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Weekly WIPs, Wins & Whinges
(self.gamedev)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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GameDev
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Hi all. First post on Lemmy, I guess I'm a natural lurker.
I wrote this up as a separate post but honestly it's more of a rant than anything so I figured it could just go in here.
I'm Pydin, I'm a Unity developer from the UK who just graduated last year and was lucky enough to fall straight into a job. It's ok, but we mostly work on mobile games and the workload is pretty intense. At uni we mostly used Unreal so Unity has been a big change but it's decent enough.
Anyway the last few weeks - but particularly since signing up here and seeing what other people are working on - it's really made me realise how draining it's been to work in essentially a mobile game mill. I have a lot of free time outside of work, so I'm thinking it might be time to get back to what drew me to games dev in the first place.
Problem is, all the games I want to make are waaaaay too big. Even the process of coming up with a surmountable idea seems insurmountable. In the uni days we were given a lot of constraints and weren't really trying too hard to make something release-worthy, or we'd be working in teams and my part would be more doable. But now it's just me, and it's a bit like standing on a precipice staring into the void. So that's my rant, great first contribution to the group I know.
I've been doing a lot of reading around this already, but if anyone has any wisdom to share I'd appreciate it.
Hey no worries, we all need a good rant on occasion. Welcome to the community and also to Lemmy! Lurking is totally acceptable btw, albeit kind of a foreign concept to me 😄
We were just talking about scoping in another thread recently and I'm gonna straight-up quote @hodgepodgehomonculus@lemmy.blahaj.zone because honestly their advice in that thread was great. Basically it was to break down your scope into bronze/silver/gold like so:
That's in the context of a game jam and the time constraints that come with it, but I think it's great advice in general. Whatever your personal limitation might be, whether it is in fact time or maybe it's budget or even your own skill level, there will be a "bronze" level game you can make without too much trouble. Focus on that first, and have your silver and gold stretch goals waiting in the wings for if you complete your original plan. Maybe add a diamond tier for the real pipedream stuff, or whatever works for you!
A lot of solo projects I follow tend to sort of splutter out and die after a few months and it's almost always because the dev finally stepped back, took a lot at how long their ideal scope would take, and understandably noped out. A bit of planning ahead and being realistic with yourself works wonders.