Jumpstarting Your Creativity: From Hobbyist to Professional

[Music] [Applause] you have a cool idea for a video game it's been a while since you've been this excited about a project uh ideas seem to flow out you readily and you start to craft them working on this game has been a lot easier than the last project you work on it for a while happy with the progress you're making but then you start to hit some bugs and some issues yeah it's okay persevere nope no problem you do this for a while longer but you slowly hit more bugs more problems it's getting harder to keep pushing through them but and you start to notice hey you could have done things a little bit better now you're going back to go fix those problems but you're uncovering more bugs and more problems and now you're trying to find that motivation trying to rekindle that fire that push you to work on the project in the first place you sit there as your mind starts to

wander and then suddenly you have a cool idea for a video game hi my name is charles mcgregor and i'm the founder and soul developer at tribe games and i personally have been stuck in this loop before it feels like you aren't making any progress on uh any of your projects or your skills and you're basically you're in a rut i want to tell you about my story of starting out in that cycle and then how i had a turning point that helped launch my career and what that led to and hopefully this can help you make that leap but before i even start i do want to say that there is nothing wrong with wanting to just be a hobbyist developer or a hobbyist at anything in life you don't always have to try and make a living off of everything that you do uh and if doing uh doing things just for

you uh is valid uh you don't have to uh continue to try and pursue some type of financial gain out of this and such so i encourage you to keep doing that if that is your goal this talk is for those that feel stuck in a cycle of starting new projects for those who want to make the jump from being a hobbyist to a professional and even for those who want to switch things up so this is still for you but for me when i first started out i had the goal of uh i already had the goal of doing it professionally when i was like eight or nine years old i uh read an article in a time magazine about a young girl who started her own bakery business at uh and she was around my age at the time i didn't realize that you could do something uh at such a young age so i wanted to do that but i knew i wanted to do that with

something that i loved so i approached my dad and asked him how do you make video games my dad is a computer scientist so he sat me down and taught me how to uh code and do the fundamentals he bought me some software called dark basic uh yes the that is as terrifying of a box as you might have thought even back then but he taught me how to do programming uh and such and all the basics that he knew uh and uh it was super cool that uh there was a thing that specialized in programming video games a bear in mind i didn't know what a game engine was uh back then but uh i was just so excited to keep on working on uh or work on video games in general he also bought me a a 700 page book on dark basic that i attempted to read all

of uh i would stay in bed when i was supposed to be when i was supposed to be asleep and try and read through all of the different chapters i never ended up doing that but i was i was really excited about learning and working towards the goal of making games for a living as i was learning dark basic i uh was reading the dedicated forums online uh where i found out that about dark face dark basic professional and i was thinking back then oh if i had a professional version of this uh software then i would make better games so i i pleaded with my dad to see if we can make the upgrade and i'm extremely fortunate to have like super supportive uh parents that i believe believed in me when i was uh really going full bore into into learning how to do development uh and all of the the crazy hobbies that i work on

so uh he got the upgrade and i uh and i quickly learned that that did not help me in terms of trying to figure out uh how to make video games a quick aside upgrading to get the pro version of something should not be your first concern when you are starting out i had uh i had started out making uh small projects but i never actually finished anything i would get to a point where i had some technical problem or lose motivation working on a game i would work on uh i would start working on a game get a ways in but then uh find that oh there's something that i could have done better or uh something that uh has taken my interest elsewhere and then i wouldn't actually uh complete the video of the video game that i was trying to do because finishing a game seemed like a

task that would always take years to complete when i became discouraged uh i would factor that in and then be and then move on to another project and when i did move on uh i felt like i've always or i needed to work on something harder because it needs to move er because i felt like i needed to move forward in develop developing my skills so i started to work on a game called emerald uh which was initially small but i started working uh which was initially small for a while but then i started working on another game with my friends unfortunately that game petered out and then i attempted to go back to the first game but i lost the drive and motivation to work on that because i was hitting technical problems and i didn't want to work on old old code uh but i knew uh i i knew i could have done

things better so i didn't want to go back so the list of games that i didn't finish grew and grew eventually i made the switch over to unity seeing seeing that i would be able to make games for multiple platforms where i would be able to and i had what what i consider one of my most productive summers where i learned unity i learned 3d modeling i learned blender i learned more about music production i started working on a new game and i was extremely excited i was i was really into the process of learning new things but with all of that i still didn't finish a game i was getting frustrated as i was not finishing games that i started and this went on for years and years this started out went uh since i learned

uh about dark basic back when i was a kid to uh in the middle of high school um still trying to figure out how to finish games as i was learning more and more about unity and starting and stopping projects of course i came across a unity forum post that told me about told a story uh and the post was called the answer to every can it be done and i've lost my way post the post starts out with a more whimsical take on what i led the talk out with the journey of someone who followed the sound of an ambitious ambitious project right away how it led them astray and losing that drive to keep working on that project after that anecdote the post goes on to talk about how uh the poster's wife uh said that he has been messing around

with uh this prototype that he uh he's been working on for too long and uh and he needs uh and he needs to finish uh whatever he was working on after getting a bit defensive uh his wife his wife replied build something in six weeks anything at all so long as you finish it knowing he couldn't finish in six weeks he said give me eight weeks it took him night he shipped the project uh the product out amidst it wasn't the greatest but it was finished and for the world to see it flipped a switch he started to actually finish projects and and in the four years proceeding he had released nine products uh out on three different platforms along with a slew of other uh great accomplishments and personal achievements

i totally wanted that after hearing that i wanted to be able to finish games i was like oh that sounds amazing but the problem is that i've heard all that before i heard you need to start small or don't work on an mmo rpg as your first project the problem is that i thought i was following those guidelines already instead of doing the 3d hack and slash idea that i had had wanted to make i wanted i started out and lowered my scope to a 2d frogger game which is smaller but after initially paring down the size i let my mind wander to more and more things to add to the game add in multiplayer add in an in-game level editor there was some arbitrary limit that i i thought of that needed oh yeah we need more environments actually we need two more environments let's add characters and uh add

a story behind it ah but you know what else we also need uh we need to update all the art and then we should also add some more environments because clearly there's not enough environments it's not actually a game yet if there are not enough environments and then i and then the the crowning achievement is instead of working on what i already had let's make bigger levels now i the list goes on and on of things that i started adding and adding and adding to the the game but i uh i was never stopping in adding new features the post hit me because i was him i toiled away on a game for a while but then i didn't finish it i kept going and i didn't know when to stop or i didn't know when to stop adding

features uh or or the game was already too big in uh some of the earlier uh versions of games that i started but that post came at a great time i had the opportunity to make a small game for a school club fair that we were trying to showcase our work at the catch i had two days to finish it perfect the game had to be complete it had a deadline so i started get working on it the work the game needed to be flashy and easy to pick up and play but it ultimately needed to be finished in two two days so i was inspired by one of my favorite arcade games geometry wars and i started work on glitching the system it was rough but it was completed and i showed it off at the event and it went amazingly

sure there were some bugs and it wasn't the most balanced game out there but there was something that was actually finished and from uh after that event i said okay i'm going to polish what i already have i'm going to release it and i have two weeks i'm giving myself a two week limit so i started working and polishing and i said i had two weeks it took two months i wanted to make sure that i didn't uh add in new features but i still added some new features i did add in a new enemy and i added in some power ups but for the majority of that i was only adding in polish and discovering that adding in polish took that much time uh really helped uh put things in perspective and about eight oh eight weeks later

i finished i was done i remember when i put in the last code the last line of code i remember when i used that 3d modeling experience that i learned that one summer to help make the trailer i remember sitting there after releasing the game on my website thinking to myself i did it it was a surreal experience because i've never gotten to that point where i got to the point where i could say that hey i actually finished and it and with this the floodgates opened in the system opened up so many doors that i didn't uh want to take grant uh take them for granted i had the opportunity to port the game to a mobile rif windows phone uh i was able to get my first paid gig because of it i

was able to uh do some of my first public talks because of because of uh glitch in the system i won my first award because of a game that i made which is absolutely insane and i can't believe that that's the case so with that i was able to keep that momentum i started to understand what it what went into finishing a game because i now had experience of doing it sure it was a small game but the ending to development was no longer a hazy area it no longer was oh this automatically takes years and years because it's a video game so i was able to start working on projects that were much more reasonable in scope and i understood what caused my games to blow i better understand what cosmic games well adding new features every week

uh would tend to do that so yeah i didn't want to jump into any bigger project than glitching the system right away i wanted to continue learning from smaller projects and smaller game jams uh smaller projects where that's where i learned about game jams where you have a set amount of time to finish games this helped me make more progress in learning and growing as a developer i was able to do my first uh my first contract job because of glitch in the system as i mentioned i was able to work on my first vr experience uh with the minnesota orchestra which is uh insane to think about i did my first game jam with friends where i was able to experience in a short amount of time the creation of a polished uh what i uh

consider a polished experience and then on top of that i also worked on my own uh solo game jam so i continued down this path working on more smaller games to helped me get better and better and now all the games that i've worked on from there on out did see the finish line and you know it's okay if they if you don't finish some games but it became less about about me running out of steam on those ideas uh on those games but it's more on oh these ideas are not working out so after doing this about two years i had eight about eight projects finished of varying sizes uh which is a stark contrast to what i had done before

so this ultimately uh led me to my biggest solo project i had taken on a project that was born out of similar constraints uh from my first completed uh a game i had four days uh to complete a game that was going to present to a class that had nothing to do with video games this led me to work uh start work on hyper dot i applied what i learned from all the other projects that i uh had worked on from before and i scoped it to what i thought would be reasonable uh after uh showcasing or after doing the presentation from that four days i'd scoped it to what i thought would be reasonable to be done in about six months total it took nearly four years so yeah it doesn't always work out perfectly every time but i still ended up finishing the game i was able to practice what i've learned from previous

projects and i limited my scope early to uh and and i had to clear goals and even though i fell into some of the same trappings as a project like my first project uh the difference was that i had much more experience um dealing with each part of the game so i could figure out the size of of the endeavors that i'm going into so yes uh hyperdot also has uh multiple environments it also has more mechanics uh adding in an in-game level editor but i was more comfortable comfortable working on those because i was able to experience them from previous projects or my past finished games so with that uh in the end i was able to actually make a game that i was immensely proud of a game that i stayed true to the

original design pillars of a game that i finished hyperdot was partially made so i could prove to myself that i could finish a game that was bigger than glitch in the system that i could express myself through mechanics design music and art of a game but hypernot became much more than just the game hybridat uh i hold hyperdot so close to my heart because i was able to fulfill those childhood dreams i had all those years ago i was able to do things that i only seen on a tv or a computer screen uh i was able to meet people that i followed for years i'm able to do this very talk uh and i'm i was able to finish a game point to it and say i made that and i'm really proud of that okay so you're probably tired of hearing

me wax poetics about my story and whatnot so with all that said what can we take away with all of this when you feel like you are getting nowhere in the in your projects or you're restarting all the time when you feel like you aren't making progress and make getting better at development when you want to take the next step try to finish a game it doesn't matter how small you think that idea is go through the process of releasing a game and when i say releasing releasing doesn't only mean put it on the store it could mean that but it also could mean just post it on a form or share it with your friends and family it doesn't always have to be publicly available to everyone just go through the process so then you can unders better understand the scope of the of all of the things that you're

trying to do for future games and i know that you have probably heard this uh advice before because i heard it before uh before that forum post which is try making it a small game but sometimes it's hard to figure out how small you should make it so try putting in a time limit on the developments uh try putting a timeline on the development and add a stopping point after two months or one month or even one week try making a game that you can finish in that time include releasing and whatever releasing means to you try doing a game jam that would add a lower pressure so you have 48 hours to make it and because it's only 48 hours it doesn't have to be the greatest thing since indoor plumbing it can be

what it can be what it is for the 48 hours it can be creative or expressive but as long as you try and finish the game and i know that you really want to work on that dream project of yours that idea that seems a little bit too big or or just it seems like oh i this is the thing that is motivating me to work on the game try before you before you do work on that hold on to that idea and try and make a smaller game multiple smaller games that can teach you how to work on that big game try pulling out that cool art style that you're thinking of and then work on an experiment or a prototype or even a finished game on doing that try pulling out that mechanic or that the sweet audio ideas that you have and do those on separate projects that

way when you do go back to that big idea it's more refined because you have that idea of what you have a better idea of how this entire game will be scoped out because think of it this way think of think of the first time that you did something that you do regularly now think of the first time that you played a game or you drew a doodle or played an instrument or ran a race then compare that first time to where you are now to see how far you have come apply that to apply to apply where you've the growth that you had in that in that hobby or that that thing that you're trying to compare to and then see where that you can apply that to your dream game the big game i the big game will still

be there but if you had all that experience doing those smaller things the big game will be better and better in quality because of because of how you build on all of your uh information and knowledge from those small games which lands on the last point uh that i will mention is that it's okay not being uh it's okay for whatever you make to not be the greatest thing i will admit glitching the system wasn't the greatest thing ever but it was fun but it wasn't the greatest thing ever but i learned from my process of making glitch in the system and you can learn from your process of making whatever project that you're working on so that next time you can be better now none of these things that i've mentioned are guarantees some of the these things may work for you some won't

some maybe none will but i hope that at least this starts you in the right direction my goal is for this my goal for this talk is for this to be someone's forum post for this to be something where you've heard this at the right time when i heard that advice when i saw that forum post i i already heard that advice before i got what that advice meant but i didn't understand and internalize what it meant until that moment so you may have already heard this advice before but i hope that someone hears this just at the right time so that they can make their jump and their leap all right and with that uh thank you so much for listening to me uh ramble on and on uh you can follow me on uh twitter at tribe games or my

personal account at tarte uh darkest tg to keep up with whatever i'm doing and thank you so much for taking the time to hear my story and i hope that this talk helps you in some way