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The problem with making video games is that it is long not hard. Designing your game is about 3-5% of the time spent making it. The rest is in tweaking animati

by debacle 14y ago

The problem with making video games is that it is long not hard. Designing your game is about 3-5% of the time spent making it. The rest is in tweaking animations, inverting arrays for better performance, refactoring, adjusting physics, fixing weird bugs, creating metaformats, and wishing desperately that floating point numbers did a bit less floating.

jwingy 14y ago
I would say the persistence needed to make something does make it hard. I understand what you're saying, but I don't think you can say it makes it any less difficult to ship something.
- debacle 14y ago
  No, but it takes dedication and discipline, not necessarily brilliance.
Random_Person 14y ago
Exactly this. I just tackled this question in a podcast interview about my freshly released board/card game. As gamers, we can all have ideas. Video gamers in particular like to dream up their holy grail of gaming... but making a video game takes FOREVER and is mostly NOT fun. Making a board/card game, however, is accessible to EVERYONE. If you can manipulate a pen and a pair of scissors, you can have a functional game in a matter of minutes. Then you get to spend 90% of your time working on the game design and not figuring out how to fix bugs in the physical medium.
jamesbritt 14y ago
Or you can go for art, fun, raw passion, and a novel point-of-view. There's an interesting take on this in the book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Videogame-Zinesters-Drop-outs-Housewives/dp/1609803728/ http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Videogame-Zinesters-Drop-outs-Hou...
CodeMage 14y ago
From my personal experience, the two main challenges when it comes to making video games are: 1) It's a multidisciplinary effort. Unless you're someone with multiple talents, you need to put together a team to work on it. You might try to pull it off all by yourself using free resources you can find on the Internet, but it's next to impossible to make a truly great game that way. 2) The biggest amount of work will be spent on "polishing" things. Dotting the i's and crossing the t's, testing your levels and tweaking them, all that stuff is a lot of work. And videogame players are a lot less forgiving than other application users.

by debacle 14y ago

jwingy 14y ago

I would say the persistence needed to make something does make it hard. I understand what you're saying, but I don't think you can say it makes it any less difficult to ship something.

debacle 14y ago
No, but it takes dedication and discipline, not necessarily brilliance.

Random_Person 14y ago

Exactly this. I just tackled this question in a podcast interview about my freshly released board/card game. As gamers, we can all have ideas. Video gamers in particular like to dream up their holy grail of gaming... but making a video game takes FOREVER and is mostly NOT fun. Making a board/card game, however, is accessible to EVERYONE. If you can manipulate a pen and a pair of scissors, you can have a functional game in a matter of minutes. Then you get to spend 90% of your time working on the game design and not figuring out how to fix bugs in the physical medium.

jamesbritt 14y ago

Or you can go for art, fun, raw passion, and a novel point-of-view. There's an interesting take on this in the book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Videogame-Zinesters-Drop-outs-Housewives/dp/1609803728/ http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Videogame-Zinesters-Drop-outs-Hou...

CodeMage 14y ago

From my personal experience, the two main challenges when it comes to making video games are: 1) It's a multidisciplinary effort. Unless you're someone with multiple talents, you need to put together a team to work on it. You might try to pull it off all by yourself using free resources you can find on the Internet, but it's next to impossible to make a truly great game that way. 2) The biggest amount of work will be spent on "polishing" things. Dotting the i's and crossing the t's, testing your levels and tweaking them, all that stuff is a lot of work. And videogame players are a lot less forgiving than other application users.