The #1 Mistake New Indie Devs Make

I've talked to a lot of aspiring game developers, and this is usually the biggest problem I see. The good news is it's totally avoidable! So let me take you on a short journey with a person who really wants to push a boulder up a mountain.

[ahmedmosaad]

I appreciate how this video is only 2 minutes with only the message.

[obakengshole]

AAA games studios be like, "hmm, we'll cut that game in half and release the other half as dlc"

[NotAnIlluminatiSpy]

I'm making "the next skyrim" now. I'm going to save a HUGE amount of dev time by leaving the game world completely in my imagination.

[HistoiredeGeek]

The content quality is awesome, you have the perfect base to become a big YouTube channel in game development

[NagyerdeiKorisok]

I started making my first game ~2 - 2.5 years ago, and I'm not intending to cut the mountain half. It's the game making itself that satisfies me, not a final product. I still need like 2 years to finish it, but it's fine, it's just a hobby, I'm not in a rush.

[SnutiHQ]

Added bonus is that these mountains seem to naturally start GROWING as you walk them… AKA Scope creep! 😅 Doing our best to bring our game to a swift finish soon, aiming small but finding things that matter to us. 💪

Thank you for another quality video, looking forward to more!

[ktmochiii]

100% agree on the tolerable animation. So many indiedevs post on twitter the littlest improvements which makes the game take like 5 years to release.

[psuedocreatura]

Wise words, I've just started learning unity and c#, immediately i saw how much effort, time and commitment goes into making a game. Big developers have hundreds of people working on a project of course, but I cant even imagine how much work, coding and art goes into making a big 'AAA' game. I'll never complain again when they take a part of a game of line to fix a problem!, I salute you all!! , single game devs working in your bedrooms, to full on production houses. O7

[flamingo]

This is so true. It's very easy as an indie developer to fall into the trap of setting off to make a massive game. It's not impossible, but it's a huge amount of work -work that big companies do by hiring lots of people and having an enormous budget, and still takes them years to get anything ready for release.

Making your game smaller is the logical path for an indie developer, especially if you're on your own. It's much easier, and, more importantly, actually achievable.

There is only one problem with that... sometimes, that's just not the game you want to make. And it's easy to get demoralized because... well, it's still a lot of time and work -why put it into something that's not what you want to make? Funnily enough, I'm more likely to drop a small project, precisely because they're so small. Yet if I want to be realistic, I can't pretend to make a big game on my own.

It's a struggle.

[Laumania]

That's some highend quality right there :D


The message and point in this is SO simple and yet it's so easy to forget and you can't be reminded enough about it.

Keep it up :)

[HananonArtworks]

It's so true!
There just so much things about gamedev that you could only see after you finish/publish a game.
Like how polishing, testing, balancing sometimes took forever!
.
And how 0 downloads hits you in the gut *cries*

[janpaulbergeson]

I would play the game where you are the little black stick figure blasting mountains in half, those visuals alone are pretty awesome

[shivz]

Thank you, I recently started game dev. I had a lot of motivation but nowadays i had none. I set my goals too high. I think as a newbie I need to Lower them down.

[alec_almartson]

So True.
That is the Main Problem of Every Software Project: Scope.

[Millu]

I started working on a prototype game 4-5 days ago, the whole idea is to make a horror game like Amnesia series during 60s in underwater City "similar to Rapture from Bioshock" the idea is simple, we live there and one day something happens, we are trying to find what is happening, encounter monsters, try to escape "usuall stuff". This will be a tall mountain to climb up but it's a prototype so it can be changed/cutted, I have split my work into goals so first goal is to make options menu that will contain all graphic settings like resolution, Mipmaping, audio and controls, then planning to make first person controls and setup, then start working on basic mechanics like flashlight, health, fear system, diary and so on. It's already a lot and there is more but still it's and prototype to learn godot, coding and experiment. I am not really counting animations and 3d modeling here because I know basics and more advanced stuff from school so I have a decent workflow already, so that is my comment on that, however, instead of calling my project a mountain I will call it a block of marble that I am sculpting 😂🤔

Ps: you are probably first person that says to cut your idea instead of not beginning with serious project🤔

[MrPizzadash]

Scoping down feels a lot better when you visualize it as destroying mountains with energy blasts

[atomialep]

Don't feel the need to limit yourself!!
If your goal is to make a small game make your goal small, if your goal is to make something big THEN MAKE SOMETHING BIG. The key part in this is that making something big will take a lot of time and effort.

[Ma_cieK]

This is the best advice You can get. I hit the wall with my project and couldn’t move forward. I started losing my motivation, i was so frustrated that i was ready to quit. Than i have realised that i spent over a year on learning unity and c# and im not ready yet for big game. So i have focused on small project. I finally make the progress, coding makes me happy again and now im confident that i will finish what I started, and one day i will be ready to make my dream game.

[smilingalpaca]

This is a perfect way of giving advice to new Game developers.. By finishing the game first and focus on the details later on so that we won't lose those inspirations and motivations we had. Great video content as always!

I miss his videos. They are so motivational. To this day I come back here to watch it again. I hope one day he will post again.