4 ms·

I have mixed feelings about this kind of articles. On the one hand is inspiring to see what other can achieve. On the other hand, I feel like I am getting tra

I have mixed feelings about this kind of articles. On the one hand is inspiring to see what other can achieve. On the other hand, I feel like I am getting trapped in a culture where if you aren't working on 30 side projects outside work, you are a lazy ass that won't be successful. I make little open source web games as hobby and side project. I never made a dime out of them, and nobody gave a damn anyway. I have put way too much time and effort on these projects and I don't feel like the satisfaction I got out of them has paid off. I have been working on a single bigger game for over 2 years now and I have seen a cycle repeat: I get very excited, I work really hard and make lots of progress, I get burnt out and I leave it for weeks/months. Right now I'm on my third burnout cycle. It feels nice to have free time again. Time to watch movies, play games, hang out with people or just go out for a walk for no reason. But I can't help to feel guilty because I am not working on my side projects. I have also promised myself that if I ever manage to complete this game, I won't engage on a large scale side project again, and chances are I will leave games completely. So it may only be me but besides this kind of articles I would like to read articles about people who have no side projects, and that is also ok. EDIT: Here you can find my current project, it's a sciency idle game so not everyone's cup of tea. Play at your own risk! https://github.com/angarg12/nucleogenesis https://github.com/angarg12/nucleogenesis

mv4 9y ago
Obsessively shipping multiple side projects is the IT version of Crossfit.
- snarf21 9y ago
  That is brilliant. Plus, sometimes these open source projects are just a script that does something useful. Side projects rarely scale linearly.
Darkstack 9y ago
I'm in the same boat, and I have made the mistake of writing my own engine, you get no quick satisfaction versus the time you spent, it requires a lot of background knowledge, and some functionality needs too much work to be a Hobby (and the fact that coding at home is not fun when you spent 9 hours coding at work)
z3t4 9y ago
People say finishing a project is hard, but giving up on a project can be just as though if not harder! What is so hard about giving up ? It's human bias that we have somehow failed. The trick is not to look at it like a failure. Think about how much you have learned! And the hours you have already put in should be considered "sunk cost" (micro economics) and you should weight the "opportunity cost" eg. how much you value the time you can spend on other things.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
corobo 9y ago
> and nobody gave a damn anyway Have you ever linked them anywhere? I'd have thought this comment was a good place > it may only be me but besides this kind of articles I would like to read articles about people who have no side projects Probably, that sounds like a boring read
- angarg12 9y ago
  Yes, I'm active in Reddit and I posted them there. I also released one in Kongregate, where it got bad rating and terrible feedback. Here you can find my current project, it's a sciency idle game so not everyone's cup of tea. https://github.com/angarg12/nucleogenesis https://github.com/angarg12/nucleogenesis
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
pweissbrod 9y ago
Like you I have a handful of these I [push to github](https://github.com/PeteW https://github.com/PeteW). Like you I dont tout them publically ([well except one time](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13271522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13271522 )) because: 1. I take my full-time job as a very serious obligation requiring good honest work every single day. If I felt like I couldnt offer my full-time job this sort of honest commitment then I'd immediately search for a better full-time job. 2. I dont have kids but I do have a life away from the laptop. Balancing full-time job and real-life means my side projects normally lack enough polish for me to consider them deliverable/sellable products. 3. Heralding all my side projects in public feels like busy work to me. If you were really interested these projects then youll search for the project first not the author. Ah well now I just caught myself rambling on HN yet again. To each his own I suppose ;) EDIT: I suck at links
nickjj 9y ago
You should ask yourself why you're making these open source web games and bigger games. Is it to learn the tech stack for some bigger goal, or are you doing it in hopes you gain recognition? Do you enjoy doing it? That's a really important distinction to make because think about it like this: Let's say you could do anything you want in the world. No limits here. You have enough money, time, health, everything. Would you purposely avoid doing it to mess around all day? Keep in mind, I'm guilty of this too so I'm not talking down to you. I know the drill here. You goto bed thinking "tomorrow will be amazing" and then tomorrow ends up being 14 hours of reddit, HN, Youtube, games, some exercise and about 1 hour of productive work if you're lucky. I've gotten a little better over the years, mainly from reading some books, setting goals, creating habits and working on things that I really care about. You might get a lot out of some of the books I mentioned in my yearly round up post at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/2017-recap-books-read-podcasts-and-goals https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/2017-recap-books-read-podcast....
tw1010 9y ago
It sounds like a cool game, on paper. But listen, you can't have both (1) a desire for the game to become popular (which, even if you say you don't, is implicit in your behaviour since the reason you seem to be burned out is because you're not getting the social reward that you expected in return for your time investment), (2) an understanding that you're building a very niche game that not everyone will like. If a startup works towards a great vision with only so-so execution, what would they do? They wouldn't (if they are wise) stubbornly keep working on what users have already told them (reviews in your case) isn't really what they want. They would, in a big or small way, pivot. They would change and iterate and get user feedback until they hit upon something the users liked, not something they, the developers, wanted to code. If you don't adapt to that reality, you might still have a fun time coding, but burnout will ensue once you realize that the hidden motivation (people actually playing the game) isn't being satisfied to the extent you wished it was. My advice is to get some (one or two weekend sized) core mechanics really really fun and solid, try it out on actual people, and change it up if they don't like it, and go from there. Don't build a big gigantic thing before you know if you're on the right path or not.
- angarg12 9y ago
  I already did that. v1 was a short-ish prototype to play around with an idea. v2 is the fully realised vision. As a matter of fact the game is feature completed (save from minor features), and it just needs balance, polish (oh boy, does it need polish) and better UX. I'm aware that my audience is niche, if only I was appealing to them!. At the end the looming feeling is whether any amount of balance/polish is going to make it appealing, or should I consider it a lost cause for good.
  - tw1010 9y ago
    Your heart doesn't seem to be in it. Don't fall for sunk-cost. Cut your losses and go for something where polish and quick iteration is the highest priority (removing all fluff like configuration files and clean and structured code). Take inspiration from Notch's live coding sessions. Try to make each version essentially "finished", without large set of "boring grunt work" weighing your motivation down (like polish is weighing you down now). Don't stop iterating on the basics until you and a few friends (online or offline) really love playing with it. Focus on pure childish joy, and be brutally honest with yourself if you don't feel it. Don't hide away for months without getting user feedback. On the bright side, now you have a chance to learn from your mistakes! Good luck!
superb_herb 9y ago
I’m interested in the game but nowhere in the readme does it explain what the gameplay is.
WillReplyfFood 9y ago
Same for me, the problem i have is that after a while you are no longer implementing new game mechanics or novell features- you are basically doing maintenance - so personally im no longer impressed by those dessert flower projects. Anyone can do the fun work, but sticking around and beeing a maintainer. Respect to that.
Sean1708 9y ago
Personally I stopped working on "projects" a couple of years ago after I had to abandon a mildly popular (that's probably a bit of a stretch) project. Nowadays most of the programming I do outside of work is either learn new things or tackle challenges that I find interesting (often using the new things that I learnt).
rufius 9y ago
I used to have a lot of consternation for not having a side project. Then I realized that most of the side projects I saw people pushing seemed like solutions in search of problems to me. Overall - it’s a mindset thing for me. I think we have overly complex software systems in place to solve problems that would be better served by people learning to communicate effectively with each other. Along that same line, I think we sell people on the idea they need these newer/faster/better software systems to be efficient or effective when in reality, not much has changed since the 80s in word processing. That’s a long way to say that my hobby is not shitting up the world with more code. Instead I’ll just spend time with my animals and people.

mv4 9y ago

Obsessively shipping multiple side projects is the IT version of Crossfit.

snarf21 9y ago
That is brilliant. Plus, sometimes these open source projects are just a script that does something useful. Side projects rarely scale linearly.

Darkstack 9y ago

I'm in the same boat, and I have made the mistake of writing my own engine, you get no quick satisfaction versus the time you spent, it requires a lot of background knowledge, and some functionality needs too much work to be a Hobby (and the fact that coding at home is not fun when you spent 9 hours coding at work)

z3t4 9y ago

People say finishing a project is hard, but giving up on a project can be just as though if not harder! What is so hard about giving up ? It's human bias that we have somehow failed. The trick is not to look at it like a failure. Think about how much you have learned! And the hours you have already put in should be considered "sunk cost" (micro economics) and you should weight the "opportunity cost" eg. how much you value the time you can spend on other things.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

corobo 9y ago

> and nobody gave a damn anyway Have you ever linked them anywhere? I'd have thought this comment was a good place > it may only be me but besides this kind of articles I would like to read articles about people who have no side projects Probably, that sounds like a boring read

angarg12 9y ago
Yes, I'm active in Reddit and I posted them there. I also released one in Kongregate, where it got bad rating and terrible feedback. Here you can find my current project, it's a sciency idle game so not everyone's cup of tea. https://github.com/angarg12/nucleogenesis https://github.com/angarg12/nucleogenesis
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

pweissbrod 9y ago

Like you I have a handful of these I [push to github](https://github.com/PeteW https://github.com/PeteW). Like you I dont tout them publically ([well except one time](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13271522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13271522 )) because: 1. I take my full-time job as a very serious obligation requiring good honest work every single day. If I felt like I couldnt offer my full-time job this sort of honest commitment then I'd immediately search for a better full-time job. 2. I dont have kids but I do have a life away from the laptop. Balancing full-time job and real-life means my side projects normally lack enough polish for me to consider them deliverable/sellable products. 3. Heralding all my side projects in public feels like busy work to me. If you were really interested these projects then youll search for the project first not the author. Ah well now I just caught myself rambling on HN yet again. To each his own I suppose ;) EDIT: I suck at links

nickjj 9y ago

You should ask yourself why you're making these open source web games and bigger games. Is it to learn the tech stack for some bigger goal, or are you doing it in hopes you gain recognition? Do you enjoy doing it? That's a really important distinction to make because think about it like this: Let's say you could do anything you want in the world. No limits here. You have enough money, time, health, everything. Would you purposely avoid doing it to mess around all day? Keep in mind, I'm guilty of this too so I'm not talking down to you. I know the drill here. You goto bed thinking "tomorrow will be amazing" and then tomorrow ends up being 14 hours of reddit, HN, Youtube, games, some exercise and about 1 hour of productive work if you're lucky. I've gotten a little better over the years, mainly from reading some books, setting goals, creating habits and working on things that I really care about. You might get a lot out of some of the books I mentioned in my yearly round up post at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/2017-recap-books-read-podcasts-and-goals https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/2017-recap-books-read-podcast....

tw1010 9y ago

It sounds like a cool game, on paper. But listen, you can't have both (1) a desire for the game to become popular (which, even if you say you don't, is implicit in your behaviour since the reason you seem to be burned out is because you're not getting the social reward that you expected in return for your time investment), (2) an understanding that you're building a very niche game that not everyone will like. If a startup works towards a great vision with only so-so execution, what would they do? They wouldn't (if they are wise) stubbornly keep working on what users have already told them (reviews in your case) isn't really what they want. They would, in a big or small way, pivot. They would change and iterate and get user feedback until they hit upon something the users liked, not something they, the developers, wanted to code. If you don't adapt to that reality, you might still have a fun time coding, but burnout will ensue once you realize that the hidden motivation (people actually playing the game) isn't being satisfied to the extent you wished it was. My advice is to get some (one or two weekend sized) core mechanics really really fun and solid, try it out on actual people, and change it up if they don't like it, and go from there. Don't build a big gigantic thing before you know if you're on the right path or not.

angarg12 9y ago
I already did that. v1 was a short-ish prototype to play around with an idea. v2 is the fully realised vision. As a matter of fact the game is feature completed (save from minor features), and it just needs balance, polish (oh boy, does it need polish) and better UX. I'm aware that my audience is niche, if only I was appealing to them!. At the end the looming feeling is whether any amount of balance/polish is going to make it appealing, or should I consider it a lost cause for good.
- tw1010 9y ago
  Your heart doesn't seem to be in it. Don't fall for sunk-cost. Cut your losses and go for something where polish and quick iteration is the highest priority (removing all fluff like configuration files and clean and structured code). Take inspiration from Notch's live coding sessions. Try to make each version essentially "finished", without large set of "boring grunt work" weighing your motivation down (like polish is weighing you down now). Don't stop iterating on the basics until you and a few friends (online or offline) really love playing with it. Focus on pure childish joy, and be brutally honest with yourself if you don't feel it. Don't hide away for months without getting user feedback. On the bright side, now you have a chance to learn from your mistakes! Good luck!

superb_herb 9y ago

I’m interested in the game but nowhere in the readme does it explain what the gameplay is.

WillReplyfFood 9y ago

Same for me, the problem i have is that after a while you are no longer implementing new game mechanics or novell features- you are basically doing maintenance - so personally im no longer impressed by those dessert flower projects. Anyone can do the fun work, but sticking around and beeing a maintainer. Respect to that.

Sean1708 9y ago

Personally I stopped working on "projects" a couple of years ago after I had to abandon a mildly popular (that's probably a bit of a stretch) project. Nowadays most of the programming I do outside of work is either learn new things or tackle challenges that I find interesting (often using the new things that I learnt).

rufius 9y ago

I used to have a lot of consternation for not having a side project. Then I realized that most of the side projects I saw people pushing seemed like solutions in search of problems to me. Overall - it’s a mindset thing for me. I think we have overly complex software systems in place to solve problems that would be better served by people learning to communicate effectively with each other. Along that same line, I think we sell people on the idea they need these newer/faster/better software systems to be efficient or effective when in reality, not much has changed since the 80s in word processing. That’s a long way to say that my hobby is not shitting up the world with more code. Instead I’ll just spend time with my animals and people.