Ask HN: Do I really want to make a game? (or any side project?)
I know the question title sounds weird, but I'm looking for other developers that might have been in a similar position.
I love games, I love games technology and I have these vague ideas for games I want to have made. Yet I never seem to actually start making one.
Even though I think I really want to. But do I?
Having an interesting talk with a friend who pointed out that maybe I really don't want to make something, maybe it's just the idea of making something that appeals more than actually doing it. That if I really did have a burning passion, I would have started by now. I don't know.
I seem to be at a kind of roadblock. Every idea seems interesting enough to pursue, yet nothing seems good enough - "there are already games like that out there", "it's not unique enough", etc. I just end up procrastinating, or sort of looking to start a million different things because everything is so appealing, but end up doing nothing.
I guess this is applicable to more than just games. I'd love to hear some stories about how people got through this, no matter what the outcome (even if it is "I tried and decided it isn't what I wanted to do after all").
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2015 where @fr0styMatt2 convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.
Everybody wants to be Notch, but nobody wants to write code for years on end.
If you actually have the free time, and the ability, to pursue at least one of your ideas then I think the only way you can answer this question is to force yourself to see one through to the end. I'm kind of the same way - tons of old Game Maker projects that got abandoned because I wasn't capable of executing on the ideas I had, things got too complex or I just stopped being interested in them once I solved what I thought were the interesting problems.
Since i'm taking programming classes now, I've decided to finish one ridiculously simple game (Space Invaders) just to earn the basic mechanics of 2d game design, in C++. Of course now you have Game Maker, Unity, Unreal and various other frameworks to choose from, but my personal interests are a bit lower level. I started in January and haven't finished yet. Just the basics are turning out to be much more complicated than I would have anticipated, and I haven't even bothered with art, sound, or gameplay that's anything beyond the rudamentary. I spent weeks building (from scratch twice) a basic entity/component system to work with SDL, not because I had to, or because that was the most efficient way to build the product, or even because there weren't existing libraries for that, but because that's the problem I was interested in solving. So something that would probably be a weekend hack for a better programmer is turning out to take the better part of a year, because I'm more into the journey right now than the destination.
Having 'vague ideas' doesn't really give you a good sense of the scope of what those ideas might actually represent. I would second the other comments here suggesting you find a simple game and try to clone it, but I would also decide whether what you're interested in is the coding of games, or the authoring of games. In other words, would you feel more satisfied writing C and C++ code, or working through a framework like Unity or Game Maker? Because the latter would probably be faster for just prototyping or getting a feel for an idea, and almost certainly better for making salable games if you're not already a professional low-level game programmer. But personally, I think the former is more fun.
Pick a language, pick a framework, pick a game, accept that the results won't be perfect, and just go for it. That's the only way you'll discover what your passion actually is, or isn't. If you can't commit to that then, yeah, you're probably not going to commit to something real. Which is fine. Plenty of people want to be writers too, who never write. People like that tend to spend a lot of time taking writing classes or hanging out on writing forums and in writing groups, because 'being' for them is more interesting (and easier) than 'doing'. It's not an uncommon phenomeneon.
Pick three project and complete each one from start to finish, then ask yourself if you still want to create games. This can be creating a clone of games to see if you can actually do it since you do need to start somewhere. I would recommend creating a clone for learning purposes ( in order ) of Flappy Bird, Super Mario (NES) first level, and Mr Jump Levels 1 to 3. Even at a slow pace each one should take no longer than 30 days each if you dedicated a few hours every day to it.
If you can successfully replicate these three games (doesn't have to be perfect) this should give inspiration or more knowledge to accurately judge and answer the question since you will have your own practical experience and know what it takes to accomplish the projects.
I spent a good part of my 20's learning about video game development because I always wanted to write a game. Sadly, the only working thing I produced in all of that time was a UI system and a Tetris clone.
I am in my 30's now and am grateful for having put the time in because I was able to apply many of those lessons to business software, which is how I make my living. That said, I still considering creating a puzzle game using Nim as a learning exercise and to make sure I "still got it".
I recommend doing something like a Tetris clone because it has challenges, but is within the realm of the attainable even for someone with a short attention span such as myself.