5 Reasons Why Game Development Is SO HARD!

okay my name is Thomas brush from the creator of a game called pinstripe I'm also working on a game called once upon a coma I've been making games for about 10 years now and I love what I do it's the best job on earth but I'd be lying if I told you that it wasn't difficult today was particularly difficult day and I just want to give you some reasons why game development may be a little bit harder than just making games all day so first off game development kind of feels silly especially when you're first starting out making games you feel like you might be wasting your time so if you ever talking to maybe some co-workers or some friends or family and you tell them what you've been spending your time on it almost sounds like I've been playing games making games too a lot of people seems like you're just playing games truth is you're making you're playing games but you're spending a lot more time writing code building systems

testing things and doing a lot of other business admin type stuff so it's not as silly maybe as its perceived but I will say that even after my second game like I'm on my second commercially viable game we're about to release it it still sometimes feels silly sometimes feels like you might be wasting your time I know today I was sort of just I got into the office a little bit early today because I feel like I'm a little bit behind and the Sun was just coming up and for some reason in the mornings I'm all sort of beat down I'm not in the best mood and I did feel like I was I had a silly job sometimes I do feel like I need to go write get a regular job because right now you know sometimes seasons are slower than other seasons sometimes seasons are really good and when you're in a dry season

thinking about having a family thinking about having a wife thinking about having a daughter and then realizing that your job is to make video games - right like right now I spend a lot of my time writing really silly dialogue for my characters creating artwork that is interesting at best and writing music and you know it feels like a silly job sometimes so that's the first reason why game development is I mean notoriously perceived as difficult the second reason is you have to wear a million hats and whether or not you want to make games solo or whether you want to work with a team you're still gonna have to wear a thousand hats just constantly doing new things that you didn't know you had to do or could do for me I'm doing accounting work I'm working with my CPA who you know I just hired a CPA to help me with tax stuff I'm writing the music

and I'm doing the development a lot some development work I usually do all of it but thankfully I have a coder helping me now with once upon a coma and doing bug testing and then managing writing story elements creating trailers creating email blasts social media doing vlogs it's like a ton of stuff to do and I'm so grateful for all of it don't get me wrong I'm not complaining but I want to let you know if you're interested in game development or do I want to encourage you if you're doing game development that it is normal it is normal for you to feel overwhelmed it's important for you to learn how to be happy in the transition because you're always changing it's always gonna be changing one hour you're gonna be doing one thing and you're gonna think okay I'm gonna code for eight hours today and get XYZ done and then in the next hour you're spending your time on something like marketing that you did not plan on

doing so it's a that's a stressful thing because it's really hard to keep a schedule it's really hard to hit deadlines especially if you're like me because I tend to be a little bit scatterbrained sometimes so wearing all those millions of hats if you don't learn to enjoy changing those hats on occasion actually all the time maybe don't be a game developer if you're doing that right now and it stresses you out I'd recommend trying to work on honestly changing the way that you think about your job because you're gonna have to change your hat third reason is kind of like changing hats but changing technologies things are always changing in the game industry and it's incredibly frustrating there's always a new news article about something that's happening so currently it's all about epics game store recently it was Nintendo switch right getting uh Nintendo switch and when it comes to just social media in general there's always some new social media tricks and

tools that you have to learn to engage with your audience and maintain your audience technologies are constantly changing so it's kind of a blessing and a curse these changing technologies one side of the coin it's amazing because anyone can make games because the technology is just rapidly advancing every single day the other reason why it's a curse is you always have to have on that entrepreneur hat and if you take off the entrepreneur hat for a day and then you put it back on you're like crap I just missed a bunch of new stuff that came out so it can be kind of discouraging to feel like because I always feel like I don't fully feel like I'm always there with the new technologies so obviously if you if you make enough money as a studio you can hire people to start wearing these hats but especially starting out it is gonna be tough to wear all those hats and then also deal with the changing technology being an entrepreneur while managing a

company so the fourth reason is the loneliness today was weird for me because I felt a little I thought I would I thought I was getting over the loneliness thing with game development that was like okay I'm done with that you know I like what I do know today was weird got up in the morning and felt lonely and I felt lonely up until now I'm talking to a camera and it's you think I'm talking to you but I'm just talking to a camera in a basement so I'm not complaining again I have the best job on earth but it can be lonely it doesn't have to be lonely right and here are some solutions that I mean honestly I need to convict myself here to pursue these these solutions to this problem but when you're trying so hard to finish a game or get content out there you can forget that it's important to involve yourself in a community so things like

live streaming on Twitch or YouTube are incredibly important or just hanging out with other live streamers especially game developer live streamers and being part of that community is really important going to local meetups or game jams is really important another thing you can do is just hang out on a discord server have that always open and be willing to talk to people and get to know people you know not only is it important to pursue these communities for your loneliness it's also important to communities for the first three points you know you won't feel as silly because you're part of a community you won't feel like you have all these hats because maybe you can find some people to help you out a little bit or at least encourage you the third thing is is changing technologies I just sent a message to Tim Russ wick who he has an incredible youtube channel you should check out I just messaged him a message Jim sterling today and some other youtubers and game

developers to ask them about certain technologies because I can't do it alone I can't change with the technology alone so don't let loneliness be just a bit like a a wound you have to deal with right it is not something you should be proud of rather in indie game development you should pursue not being lonely there are plenty of solutions so I can't complain and whine right now about being lonely if I'm not pursuing it first so that's really that's number four but it's also you know kind of convicting for me the fifth thing is it's kind of weird you're always and I think I heard this in another video you're always getting better as a game developer you're always getting better which means that you're always hating your work so yesterday's work is not going to be as good as today's work therefore you're gonna be likely to quit your project because

you're always thinking about how it could be better like yesterday's work could be as good as today's cuz now my eyes a little bit different I'm more in tune with maybe how music should sound or how my game should feel so you're always getting better and that's always causing you to hate the work you worked on the day before now if you're working on like a three year project you're certainly going to hate the work you did a year before or even a year before that so it takes a lot of humility to push through so I would highly recommend being humble recognize that you're never gonna be happy with your work you're never gonna be happy with what you did a year ago but to finish it it's not about you shouldn't be proud and try to be a perfectionist to prove a point or to prove that you're an amazing artist you know just just get it done push it out people don't care they really don't care they don't actually know here's a good rule of thumb if you feel like there's

something you need to tweak in your game especially something visual or maybe with the music people don't they don't see that most people they don't see that so anyway those are my five reasons why game development is notoriously considered a difficult thing to do a difficult job in career path my name is Thomas brush I make games for a living I love what I do if you want to support this channel subscribe comment hit the notification bell to get notified of daily videos I'm gonna try to post daily if I can about indie game development I want to hold your hand as you're making indie games and hopefully you'll hold mine head on over to patreon if you want to support this channel and see your name in the next video I'll talk to you later see you guys bye