The HARSH Reality of Game Development...

► Wishlist my indie game about wizards now!

► Socials

► Support

► Description
Chapters:
00:00 - intro
00:33 - my indie game dev background
01:14 - how to start making games?
05:28 - how will you market your game?
06:54 - when to release your indie game and measuring success?
07:26 - conclusion

If you've played a lot of video games, you've probably thought at one point that you could make one. Speaking from my own personal game dev journey, game development has been an amazing hobby to get into. Despite its appeal, learning game development is no walk in the park. Game dev involves a massive crossover between art, programming, design, feedback, marketing, financing and so much more!

I wanted to create this video about my experience learning game development, and some questions you may want to ask yourself if you are planning on learning game dev as well.

Now this video specifically focuses on indie game development, and even more specifically solo indie game development. The game dev questions and answers that you encounter at an actual game studio will probably be even more!

Comment down below your thoughts on learning game development and best of luck on your game dev journey!

If you liked this video, consider checking out some other related videos!
ByteOfMichael - The TRUTH About Making Money as a Game Developer...
Brackeys - The Future of Game Development
Sasquatch B Studios - How to Start Gamedev in 2024
AIA - The biggest lie in video games
AIA - 2 Years MAKING an OPEN-WORLD game
Goodgis - Adding Tons of Levels to My Indie Game
Goodgis - Finishing my Dream Game After 4 Years

#gamedev
#gamedevelopment
#devlog

► d i s c l a i m e r
I do not claim to own any or all of the pictures/footage that may be shown in this video.
All of my opinions are entirely my own and do not represent any company I work for or am affiliated with.
Any financial topics discussed are not financial advice.

Channel produced by Rainy Sunday LLC.

[dre_rona]

Finally someone who talks about the difficulty of "I know how to program this but how SHOULD it be programmed?"

[ymellow.]

I thought this had like 100k views. Shocked it’s only 892

[icecake]

I’m an artist by trade working in video games, and I’ve been working on making my own turn based strategy game for the past month I knew it would be a challenge so I tried to keep it as a vertical slice and simple as I could then add complexity later down the line. I did a basic C# programming course to see what I could accomplish. It’s still a huge as challenge, but with the help of chat gpt and other AI tools I’ve made so much progress in a month as a non programmer solo dev than I could have ever hoped for. But the more I continue with it, the more complex it starts to get and harder. Not only am I required to be an artist, I need to program, I need to level designer, I need to UI design, sound, gameplay etc it becomes a time sink. But I have been enjoying myself immensely which has kept me going. I am hoping when it becomes more fleshed out I can demo it and bring people onboard from either work or elsewhere who want to be a part of making something

[georgeml-o_o]

I think those are very good questions, but even big companies fail in answering them. To someone that's even starting, thinking on this now, doesn't improve his/her chance of success

[SkidesGames]

I appreciate your videos man! Excited to play your game.

[GodotBro_]

Nice video man! I love your stuff. I, much like you, have decided to jump head first into the solo dev life! It has been a dream for a long time! Made this new channel to document the process. Keep up the good work dude, your game looks awesome!

[noiadev]

I came in here ready for a fight 🤣, but all of this was good.
Not answering, questions but posing the questions game devs should be asking themselves.
I'll add one question to the pile that I find I ask myself all the time, "What game has done this before?"
More often than not the ideas devs have for their games have been done before, and were done very well. Sometimes those are the games that inspire us devs to make our game in the first place. So ask yourself, what game has an inventory system I like? What game has character movement that was fun? What was my favorite boss encounter, and what made it so memorable.
Once you are good at cooking, you can take other recipes you know are good, and change them to suit your tastes.

[Guitarist]

I have been avoiding these kinds of videos for a while now. In the last couple of days I began diving into solo developing and have been enjoying it but would notice a video with a title like yours and I would avoid it thinking "I'll watch it later, let me just enjoy this sudden spark of motivation a bit longer before it's crushedby reality". I just finished your video and feel excited to keep going.

P.s excited for castlemancer

[bigmunchyfinger]

I wanna start game development as a hobby since I have nothing else going on in my life besides sports. I would appreciate a recommendation on a laptop that is capable of “making a game”. Any suggestions help. Thanks. 🙂

[NotSoSharpGames]

Hi Michael! Big fan! Been watching your videos since early 2022, so excited for castlemancer . This may be a stupid question, but the game you were working on before this, muster, is it released? Or did you never finish it? Or are you still working on it? Sorry, might’ve missed a video or two but I love your videos! Keep up the good work

[petersmythe]

"are we using 16, 32, or 64 px sprites?"
Ah yes, for my senior project in Godot I was just like "yes" and had it scale any and all images you decide to throw into the texture pack folder to their correct size.

[holtzheimer]

I always get stuck in the asset making part but I'm too stubborn to buy/download pre-made assets since I always feel like I can't find anything that fits the game artstyle.

[Tortuap]

One bit that you discuss around 4:07 is IMO greatly underestimated when it comes to making a video game : design choices. Design requires a lot of trial and error, of back and forth, of exploration in uncharted territories, to ultimately discard most of the work done to retain only the tip of the iceberg. It's, in my case, what's consume most of my time.

[greenguy]

I was in the fortunate situation, to be a programmer and someone who really likes to draw(I wouldn't call myself an artist, because my skills aren't there yet) and still my game took me nearly 3 years to make. It's true: Gamedevelopment is hard and if you try go solodev then it's even harder. But still there is nothing more fullfilling when the game succeeds.

[onionbrotm]

ALRIGHT, I'M HYPED UP NOW, TIME TO MAKE MY DREAM GAME!!!

*Adds one mechanic.

Alright, time for my well deserved 24 month recess.

[jackmiddleton]

I'm sure others have done it but I love the idea of having animated characters spawn from your cards. Whether you control them or they are just acting out the cards..

[sanidhyameena]

Being an artist and finding a great programmer that is willing to work on ur small indie game is really difficult. There's a ton of programmers in my country but their all working on phone apps for some reason.

[bewilderedlearningevolving]

Anyone know the title of the game at 6:51 ?

[kiam]

What are the game at 4:39 and 7:05 I can't figure them out 😭

[megatronusv]

Videogames RARELY make money. Only 5.6% of steam games gross over 200k (note that this gross, before steam and your publisher's cut). So, 94.4% of games are effectively going to fail financially. Understand this thoroughly. Make a game because you want to! Do it for fun, not for money. Reality will piledriver you