not unique, but I hope that by giving you a glimpse into my life as a software engineer by day and game developer by night/weekend/morning/ lunch break/whenever I can squeeze some time in it will help you as you either get started with your own project or continue working on an existing project.
Game Development is Rewarding. Game Development is Hard.
As a professional programmer, it’s probably obvious that I love the process of solving problems because, in essence, that’s what programming is. You are solving multiple layers of problems. Are you creating an application? If so, you are aiming to solve a problem with the creation of the app? Are you deep in your code trying to figure out why something just won’t work like you think it should?
Well, you are obviously trying to solve a problem there. Programming is all about problem-solving no matter what form it takes. Game development is certainly no different. By creating a game, you are attempting to solve a problem that every single person faces: boredom. You are creating something for the purposes of entertainment. By definition, a problem is hard. Do you see where I’m going with this? I’m assuming that if you read the section header you do. Game development is hard. It’s worth saying twice.
If you are new to game development, you will be bonked right on the head with how hard it is from the get-go. Even if you have experience with programming, art, music, etc you are sure to run into hurdles immediately. Game development isn’t like other forms of software development. It combines programming, visual art, music, sound, animation, and often even more into one medium. It’s worth noting here that I am writing this from the perspective of a solo game developer. I do almost everything myself (aside from the odd bit of help here and there or the usage of “off the shelf” assets and things). When you start to take the plunge into game development the difficulty begins immediately with the very first question you must always ask yourself: where do I start?
Do you start by learning how to code (if you are not an experienced programmer)? Do you download Unity and just take a stab at it? Do you jump into Photoshop and start making some pixel art? Maybe you look online and discover Blender, which you then download and begin to learn how to do 3D modeling. Which of these do you think is an appropriate starting point for you? What if you are already experienced in game development? Maybe you’ve made a couple of small games and you are ready to start a new one. What do you make?
These questions are not so easily answered because the answer largely depends on who you are and where you are in your game dev journey. A lot of people give up before they even truly begin for this reason, or they never even make the decision to start because of how overwhelming it all is.
Say you’ve gotten past the up-front barrage of questions and emerged on the other side with some answers. You get started learning some of the tools you need to make games. You’ve thought up a game idea that excites you and feels attainable. You sit down at your desk to get started and… damn it all, it’s that same old question again! WHERE DO I START?
You’ve practiced your development skills. You’ve maybe taken a Udemy course or two and you’ve made a couple of practice projects. You have an idea and you feel ready to get started but what do you do first? Do you start creating some art? Do you start implementing some gameplay systems with pink squares and blue circles and other placeholder art? And already, here is another roadblock. It’s one thing to follow along with a YouTuber or an instructor on Udemy, but it’s another thing entirely to start building a game from the ground up.
Now let’s fast forward a bit. You’ve been working for awhile and you’re doing a good job of making time to work on your project on a regular basis. But, your friends miss you. They wonder why you’ve been so distant lately. Maybe your partner is a bit irritated that you get home from work, eat dinner, then jump right into your project. Maybe you spend your Saturdays working on your game but now you’re missing that work time because of family obligations.
Balance is the next major hurdle that hobbyist game developers face. How do you balance your day job, family time, home obligations, social time, leisure time, and game development time? It's not an easy problem to solve and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. This is what causes burnout. You can’t spend 40 hours a week working on your game because you are already spending 40 hours a week at your day job, so you have to fit in development time wherever you can. It’s hard to stay consistent, and without consistency, it’s hard to stay on the wagon. It’s hard to stay energized to do the work, and without energy, your motivation goes right down the drain.
This is exactly what happened to me recently. I was feeling burnt out. My day job was causing me a lot of stress and the overtime was exhausting. It was hard to come home after a long day of starting at a computer screen only to stare at a different computer screen. I was having trouble keeping things consistent and I was having trouble feeling motivated to do the work. I wanted to do the work, I just didn’t want to do the work. I was neglecting my other needs as a human being. I wasn’t giving myself enough leisure time. I wasn’t spending enough time with my partner. I wasn’t spending enough time being active. Suddenly, everything came crashing down. I took a long hiatus from game development (an unplanned hiatus) because I just flat burnt myself out.
You’ve been burnt out for a while now. You haven’t even so much as looked at your project in about a month. You feel the itch to get back into your project and pick up where you left off. You turn your computer on and load up your game and… what the hell is this? You don’t even recognize your own code. Where did you leave off? It’s not like you planned to take time off, you got burnt out. What were you working on? Ok, you’ve been using a planning tool of some kind. Good, we’re back in business. You go back to what you were working on before but nothing makes sense to you. You never even finished the method you were working on. What were you doing? This design doesn’t even make sense, what in the world was past-you thinking?
Enter the next roadblock — difficulty spikes. The previous example isn’t the only case where the difficulty can spike way up. Maybe you’ve been working hard on an RPG for a while and it’s time to develop an inventory system for it. You do a ton of reading and start prototyping things out but nothing seems to be working. You spend an entire week just trying to get a basic inventory system working, but it's a buggy mess and you can’t figure out what you are doing wrong. Ah well, you’ve lost interest anyway. What you really want to do is start a new project. You’ve had a great idea in your mind and you may as well get started on that because you aren’t having fun anymore. Suddenly, your project is dead.
And repeat.
So many developers give up on their projects and repeatedly start new ones, only to keep the cycle ever-turning. It makes sense. When you start a project, you are incredibly gung-ho and you do your work with gusto. It’s fun. You overcome a few hurdles and it is rewarding. You start to get somewhere and what you see on the screen starts to look like what you see in your head. But eventually, the “new car smell” fades away. Developing a game takes a very, very long time.
You know the feeling when you’ve been playing an open-world RPG for over 100 hours and you are starting to feel burnt out on it? Developing even the simplest game can often take hundreds of hours, if not significantly more. What’s more, the difficulty of the work often ramps up over the course of development. Once you’ve been involved with your project for several dozens of hours, that’s when you are sure to find yourself working on some pretty challenging and difficult things. The fun has faded, but that shiny new game idea in your mind is calling your name. The end result is you get nothing finished. You have 10 projects at various states of completion, but none of them are actually completed.
What Do I Do?
By now I’m sure you get the point. Game development really is hard! But what do you do to succeed? I’ll attempt to make this part brief after my long-winded rant. Here is a list of things I try to do to help me keep at it.
1. Consistent effort
Put in at least a little bit of effort on a regular basis. You may have heard about the “no zero days” guideline that some people adhere to. I mostly agree with it, but try not to burn yourself out. Take a day off. Go outside. See a movie with your partner. Take a little vacation. If you feel like your wick is getting shorter and shorter, take a break but try not to take a month-long break. You’ll have a major uphill battle when you decide to return to your project. Maybe shorten the length of your work sessions. Spend 30 minutes on your project today instead of 3 hours. Just be sure you put in the effort consistently so you don’t lose focus.
2. Start small
You probably have a few amazing video game ideas in your head. Maybe you’ve got a game you are dying to make and you just can’t understand why nobody has made it before. Well, chances are it’s a huge, complicated piece of software you are dreaming of. If you are new to game development especially, be sure to start small. Don’t tackle your dream game right away. Make your own metaphorical Flappy Bird. Do something simple that focuses on a few mechanics and finish the project. Work on another small project and finish it. Then another. Over time, you will build up your skillset and when you eventually do start that dream project, you’ll be more prepared for it.
3. Focus on what you enjoy
For solo game developers specifically, spend extra time on what you enjoy the most. Do you love making art? Focus a lot on making beautiful art and animation for your game. Do you love programming and implementing complex technical features? Spend more time in the code and less time on the art. It’s important that you do it all (unless you can outsource the work you don’t want to do, or you work with a team) but it’s important to be sure you enjoy what you are doing. Lean into your strengths and keep your motivation up by doing things you enjoy.
4. Build relationships
This is something I’ve struggled with. I’m not big on social media and I’m pretty introverted by nature. But, I can tell you from experience, it pays to build relationships within the game development community. For one, its amazing to see what indie creators are doing! I am inspired on a regular basis by indie creators both big and small. On top of that, it will help you stay motivated if you can share your work with others. You don’t have to be super official about it either, just find some folks to talk to. Maybe start a Twitter account like I did where you can share development updates. The only important thing is to try to integrate yourself into the indie dev community because it is a huge source of inspiration and motivation.
5. Finish something
Nothing is as demoralizing as repeatedly starting new projects and never having anything to show for all the hours you put into your work. Try to finish something. Anything. I need to do a better job of taking my own advice here as well. I’m fortunate that I have not fallen off the wagon too many times in my short career as a hobbyist game developer, but I’ve come close. I think something I want to do is spend a little bit of time away from my current project to make a very tiny game from start to finish. I want to go through the entire process. Make a game, even a simple one, and get to a point where I can call it done. It is incredibly motivating to complete something in general. When I spend time practicing the guitar, it is always so satisfying to finally get a song down from start to finish. This keeps me motivated to keep learning and take on new and more challenging songs. This applies to other kinds of work as well, and game development is no exception.
6. Try again
If you fail, try again. It’s that simple. Maybe you got super frustrated and gave up on your project. That’s ok! Dust yourself off and try again. Start a new project or try to resurrect your dead project. Analyze what went wrong. Do you need to build up certain skills? Did you over-scope your project and get overwhelmed? Do that analysis and see what you can do differently going forward to avoid those problems in the future.
Closing Thoughts
Game development is seriously one of the most fun and rewarding things I’ve ever done. I consider it to be the ultimate artistic medium for a reason — it's a convergence of storytelling, art, animation, music, and abstract game design. I love all of those things. At various points in my life, I’ve wanted to be a musician, an author, a painter or illustrator, a filmmaker, even a board game designer. Being a solo game developer allows me to satisfy the parts of me that want to do those things all in one go.
That complexity gives indie game development an undeniable allure, but it also ensures that the work remains challenging. Don’t let that discourage you though! The most rewarding things in life require work. That’s why we get so much satisfaction from killing that boss in Dark Souls after it burnt us to a crisp 20 times. Stick with it and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.
