Why people give up on game development

My path into game development was not the standard route. I got into programming because I loved computers. When I started university the hard decision on major for me was do I go Computer Science or Computer Engineering. Essentially hardware or software. Over the course of the last 7 years since I started university I slowly became more and more interested in game development. Now today nearly all my free time outside of work is spent working on games.

The majority of people I meet in this industry come the other way around. They begin the long road of programming with the goal of making games.

Last week I made a post on Reddit in the /r/gamedev community asking people to tell us why they didn't finish the game they set out to work on. The post got 80 replies and I have broken down the reasons that people don't finish their game.

People's comments generally fell into one of the following categories:

Got overwhelmed by the scope of creating a game.
Life got in the way
Lost motivation and momentum on the project
Got discouraged by genre competition
Technical difficulties or lack of abilities
Trouble working on a team

I think it's easy to imagine a game, draw up a few sketches, and make a simple game design document. But actually building a game and taking it to completion is seriously hard work. In the rest of this post I'm going to talk about each of the categories above and give my thoughts and recommendations on how you can overcome them.

Getting overwhelmed by the scope

Like I said earlier, it's easy to have ideas. But unless you've been making games for a while you're going to quickly get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things you need to do to create your idea. You have programming, game design, animations, UI, controllers, networking artwork, and lets not forget marketing so that people will actually see the thing you've created.

How do you get over this? Start small! Take whatever it is you want to build and build the smallest version of it you possibly can. For example on my game Tel-AI-phone I built the very first demo in about 12 hours, half of that on a road trip to see family for Thanksgiving. It had loads of bugs, no menu, it only ran on my computer, and it looked super bare bones. But the reaction I got when I finally got it working and made my family play it was spectacular. That feeling alone pushed me through the next months of development until I finally released the game.

Once you have built MVP of your game, iterate it one piece at a time.

Also not to dash your dreams. But if you compare you're idea to AAA games then you're surely going to get overwhelmed by the scope. Those games often have teams of 100+ people all working on the same game. Be sure you are realistic with what you set out to build.

Life getting in the way & loosing motivation

Building a game and carrying it through to launch is like running a marathon. It is long, arduous and you're going to wonder at times why you ever set out to do it. If game development is not your day job then you will likely have to give up many other things to bring your game to life.

Back to the marathon metaphor, if you start off too fast you might easily run out of energy in the end. How this applies to my life is that I have to have a cadence in my work. I find that if I stay up late to push some feature over the line my effectiveness and motivation waivers the next few days. Staying consistent in when and where I work are a key part to my completing my projects.

I think it's important to make a plan for creating a game. Not just a technical plan, but a personal plan. Ask yourself and answer the following questions. What days of the week will you work on the game and for how long? Where will you work? What's your plan if you loose motivation? What will you do if you have a bug you just can't fix? What is your goal with the project?

I think the last question is the most important. If your goal is to learn something, then quit when you've learned what you set out to learn. If the goal is to make your dream game, then understand ahead of time what you're signing up for.

Getting discouraged by competition

Be tough! Thousands of games are released every week and there are bound to be some that are similar to your game. Don't let this get you down. You are the special sauce for your game.

Another thought here is that I see this more from people who get into game development to "make their dream game." When they see someone else build what they thought they were trying to build they give up. Being a game developer generally needs to be something you are, not just something you do.

Technical difficulties & lack of ability

I feel like this easily fits into the Getting overwhelmed by scope category, but I want to talk to the beginners out there. Take it slow. If you get home from work one day and say "That's it, I'm quitting and making my dream game." Then I hope you married into money, you have a long road ahead of you.

I see quite a few people get hung up on making one aspect of their game perfect. Like getting the sky to look perfect or making some engine plugin work. Be willing to look past the early flaws of your game. Don't go down the rabbit hole of trying to fix one single bug and not letting the rest of the project move forward.

My recommended path into game development:

Pick an engine to work with (could not care less which one)
Find a free tutorial on YouTube on how to make a game that looks sorta interesting
Do a game jam and make a game that's 95% similar to the tutorial game
Do another game jam and make a game that's 90% similar
Make another game small
And another game slightly more complex game
Maybe just one more small game for good measure You get the point. Take it one step at a time, and don't bite off more than you can chew. You'll start to be able to gauge your abilities and you'll be better able to set the scope for your next projects.

Lastly, don't give up!

Trouble working with a team

Unfortunately I don't have team game dev experience, but I do have years of software development experience on teams. Here are my three pieces of advice:

Make sure everyone is on the same page for the vision of the project.
Make sure everyone has set the expectations on what they're expected to contribute, and communicate limitations ahead of time.
Make the work batch size as small as possible. Use a free tool like Trello to manage what each item in the game that needs to be worked on. Also be they type of person you would like to work.

There's a great GDC talk about the development of Octodad, in it they talk about the struggles they had getting their team of college students to work together.

Conclusion

If I could sum up my biggest take away from all of these is to start small and be consistent. Making your game will undoubtedly take more work than you think. Finishing your project will not happen in a weekend of all-nighters, rather of consistently putting the development of your game as a priority in your life.

P.S. Got a seriously unexpected reply to the Reddit post. See it here.