Powerful Habits to make Games Quickly

Follow My Journey:
📺 Watch My Streams: / @edwardivandeveloper

Hi, I'm Edwardivan Labarca. Creating video games has always been my dream, and now, I'm passionate about teaching others how to turn their game development dreams into reality. Here’s a glimpse into my journey:

• Worked at a Double-AA Studio: Gladius Studios
• Recreated Classic Games: LBP's Kirby, Mega Man, Pokémon
• Sponsored for GDC 2023: Latam-2023 PRGDA Sponsorship
• Collaborated and Play-tested: Titles like LunarLux and The Bunny Graveyard
• Upcoming Releases: DodgeKing Deluxe, Another TechnoMancer
• Active in the Community: Puerto Rico Game Developer's Association (PRGDA)
• Professional Software Engineer - And I started coding just two years ago (2022)!

It wasn’t always like this—pursuing video game development tends to be a common goal for many creatives. It’s the perfect outlet for blending art, logic challenges, and business development. Yet, it’s always been a daunting path, and for a long time, I strayed away from it. The fear of becoming a developer overwhelmed me, leading me to "play it safe" in life. I firmly believe I invested a lot in my engineering career, avoiding my true passion. Here are some highlights from that journey:

2016: Top 4 Future Boeing Engineers at a National-level Engineer Conference; Created a Google-sponsored computer science community for students
2017: Contracted by NASA to record a HASP for the American Solar Eclipse; Began research in soft robotics
2018: Developed Puerto Rico’s first microsatellite (PR-CuNaR-2); Won the National Extreme Engineering Competition
2019: Hired as a Procurement Nuclear Engineer
2020: Lived the expected successful career life... but felt purposeless

Despite all my investments in mechanical engineering, I abandoned it all in pursuit of developing video games. I quickly realized that my dream wasn’t as optimistic as I had imagined. In 2021, I quit my engineering job and lived off my savings while supporting my family. As an unemployed developer with bills to pay, I dreamed of my game being my salvation but underestimated what it takes to be successful in this industry.

You need patience, skill, time, a deep understanding of game design, the ability to avoid common pitfalls, learn to delegate, create time for your project, balance a healthy lifestyle, stay focused, seize opportunities, and say "NO" to temptations. You need to become a better version of yourself to thrive in this world.

Because of my pivot, I’ve learned invaluable lessons. My favorite lesson? There’s a difference between creating a game and creating a GREAT game. Game development isn’t as superficial as it might seem. That’s why I create content to help you become the best developer you can be while avoiding the massive life-changing mistakes I’ve made.

Today, I'm dedicated to accelerating your game development projects by focusing on essential design principles, providing educational and technical tools, and empowering you to elevate your games to new heights. We'll take the right steps together to make this journey efficiently enjoyable.

I know the Game Industry can seem saturated and challenging, but I've seen countless warriors overcome these obstacles. Whether you're learning technical skills, making lifestyle changes to accelerate your project, or just need guidance, I'm here to help you succeed.

Remember, everyone has the potential to create something magical. You are capable of making someone's favorite game, experience, or lesson.

To all the knights out there, challenges exist to prove your strength.

Get Up or Get Good - Both outcomes are amazing. Don't give up!

Never give up and keep going! I believe in you.

- Edwardivan Labarca

Algorithm Words:
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[treasureimpact]

Don't usually comment but I have to say this video was a Godsent. Well structured, well presented, well explained. These are lessons that could've only come from experience and you've indirectly saved alot of people suffering by trial and error to learn these.

I noticed some people might misinterpret the drilling part so I'll put it like this. The value of drilling is it's effect on "your mindset" and "mental fortitude". Once you have the habit of enduring on difficult problems without skipping to sth else, you build confidence bcos you have created a backlog of evidence of yourself overcoming challenges by persistence.

Where the objections might come is in "taking breaks" bcos in truth, staying too long on a problem without diverting your mind to sth else can be counterproductive & lead to diminishing returns. So yes, if you're too stuck, you may have to do sth else to allow your subconscious find a solution for you. The best strategy I've seen is to do sth "UNRELATED" to your current field. If you're a game dev and stuck, rather than taking a break with another game dev project, your breaks will be better taken by doing sth outside game dev and when you return to game dev, you are solely returning to tackle the problem again.

The Disadvantage of taking a break from a difficult game dev problem with "another" game dev project is that you might end up running into "another" game dev problem. And since you don't have a track record of solving your previous problem, the brain autopilots and you end up repeating the pattern of avoidance and skipping to yet another project. This leads to a deteriorating cycle of abandoned projects and leaves you mentally and emotionally stuck with low self-esteem in your ability as a developer due to your history of unfinished projects.

So back to my original thoughts on the value of Drilling and how it affects time management in game development - it's hard to finish games quickly with low self-esteem in your ability as a developer, it's hard to finish games at all if your brain sets you off on an automated pattern/cycle of skipping ships when things get hard.

It is easier to finish games quickly when you have confidence in your ability to handle whatever roadblocks come in your way. It is easier to maintain motivation when you have a history to overcoming challenges through persistence when things get hard. Drilling is a "mental exercise" that builds your mental fortitude, confidence, persistence muscles. The effect will spill over to not just your game development habits, but in your life in general as you become more mentally prepared to handle life challenges.


Overall. This was a goldmine of a video. Learnt alot and will be rewatching for the third time😂🤌🏾. You've earned yourself a sub.

EDIT: Grammar

[Alex]

I would argue against "Drilling". When I encounter a hard problem, I drop it for a couple of days. This allows the mind to take a step back and invent solutions out of nowhere or realize that the problem doesn't need solving and can be completely removed. On the contrary, focusing on a thing and methodically hacking at it only stresses me out and bears no fruit.

[marianoschulzlatapi]

This feels like a high quality college class! congrats! definetely going to take notes!

[DUHRIZEO]

Really impressed with how graciously you've responded to some of these comments man, let alone some great advice. You rock.

[vikingfabian]

I was you 15years ago, what you are talking about will eventually lead down a road of being alone, overworked and depressed. Games are a black hole of time consumption, each time you plan a vacation some deal will show up "xbox license if you can finish in X months" and the crunsh goes on.

[GurkisDev]

Man, the part about "if you want the game to be done in a month then the work adjusts to that timeframe" is so true. I've been working on a game for over a year now, mostly took so long as I was learning new tools & a new language, but then I took a break from that to work on a commission project and since that had an actual deadline I was able to put out the project in a few months.

[DutchDinosaur]

i think its most important to be kind to yourself and structure your life in a way that's sustainable in the long term. I have been making games for the better part of a decade and i feel like I'm just at the beginning of my journey. I heard an anecdote in school that the average career span of a game developer was around 3-4 years before they switched jobs/ burnt out. whether you're working on small games or a big project, focus on doing what you love, take breaks, find others to help in areas that you lack interest in and measure success in stuff you learn and will still benefit from for many years.

[kilonaliosI]

Good advice overall. My advise would be a LOD approach (level of detail) start with super simple idea, super simple graphics with the goal of finishing fast the game and add detail later on. This way you can make your game as complex you want but you will also always have a finished game. Thus finishing becomes super easy too. Working linearly, from point A to B, is for people who love pain and wasting time.

[sienihemmo]

The social life stuff and others about refusing, minmaxing and sacrificing other activities to get more time to work on the game sounds like an excellent way to ensure that when you get the game released, you won't have friends, family or the mental health to celebrate it with.

Crunch is extremely harmful, but you're basically advocating for it. People in the know will realise that and will temper the suggestions in this video, but new, young and naive game devs might take the advice at face value and cause major harm to their mental health and relationships over the course of months or years. Crunch might be good for the short term, but your example of releasing 4 games in a year will cause burnout eventually, and then they won't be releasing any games anymore. At that point they might not even be able to work on games ever again.

And about the mealprepping and other minmaxing: Cooking and doing chores can be an important point in the day where you get to let your mind rest, while mindlessly cooking or doing laundry or whatever. Trimming all that out and just sitting at a computer doing the same stuff all day (apart from breaks) will mentally exhaust you. There's a reason why some countries and/or companies have even started trying out 4 day work weeks or 6 hour work days. Because there comes a point after which the human brain doesn't do effective labor anymore, and it's more efficient to let it rest instead.

[Sskelll]

If this is what you need to do to make a game quick, I dont mind taking my time.

[softsofasoftsofa]

Next game, make a game that shows how to make a game fast. Update it when comments suggest other ways. Eventually, it becomes the go-to game about making games.

A tip from Jim Kwik is to take breaks to move yourself for like 30s every 20 minutes, but it works for me every half hours too. Its important to stretch my back so I just stretch my hands up and bend back and also move my legs.

[timvandeneng]

You are correct this will push a game out really fast but if i do this i will burn out and become depressed and my social life will be non existent.

During the work week i follow your exact schedule, i exercise, i stay efficiënt and keep the focus on the project. However i do need relaxation!!! In the weekend i need to see my friends and do fun stuff otherwise I'm going mental

[luckyknot]

nice tips. For 'passive' playtest I would request friends to record a video of their playthrough with videocam so they can comment while they are playing, also you can see their emotional reactions and this is unvaluable.

[TRUSTLBLACKMETAL]

I find a lot of these points helpful, your suggestion to invest in scaleable systems is spot on. I would suggest for code comments though that you try to limit them in favor of commenting what the function does as a whole and breaking complex function down into smaller ones. Doing this and naming your funtions and variables implicitly with clear names will reduce the number of comments you need to make in your code and make it more readable for debugging. But, take this as a suggestion, if commenting more is helpful then by all means do it.

[abdullahnaim]

Thank you for taking so much time proving this much value. I hope you the most success. Hope to see more!

[Willyuum]

The pointers and discussions mentioned are really good, it feels these notes are really good for people who are new to game dev and are a nice reminders for game developers with experience and trying to make their own game out of their main job(Yes I'm being very specific :d).

[reebalt]

I am so torn by how the tips in this vid are both incredibly helpful in achieving set goals while simultaneously they seem so artificial and robotic. It all feels like a highway to achieving your dreams and reaching burnout by the way. Becoming a perfectly tuned factory that looses its' humanity somewhere along the way, minmaxing your life so you have time to create, limiting the time you spend with other people unless it's necessary - it all works but I'm wondering at what price from a future-you point of view

[DoctorMario]

Saying "No I dont feel like going" is so satisfying 😂

[thehiddenplace]

I can respect this attitude to rocket jump your way to success. When you're young, you probably have enough health to do it.