Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Edmund and his girlfriend bought a house, and a hairless cat.
Soon after that, Tommy and Edmund started working on their next game. Who
wouldn't, after such a success?
Granted, these stories don't happen to everyone, but to know that the biggest indie
developers to make it huge went through tribulation, and spent their blood sweat
and tears, never giving up and going from having absolutely nothing to being able to
pay off their parents' debts, for me is encouragement enough.
Watch the documentary. It's amazing. (There is a lot of language in it, so beware!)
The challenges of game development
If you've watched the
Indie Game: The Movie
documentary, you will have seen just
some of the challenges of game development. Game development is mentally,
physically, and emotionally taxing. Especially considering people invest financially
and emotionally into their projects. They sacrifice hours of family time, or any spare
time at all to develop their game. Some have no job and run off savings, or in the case
of some, live off their parents' or spouse's income.
The stress of development too is very difficult. For the most part, the workload that
around 200 people do is put on the shoulders of one or two people. So you have to
consider that not only are you programming a game, but you are creating all the
images, sound effects, and music. That's a lot of work! There have also been many
times when developing a game, you get so intensely into it that nothing else matters.
Then you get a game killing bug. Then there's the stress of the interruption, and the
stress of finding the error, which can take many many hours to locate.
Now let's talk about the difficulty of learning a new programming language.
Some languages are a little less complex than others, but for the most part, learning
a new language is exactly that. You are learning a new language. Did you ever take
a secondary language in school? I took French and Spanish and I picked up Spanish
much faster than I did French. Why? Some languages are easier than others. It still
takes a lot of time and effort to study.
