You're Not a Solo Dev and You Can't Make a Game on Your Own

Hey Everybody,

Today I am making a little bit of a different video than I normally do. Throughout my involvement with game development I have gotten to know the indie dev community pretty well. Almost every developer I’ve met that’s working on an indie game has been a solo developer. But there seems to be a common sentiment from a vocal minority that’s within this community. What's this idea you’re probably wondering, well it’s the belief that “You must make every aspect of your game by yourself”. And if you don’t make everything on your own, your game is somehow not worthy.

So today I’m going to be discussing this topic and revealing indie development’s biggest lie.

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References:

Stardew Valley developer is an Auburn native - KING 5 Evening

Why nobody knows how to make a pencil

I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read

I, Pencil the movie

Thomas Paine Quote

If you’re interested in the game I’m working on now, checkout my Steam page.

Spire on Steam

Talk to me on my Discord Channel:

[hornetsilksong]

This is really good advice to manage scope, why are the dislikes so salty?? Do some devs have a weird complex about being self made 100% solo talent or something?

If people insist on programming an engine from scratch instead of using an engine or do every single asset themselves they shouldn't be surprised when it ends up in vaporware development hell.

It doesn't hurt to use other people's code assets either when it's popular Unity store stuff. If it's popular it's well documented and other users have troubleshooted issues together. If I tried coding everything myself I'd give up just because of the sheer mountain of bugfixing I'd have to do for so many systems interacting with each other.

[sutsuj]

I agree with the premise of the video, but saying that making anything with any tool means that you didn't "make it on your own" is quite the stretch.

[gbeebe]

I don't care what tools you used, how many paid or free assets you have, or the amount of copypasta in your code. If you're the only person on your team, you're doing it by yourself.

Try telling your wife, she didn't clean the house all by herself.

[ShadyRapture]

Nothing is self made. So this whole debate that always happens with solo projects is stupid ego-sheltering behavior. Solo just means nobody worked with you on the project, for music, games, whatever.

You didn’t make your computer, so I don’t care if you made every asset, line of code, the engine, etc. and even if you somehow made the silicon and every transistor in your computer, you didn’t harvest the electricity. You didn’t raise and kill the animals/crops you ate to fuel your development. So you’re not self made.

See how stupid this is? Solo dev means nobody worked with you to bring the vision to reality. Even if you grabbed all your assets online, copied a bunch of code, and followed guides… you still developed the final product yourself. You can give the exact same ingredients to 10 different chefs and they will all make vastly different dishes.

I make music and sprites for my games. But if I released a free or paid asset pack and people used it in their games, I’d still consider their project solo projects. There’s an asterisk to solo projects that use all their own music and image assets. That’s very impressive, but not necessary. Nobody uses 100% their own own code. Did you write the compiler? The kernel-level and used-level process switching algorithms? Did you somehow defy logic and invent new data structures that actually work? Doubt it.

Feeding your ego and discouraging others does nothing. Nobody who’s ahead of you in the process will ever discourage you or tear you down. If you’re alone on a project, even if you get assets to help you, it’s still yours.

A photographer isn’t any less of a photographer if they aren’t photographing solely things they created…

[oredaze]

Ok, then. Who should go into the credits then? Do play testers qualify? Does a friend that gives you 5% of the ideas count? etc ?

[ehlingard]

I get comments about using assets for my project from time to time. They are saying stuff like your game should be called War of assets which sounds like my efforts are worthless. They have no idea that I almost have been working 3-4 hours everyday after my day job for the past 3 years, stay home for the weekend so that I can have a full day to work on the project. Thank you so much for sharing videos like this. It really helps.

[tcqcqlm]

barone's success is actually very easy to replicate: get a large wraparound desk and box yourself into the corner of your office so you can't walk away from your computer

[DetectivePoofPoof]

Theres absolutely nothing wrong with trying to do as much of the game by yourself as you can.
Theres absolutely nothing wrong with taking a long time to make something if thats what you wanna do.
And theres absolutely nothing wrong with having a team or getting assets or paying somebody to help you out or getting investment or using an engine or making your own.
Whichever way you wanna go about it is fine, you do things the way you want to its your time your project your thing.

[PinballBrendan]

The feeling of "I must make every single little asset for my game or I'm a fraud" is definitely not a healthy mindset for a solo dev. Assets are your friend and can really speed things up. I tend to make original assets for things I feel are important to the identity of the game or a specific area, such as background art, tile sets, music, and character sprites. However, I rely on assets for more generic things that I feel don't feel really affect the game as much but are still a necessity. Some examples would be certain sound effects (explosions, gun shots, foot steps) and visual effects (particle bursts, impact animations, elemental animations like fire/water/lightning). I'm not saying those elements can't be made to really stand out, but for me it makes more sense to save time by using assets for things that just need serve a specific function.

[GxCreed]

To be fair, just cause you didn't get all the rescources yourself, doesn't mean you didn't make the game yourself. You bought the pencil and paper, doesn't mean you didn't make the drawing on your own. The engine nor the pencil doesn't use itself, so the labor is still there.

Although I'm not saying people don't recieve help from outside sources, its honestly more accurate to say "I made most of the game myself" then to say you "I did everything".

[muffiincodes]

I disagree. I don't think the argument of "at some point in your production pipeline you used a tool someone else developed" means you didn't make a game on your own. If you take that concept to the extreme sure no one ever made any software on their own because someone had to make the hardware, and someone else had to make the coding language, and on and on.

But when we discuss the concept of "doing something on your own" we all have an informal definition of what that means, which typically means if you used an engine you still did it on your own, but if you hired an artist then no, you didn't do it on your own. That is the true bar most people are trying to satisfy when they try to make something on their own, so I feel like saying "oh but you didn't code your own engine" is moving the goal posts in a way.

In general, I agree the indie dev community is a little too preoccupied with the concept of doing everything on your own, because game development is inherently a multi-talent work of art. But instead of discrediting the idea of doing someone on your own we should elevate it to one of many options that are open to people. You can do everything on your own, or you can hire out some help, or you can have an entire team who all have their own specialisations and an equal ownership over the game.

Neither of these are objectively better or worse, just different, and will differently fit your specific needs.

[Cyberfoxxy]

Stardew Valley was built on XNA. While not a user friendly one clicky play engine. It's still an engine. All the heavy lifting of decoding textures and communication with gpu is all under the hood. All you need to decide what you want to display and where. Anyway. I think the engine argument is invalid. Tools doesn't make games. At least not until AI can do it all by itself.

I think extra credits phrased this much more bluntly over 10 years ago:

You will never be able to create a game like the AAA ones you play and love. Not in your lifetime. Never.

[DileepNow]

If everything done specifically for a game was done by yourself, then you are the solo dev of that game. Bought assets? Solo dev. Hired someone? Not solo dev. Unless of course it involves things the dev simply can't ever do. Like voice acting for multiple voices.

[RioXavier]

This reminds me of when I was like 19 working at Burger King and the assistant manager brought a guitar and played More Than Words by Extreme. I asked him, "Don't you know anything else?" and he responded "How many songs do you know?" I'm not saying we all have to be better before we criticize. Let's just appreciate what these people are making and offer constructive criticism that encourages them to be better.

[IsaacCode]

no matter what you say, minecraft is childs play next to chris's sawyer roller coaster tycoon, made this game alone, with assembly !

[scottiefutch]

Seriously. People who cry over asset flipping, or even simple outsourcing for code or artwork are just sad. They might as well say, "You didn't mine the gold, copper, lithium, iron, or silicon that goes into your pc and its batteries", so you didn't make your indie game solo since someone else had to do all that and you used a pc to make it. Hur hur. pwned.

[anshul]

This just makes me more positive and less regretful of the decision of asking my friend who has basic experience in Blender to do the assets for me after learning it himself and together, focus more on making a game which people want to spend hours on without anything forcing them other than the fact that the game is simply good.

[meh]

The problem with using (aesthetic) paid assets isn't that the developer is being "lazy" or anything like that, it's that the identity of your game could be cheapened by anyone else using those same assets in their games. Many developers will deem this a worthwhile trade-off, but it's a trade-off nonetheless.

[SimGunther]

"When people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they're almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong"

- Neil Gaiman

[thejankjohnsonshow]

The problem is you can't trust other people will have the respect and care that you do for your project. Without money there's nothing to incentivize the other people involved in your project to do anything correctly.