this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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I'm so glad I made games as a hobby before I got anywhere close to graduating. Killed that dream real fast. It felt like shit having to play your own game so many times the game lost all meaning and it was hard to gauge if it was even fun anymore.
Reminds me of learning to play a piece of music you love. By the time you master it, it seems all the magic has disappeared.
I tried to teach myself piano. I actually enjoyed it when I was learning it, however I was really enjoying the progress I was making and less about the music I was playing. I wonder though if you get really good with music, you can probably learn and play new pieces much more quickly so maybe the magic won't fade as quickly.
I think you appreciate the piece in a different way, it's less magic and more knowledge.
Game making professionally is more like going all the way to playing a full piano concerto to a paying audience.
Sure you start by learning to play the piano, which is fun, but you also have to compose several pieces that people will like enough that they'll pay to hear them, organise the concert, learn the specifics of public performance and so on.
The cycles were the pieces you compose are shit because they're limited by your limited piano playing knowledge so you go back to learning some more only to find out you learned it all wrong hence your current technique will never be good enough so you have to relearn a lot of what you thought you already knew, is not fun and the having to learn everything else needed to organise the concert because you have to make the whole thing generate $$$ even though all that you really wanted was to play the piano, is also not fun.
For somebody working in a large game company, it's the difference between a hobby and a job, whilst for somebody doing indie game development it's the difference between a hobby and a business.
Is that the same effect like playing a piece you love over and over and suddenly you can't hear it anymore?
I think it's even stronger, because sometimes you'll repeat the same 10 seconds a thousand time to master it until you feel like jumping out of the window.
I did something similar. I would get about as far as writing the interesting mechanic/game logic and then give up.
So you succeeded in prototyping?
I’m also glad I did it as a hobby before I started viewing software development as a job. No code from me if there’s no money on the table.
Oh I actually love programming. I just hated writing games it turned out lmao. I love front-end development especially.
This. I started with 2d browser games. Turns out that was way too much work for me and landed in front end. I'm totally enjoying it now
Interestingly it's becoming more common to use front end technologies like React in AAA games, for things like in-game menus, and development tools.
Don't tempt me