"Hobbyist Games"

everythingstaken's picture

I've been making games on my own consistently for a little over a year now. I used to make games with friends in high school and middle school, but I never finished anything until I started working on my own. I have always wanted to make video games for as long as I can remember, but through the years my confidence in abilities have kept me from actually perusing my goals. I partially never made games because of this stigma where I thought the games I made had to have a specific level of quality or something, it was a fear of not knowing how to program at all and being intimidated by coding languages and different software. This fear is a different fear that I think some of the friends that I worked on games with had. Most of them did not want to waste time working on games if they didn't get some sort of reward after like being able to sell the game or have some sort of wide recognition for making the game. I have always felt that because there are so many people in the world and on the internet that do or make anything (and a lot of those who make games) that expecting recognition is an almost futile effort and an effort that is earned in plenty of failure like any other activity that humans do.

Anyways, since I started using GM and KnP and MMF2 my life has improved in the way that now I am making video games and that part of my life has been fulfilled to some extent, however I have learned just making games is not enough in a way. I have come across different obstacles like, "I want to be making games basically all the time instead of just in my free time but not work in the games industry", "I want to make very large scale games, but I feel like I don't have the time to do so", "I don't know how to really program very much", and "I would like to make games, but not sell them".

My questions to you is what do you do for a living and would you ever want to work in the games industry, and if you don't why?

Comments

clyde's picture

I work at a trash-site where

I work at a trash-site where I inform citizens of and enforce the county's codes, instruct people on how to throw their trash away, and help those who have a hard time throwing their trash away throw their trash away. It's great. It doesn't pay well, but I get a lot of downtime to draw and write and read and listen to music.
I would love to get paid to make games because (like you) I would like to have more time to do it. The thing is that I think working in the games-industry would probably give me less time to make games rather than more. I don't want adjust colliders all day for some Assasin's Creed game. I want to come up with my own idea, work on it until I like it and offer it to anyone who wants to play it. I think that's what I'm doing now. The game-industry doesn't seem like it has anything to offer me except more money for more of my time.

everythingstaken's picture

I'm glad to hear someone

I'm glad to hear someone feels the same way I do about working in the game-industry. I know some people what work in the animation-industry and they said once they started having a job they felt like they had no time to continue working on their own projects.

I am an international relief

I am an international relief NGO aid worker, I have no reasons whatsoever to look for a job in the game industry. Actually, despite nostalgic gaming memories of my chilhood and teenage, I find most videogames, the industry that create them, and the gamer culture that surround them, very repulsive. I'm certainly not looking forward to meet these guys or work amongst them.
Beside this, my skills are far from what the industry requests. Although I'm interested in coding and designing, I'm not even really improving my skills. I'm mostly predating on the countless innovations in the middleware range (such as construt 2 effects, or on the indie side, Leon Arnott's twine macros). Technically speaking I'm a parasite.

"Make games all the time" is not the way I see my ideal creativity routine. My games are mostly fed by what I experience in the outside world: facing reality and meeting people and working with them. However I have great respect for an artist that de in dicates 100% of his time to his practice and achieve either (or both) technical or artistic proficiency for greatest results.
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I'm interested in funding experiments, that introduce new relationships between creativity and money, such as kickstarters and patreon accounts, pay what you want, or just making people pay for games. I'm interested in the idea of monetizing (to a small extent) what I do but I haven't thought very seriously about that yet

everythingstaken's picture

Patreon sounds pretty

Patreon sounds pretty interesting, but I feel like I have to legitimize myself in some way before I make something like that, or make a whole hell of a lot of consistent content somewhere.

yeah, same same I like the

yeah, same same
I like the idea of having a patreon account but only if I manage to get, say, 100+ people supporting me, which for the moment sounds pretty unrealistic
beside this, I does not make a difference yet, whether I make money or not : I feel like I would make the same kind of stuff I usually do, if I was lucky enough to make small money from it
but it would bring me a welcomed feeling of recognition

guess im the odd man here

I'm actually a game developer (at least according to my BSc)
i was in the game industry only for a month, now i'm just a software developer
I feel gTrWx is the last bastion of what game development is truly about
(hence why i drop in time to time)

everythingstaken's picture

Cool! I'm glad to have you

Cool! I'm glad to have you among us! I also feel like gTrWx is also one of the last safe havens of great game development, and I'm sure everyone else here does too.

thank you you make the game

thank you
you make the game industry less repulsive to me

pensive-mosquitoes