Hey. Just making this post to talk about my recent experiences with making games.
For myself, I would say that I can make UI for a game and it would be quality at least to the point where players notice that it’s not horrible. I can also pump game ideas out (that noone’s done before, and are relatively simple, so if done right would be a success). My only roadblock, is that I am ONLY a UI designer. I have no interest in acquiring skills for coding, modeling or animation (although I’m currently learning hand-drawn art).
What do you suggest I do? Stick with it and hire people to do the job for me? Just do it, and learn something else just so I know how to do it?
My goal is to master my craft without having to do other things, but if it is what I have to do I understand. (I’m not trying to be mediocre at everything, I want to be good at one or two things)
The best way to handle this is to learn it yourself, though it may be tough at first you’ll get it eventually and then you make any game you want. You could always hire people since you have no interest in acquiring the skill, but the downside is you have to find the right person and have a payment which may be tough if you don’t have money.
Though if you do learn make sure it’s because you want to learn and not that you need to since it won’t be long before you quit since you’ll run into issues and bugs that may not have a solution and you’ll most likely quit.
If you do want to focus on one skill I would recommend mastering it and taking commissions to earn some money to later hire people. Also if you do ever make a game make sure to plan it out and don’t let it be “Adopt Me but with more features” or “Jailbreak but with extra features” since it won’t work especially the first time.
I would recommend learning what it takes to make a successful game and working on that. I used to be a UI designer but now I also script and model but that’s because I wanted to learn it and I’m still learning.
Hopefully, this makes sense, though there are many posts like this that I’ve seen. Anyway, that’s my take on what you should do. Hope this helps.
Thanks for this feedback! Really in depth and it helps.
The ideas I have for games are completely from scratch and they are all planned out. I’m very obsessed with writing out and blueprinting an entire game (gameplay, features, monetization etc) but I never find myself doing it because, here’s an example, "i don’t know how to script this simple system which is probably 40 lines of code, but why bother"
or
"if i want this game to be good, the weapon models gotta be mediocre at least. and I gotta pay someone for that, and oh wait, the textures for the skins too!"
Skills like programming can be made easier with planning for example. Usually, programmers use something called pseudocode which basically plans out what their program may look like, it’s a really rough version and this helps just visualize where pieces of code are going to go and how it may look like. When you look at long pieces of code you may think I don’t even understand what’s going on or I’ll never be able to do that, but if you start breaking the code up and learning things bit by bit you’ll eventually learn it and with time it makes the process easier.
To add to this if I wasn’t a UI designer and had no knowledge of any software, techniques etc I wouldn’t know what is going on. How do you round edges? How do you add a drop shadow? How would I even export this into studio? Of course, to you, that may be easy but that’s only because you took the time to learn it. This applies to all other skills.
Finally, there are a lot of things that go into making a game so it isn’t easy and most of the time can be a bit annoying, but as long as you start making games you’ll pick it up quite easily. You could always commission certain things like weapons and textures instead of hiring but that could be quite expensive, but it’s always an option. I say just make a start on a game and make sure to start off slow or you will get burnt out. I’ve made many games but stopped working on them due to me being burnt out and it’s never good so make sure to take breaks. Hopefully this helps as well as my other comment. Have a nice day and take care!
