How to have motivation for a game

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In depth tutorial

First of all, the first step of being motivated is to find your end goals.

If your goal is to be successful on ROBLOX you should spend time coming up with game ideas, plan thoroughly and predict how long they will take to make. Going down this path means you will not have fun making games and you need to work on them even when you’re not motivated. Most people fail to do this…

If you just make ROBLOX games because your passionate then I think you should make a game that links to your real life hobbies and interests and only work on that game. Don’t make ambitious goals of being a robux millionaire or anything just have fun making the game! If you get lucky then your game will be successful but even if you don’t, you would have learnt a lot of things and learned more about your passion for games and hobbies.

How do I stay motivated?

This is something I have had problems with ALOT and I can safely say that I tackled it well. I’ll tell you the way I tackled this issue and perhaps you can take inspiration: I was a very unmotivated person especially on this project that was way too big for me like it was a mega map and it had loads of stuff that needed scripting, building and modelling, overall it was overwhelming. To this day that was just a passion project and I still haven’t finished it but I come back to it once in a while because I enjoy working on it. If you have a large game that you hate working on then it’s most likely to fail because in the end you might rush it out of excitement to release it.

I learned more about how motivation worked and I learnt about dopamine and it’s effects on your brain: in simple words dopamine is a hormone that makes you feel good, it can give you motivation to do something when you feel pleasure that;s why some people start games feeling very motivated while having fun working on them but then after a week or two they have zero motivation because they lost their spark for the game.

In other words dopamine will decrease your productivity and your motivation to work on games. The way I tackled this is by blocking out any bad dopamine-releasing things such as social media or games. The main cause of bad productivity is social media and the relentless releases of dopamine. I personally didn’t delete any because I keep in contact with friends on their but I made sure to put a time limit on any distractfull apps that involved scrolling because they are designed to make you scroll endlessly and release large amounts of dopamine for pleasure in your brain.

There is good and bad dopamine, the good dopamine comes from productive activities like the gym, exercise or reading.

By blocking out all these distractions and sources of pleasure for my brain I was able to feel more productive and motivated to work on my games.

I found that exercising at least 30 minutes a day whether it’s cardio or weight lifting made me think much better when programming and it allowed me to be more productive.

I personally hate the word motivation because its basically saying some days you work on a game a lot and some days you barely work on it. This is the one thing that will ultimately lead to the downfall of your game’s progress.

It’s more effective to be consistent and have discipline where you have set periods of the day for a set amount of time to work on the game. Have some breaks if you really need to.

Personally I hate breaks and I don’t believe in burning out, I do things when I don’t feel like doing them and over time the dread of doing them goes away and it turns into a habit. It would be helpful to read certain books like Atomic Habits for that kind of stuff to build a good daily routine and a set of habits.

It might also help to find yourself an idol that would help you build the willpower you want for games. Personally I’m a huge David Goggins person and he has helped me turn into the person I’m today from his incredible mental strength and doing things that suck every day.

(Edit and a response I gave someone)

Staying motivated for a game in the long term

I view motivation as a kick starter to build a daily habit of working on your game. Use motivation to kick start a project and then learn to be consistent with it using the tips I give below.

Something else that can help with your motivation is to find someone to work with. When you are working on a game alone you will feel much less motivated to work on it. But when you have someone else there present to see the work you’re putting into the game. Even if you don’t pay a developer they can still be there as a volunteer and it will motivate you to do more by showing them your consistency and hard work. This would also motivate your developers knowing that the game has progress being made to it.

Another way to stay motivated and consistent is to hire a bunch of volunteers to test your game and give them a “tester update” every single day. You will aim to do one every single day anyways. Basically you just update the testers on what changed about the game every day, they will play and report bugs to you and the game will begin to take shape slowly but surely.

One more important thing about staying motivated is… Stay organised! Keep your code clean and make sure you use a module loader (you don’t need to but it’s preffered) This means scripts and everything is extremely organised and it’s very easy to add features and edit other scripts. Having unorganised code will destroy your motivation ALOT.

Here is a tutorial and great open source module loader by @crusherfire .

I don’t know your programming level yet but if you think this is too complicated for you then you should spend some time learning how to use module scripts and stuff before going onto it.

If you know how to use modules that’s great! I would learn as much as I can about this module loader and try it out for a game. Try to make a small project and don’t make the mistake for making it too big. This is so you can actually feel what it’s like to release something you’ve worked on for a week or two. Now imagine the feeling for a project you’ve worked on consistently for a month or two.

Thanks for reading, I’m happy to help anyone in the comments struggling with these motivational issues.

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Really helpful post. I’ve been working on a game for the past two weeks, putting most of my time into core mechanics like movement and AI. But when it came to building the map, I spent a few days on just one tower, then two more on the second one. After that, I felt extremely demotivated. It stopped feeling fun, more like something I had to do.

The best way I’ve found to deal with that feeling is:

1 - Take a break. You’re not a machine, you can’t go nonstop.

2 - Play a game that inspires you. For me, that’s the only thing that brings back motivation. I look at developers I admire and let that spark something in me.

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Hi I’m happy my post was helpful. I think every person is different on how they handle motivation but personally I’m more like a machine lol!

I have been consistently working on my game every single day without distractions for over a year and it has made good progress. The fact that I have been so consistent with it completely destroys the motivation factor because it has turned into a habit.

That is one of the things that the book “Atomic Habits” has taught me.

You say you are not a machine but a human but at the same time you are procrastinating (e.g playing a game instead of doing what you’re supposed to) .

It’s human nature to feel demotivated and do something that feels more pleasurable like play a game, however you must have the discipline to be able to do what’s more important.

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this post didnt help i still need motivation and i cant stop procrastinating /srs

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Then you’re not cut out for it, you won’t be a top dog without disciple and consistency.

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What causes you to procrastinate?

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I talked about this a lot in this post.

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Okay I read your post.

Here is my response:

I understand your position right now and I have been there before. I believe you are feeling something known as burn out. This is what I would do in your position, burn out is something caused when you work on something for way too long and you get exhausted so much that you start, feeling very bored and begin doing other things. This is where the principle of procrastination comes in. Burn out is something you can get rid of by taking a 1 day break, all you need to do is just spend a day without opening Roblox Studio but also don’t play any games. This means go on a walk or something or do something that relaxes your mind, something stress free. You can play a game if you really want to but make sure it’s not going to make you stressed or anything like that, e.g competitive game, horror game and so on.

Since you are burned out at the moment I’ll let you do what I said above (that’s if you want to follow my guide). Now after tomorrow you are going to feel much better (trust me). Burn out is something that you can prevent, using the concept of consistency. If you work on a game for the same amount of time every day consistently you will never be burnt out because your brain has adapted to it and it’s become a habit. (Knowledge coming from “Atomic Habits” (the book). I know this because I have experienced it myself and for the past year consistency has led me to never be burnt out again, this means you don’t need breaks, your breaks are every day before and after you finish with your roblox studio session.

This does not mean you have to track your hours on roblox studio and make a schedule or something. Your breaks can be as long as you want but usually personally: When I wake up in the morning I play a fast paced game or something to get me ready and wake me up a bit. Then I aim to be on Roblox studio before 10am. Admittingly, sometimes I can get addicted to a game and try to grind it lol but I always aim to get something done in studio by the end of the day. I have the discipline to stop playing if I need to.

Staying motivated for a game in the long term

I view motivation as a kick starter to build a daily habit of working on your game. Use motivation to kick start a project and then learn to be consistent with it using the tips I give below.

Something else that can help with your motivation is to find someone to work with. When you are working on a game alone you will feel much less motivated to work on it. But when you have someone else there present to see the work you’re putting into the game. Even if you don’t pay a developer they can still be there as a volunteer and it will motivate you to do more by showing them your consistency and hard work. This would also motivate your developers knowing that the game has progress being made to it.

Another way to stay motivated and consistent is to hire a bunch of volunteers to test your game and give them a “tester update” every single day. You will aim to do one every single day anyways. Basically you just update the testers on what changed about the game every day, they will play and report bugs to you and the game will begin to take shape slowly but surely.

One more important thing about staying motivated is… Stay organised! Keep your code clean and make sure you use a module loader (you don’t need to but it’s preffered) This means scripts and everything is extremely organised and it’s very easy to add features and edit other scripts. Having unorganised code will destroy your motivation ALOT.

Here is a tutorial and great open source module loader by @crusherfire .

I don’t know your programming level yet but if you think this is too complicated for you then you should spend some time learning how to use module scripts and stuff before going onto it.

If you know how to use modules that’s great! I would learn as much as I can about this module loader and try it out for a game. Try to make a small project and don’t make the mistake for making it too big. This is so you can actually feel what it’s like to release something you’ve worked on for a week or two. Now imagine the feeling for a project you’ve worked on consistently for a month or two.

I hope my advice helps you and I would love if you keep me updated on how you’re doing!

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