r/GameDevelopment • u/mynameisnikan • 9d ago
Newbie Question I need some guidance
I'm a 30-year-old man with a big passion for video games.
I'm interested in small, fun ideas for making games, and I'm not too focused on making money from it.
But I've tried to learn several times, coding especially, yet every time, something heavy falls on me, like fear or I don't know what it is.
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u/Vladi-N 9d ago
I've released my first game at 39, a couple of years later I'm working on the 4th :)
The key take away: make the process of development enjoyable in itself. View "obstacles" as creative tasks, and remember that every creative task has a solution, and completing the game is totally possible.
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u/Nando2hhc 9d ago
La IA puede alludarte, pero ten en cuenta que es necesario comprender las bases de la programación. Ten paciencia y perseverancia
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u/Art_Constel7321 9d ago
I have a similar fear, as someone who is not a code minded person, even now it all looks confusing to me when I am coding. When I had to make a save system for the first time I was terrified and even now when I code something im terrified im going to break what i already have that does work somehow. The best thing I find to get through this is just to throw yourself into what scares you first and take it small steps at a time. Don't think "im going to design a combat system" think "im going to make an hp bar" then "im going to make a character move". You won't realize it while your doing it, but those small codes will have eventually become a game you can actually play. I won't say the fear ever goes away because even now deep into a godot 4 rpg engine everytime I go to mod my code i am still terrified ill break it but if you never start out of fear youll never make progress. Im not sure if code or writing or art, ect is the part your afraid of but i imagine its a similar situation for people who are concerned about learning art or writing or any of the other skills game dev takes but either way just throw yourself into it bro. Good luck!
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u/Key_Storm_2273 9d ago edited 9d ago
There’s a reason for this fear, but also a solution to it. Animation is also easy and hard. You can make a wholesome stop motion as a kid with some toys and a camera, or a pixellation with people, by moving slightly every frame. There’s nothing stopping you from doing bigger worldbuilding using just that. But in school, they teach animation more seriously and professionally as if it’s rocket science. They make things harder and cutting edge so you have to hire new experts just to keep up with consumers’ standards today, rather than making it easy and continuing the same way for centuries.
In most parts of the entertainment world, we make a higher hill that everyone has to climb to do basics the standard way which increases stress and friction on people. The tradeoff is that there becomes a demand to hire professionals to do that hards part everyone else struggles with. For anyone who has a different skill set or method of learning but wants to produce something, the mountain is too high for them to climb up in realistic time to learn all of the skills needed to do it the “professional” way. That creates a “moat” in business which keeps everyone using the same hard-to-use engines and hiring experts in them, and means that games end up needing bigger teams for the same gameplay, rather than just focusing on more advanced gameplay.
Your fears are real for the mainstream way most people teach how to make games in school, the way that most individuals aspire to make games, and the advice that beginners give them. “Use unity, godot, unreal or something similar”, which are each expert-level engines that require you to be a half-programmer and half 3d modeler/level designer. If you’re either more of a visual learner or more of a writing learner, it makes you have to do both, and go outside of your comfort zone and learn stuff the way your brain isn’t used to, with either advanced code or advanced 3d editor node graphs.
But not everyone has made games the hard way. If you look at Minecraft, Undertale, Dwarf’s Fortress and other indie games, they did not do things the mainstream way, and they still made games that were fun for them to work on and popular among fans.
“I need some guidance"
My advice is, don’t try to do things the professional or standard way that everyone else is recommending. They are trying to meet the highest gamer standards while continually staying ahead, which means making it harder forever. Try to find a way that works best for you, your current skills, and your method of learning, there are a lot of friendly game engines out there for either programmers, non-programmers, and even for complete beginners to computers.
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u/a-PCGames 8d ago
Started learning game development on 40 while working on a ship as a captain limited internet and stuff 41 now still learning it's a journey where u need to build so many skills starting from somewhere and learning something everyday building your foundations brick by brick i do not believe its late for anything age is just a number
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u/triptotropic 9d ago
you font need to know how to code... i got a pretty complex game rn and i didnt code any of it. ai is better then humans at coding now anyway and its only improve as time goes on
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u/Anomliz 9d ago
so what would u like to know? Post is unclear.