Hello all.

I want to confess that I have wanted to be a game developer for over 10 years now. When I was in primary school I messed around with games and enjoyed modding them, starting with making levels in Doom. I did a little self study in a few languages and since then I have just fooled around starting little games and never getting far with them. I have so many game design folders of stuff that interests me and I want to have a go at creating, I don't want to say they are good ideas, just things that float my boat. Whats the point in making games if your not creating something that you want to create?

But the issue that has plagued me for all these years, more so now that my current job requires so much of its own study and extra work, is finding motivation. Its alright to have dreams and to think of a piece of software you want to create, but actually spending the time to study programming/computer science, getting experience by creating simple software, and then spending the huge amount of time in a project that will hopefully turn into something close to what you envisioned. I'm not talking about making yourself spend time doing this, I mean enjoying yourself while you do it and choosing this as a hobby over everything else.

I have periods on and off where I get into a routine of study and programming, but then this falls off usually when work or other parts of my life take away the majority of my time. Or I just loose interest.

What I want to know is how you people work yourself up to doing this? Is the secret finding another like minded person? I have often thought the key is to find someone to work with that way you both can help each other and its a lot more exciting. Or is it just the case that if you place a brilliant video game or a women/man on one table and a 2000 page c++ manual on the other, the only people worthy of being game developers are the people who run to the C++ book without a seconds thought?

I just feel kind of bad. I live in NZ and game development is really kicking off and I probably could of been there and been someone if I actually put the hours in. maybe I could have found a team if I was skilled enough.

So before I ramble on anymore, what do you guys do to motivate yourself?

Cheers!

PS - I know some of you will say that I will have to quit my job, go on a course for a few years and then look for any kind of game industry job I can find. Apart from the fact that I don't feel that secure leaving my current job when there are a ton of people wanting to get jobs as game developers, I don't want to work for someone. I want to make my own games. Yes, this is a silly dream and its likely to fail, but the only reason I want to be a game developer is to make the games I have always wanted to make, not work on grey-brown-cover-shooter 26. I have always thought that if I could make some small games (and I mean small 1-2 man games with half a year production time) for experience and found a group of like minded people, I could have a shot at making something cool. I'm still not talking triple A title, the majority of stuff I want to make wouldn't require a big team.

I don't want to sit down at code Final Fantasy 14 over a weekend, probably the biggest game I want to develop is a 3d Rogue-like, I'm talking small hobbiest games that would hopefully have a chance at making some money in digital sales.

For decades I have said that my biggest obstacle to my personal projects is just overcoming myself and inertia.

That is fine if you don't want to be a professional game programmer. Lots of people on the board have a similar attitude.

Following your passions is important. If game development is a smaller passion then by all means do it as a hobby. I have passions and hobbies for photography and painting and music, but they are not my day job. If something else is your day job and you follow your lesser passions of game development on the side, do what brings you joy.

I can't recommend any specific tactic on motivation other than to just get started. It may take 10 or 30 minutes before I enter the groove (nobody likes soaking and stretching a canvas, or dressing properly and heading out into the rough for some nature photography) but once I'm there I love doing it. Even so, I agree with you. Note that I am replying on the site rather than reviewing an afternoon's photo shoot.

I struggled from the exact same symptoms as you seem to be wrangling with, for quite some time. That, combined with an over-active creative mind made my life a living hell to be perfectly honest. I would be sitting, watching a television show with my significant other, playing with my kids, enjoying a new video game, reading a book, or listening in on a departmental work meeting and all of a sudden an idea would hit me. Not a simple, or generic idea - the idea would hit me fleshed out to the point that I could call it a new project, and until I placed it on paper I wouldn't be able to think of anything else - this began to cause problems, especially with my profession.

I had to do something, and I can say with some certainty that the avenue I've taken has solved most of these problems, and I'm a happier person for it.

Pick one project - This was literally probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life. Having notebooks and notebooks filled with ideas and illustrations, picking one that I actually wanted to hammer down and complete was quite a painstaking act, but I knew this had to be done. Pick one project that you're dead-set on finishing, one that stands out among the rest. Once this has been completed you can move onto step two.

Define your project - Devise a paragraph of what your project is and what you hope to achieve with it, at the very beginning. This will act as your cornerstone for the rest of the project. Having a definitive goal in mind for your project in words will help you keep focus, and not sway from the target at hand - additionally, each time you go to work on your project you should re-read this definition of your project - just to make sure that you stay within it's bounds.

Divide your project up into realistically achievable tasks - Looking at your project as a whole can become an overburden, and demoralizing - losing the forward momentum to finish the project, especially if you're the only one working towards the end goal. Split your project up into tasks, something that's achievable within a window of a week or so. These tasks may be really small, or be subtasks for a bigger task that you have to complete - either way, being able to check that task or subtask off of a list of things needed to complete your project will keep that forward momentum going - you'll see that you're actually getting close, inching perhaps, to the final product - and that gratification can go a long way to keeping your morale up.

Software development teams do this, and obtain enough information from the stakeholders to create what we call "User Stories". As an example, defining my tasks in a laymen tone tends to help me with completing the task much better - such as "I want to connect Game Engine X to Relational Database Y" or "I want to have a searchable in-game inventory", "I want to understand instantiation as it pertains to C#", "I want to create an actor that can freeform move within my world", etc. etc. These may be small tasks, or larger tasks broken down into smaller subtasks depending on the level of resources and time needed to complete the task.

Keep track of your tasks - There's no sense in creating all of these achievable tasks if you're unable to easily administrate them. Find a software application specific towards task management or some other means to keep track of your progress of the current task you're hoping to achieve. There are oodles and oodles of software applications out there that are specific to task and project management. Try some, try all, find one you like and begin tracking your tasks.

Work on an array of tasks - Not to be confused with working on multiple tasks at once, work on different genres of tasks within your task schedule. If this week's task was creating a small government for a city in your game, etching out the finer details of such with short stories - then perhaps this week's task may be something more technical like studying up and understanding polymorphism. This will allow you to work on different things, while still transitioning to the same goal - the project you've defined, and you're less likely to become bored this way.

Keep a notebook with you - I keep a small, pocket-sized notebook with me at all times. If one of those "AHH HA!" moments comes to attack my mind, or a new idea begins to form - I write it in this notebook, as a brief summary, to keep incase the current project that I'm working on is ever finished. It's possible my current project may go tits up, or what have you - so writing down these ideas and just keeping them close by, without actively working on them tends to keep them at bay for me.

Either way, I hope you're able to overcome your current symptoms and hopefully some of the points I've made help you in doing this.

Programming should be fun. .....like you sit down to program and after a couple of hours something cool appears on the screen. (of course thats not the case when you work for someone else, but then you get paid for it.) If you do it this way, you will have enough momentum/motivation to push through the hard times when you have to research, analyze, plan, program for days without anything appearing on the screen.

Do something small. Make a sketch how the game should look like then list all the modules, features you will have to create. Normally if you cant list most of them the game you chose is not small enough.

...and a 2000 page c++ manual on the other, the only people worthy of being game developers are the people who run to the C++ book without a seconds thought?

If you are dedicated and find joy in game dev, that will come naturally:) And sometimes you have to force yourself doing it. Not all the time but without working hard you wont see much from your dream-games.

(I dont recommend books if you want to gain motivation now. Tutorials, gamedev.net, stackoverflow are a better idea.)

Also.... finish a game. I think game dev is not about spending years planning, making demos, engines(!), engine-fragments, game-fragments, ...but releasing games.(Ive learned that the hard way, LOL)

Thats exactly what happens to me, I will be playing a game or watching a movie and suddenly I will be extracting things from the media and I keep thinking about what I can take away from the media that will help me, or what I would of done differently. I am terrible at drawing freehand so I usually right down a few pages of messy information in hopes I will remember what I was thinking at the time. I always get vivid vignettes and I want to stop them filling up my memory .

In what way is it best to plan your study and project work? Just a simple calendar or spreadsheet? Is there a particular program you use for organization?

After watching many interviews with "Lord British" AKA Richard Garriot, I really like the old style design document and planning he does in clip lock folders, similar but far more organized than what I do. Nothing like beautiful concept art or maps.

I agree that its important to make sure you understand every line of code in a tutorial to the point you can call on it and modify it yourself, I have caught myself copy pasting once to many. I had a pretty good c++ regime last year where I had the book next to my keyboard so it was easier for me to do some practise each night because it was in my face. Books are so boring though, need more stimulation than that, I'm one of those learn by doing or viewing people.

That code project site looks awesome, does Gamedev have tutorials on languages in particular?

Thankyou everyone for the advice so far, I feel like I really need to change the way I do things this year or I am probably doomed to procrastinate forever and I have already wasted more than enough time.

As to me it seems that no motivation is a problem but time, or do i notunderstand? If you got a 5 hours a week you cand do it (is there a problem with motivation to do it?) The trouble is IMO that even doing this

70 hours a week (as I do, (or almost)) may be not sufficient to doing something finished/polished - it steel needs yet tremendous amount of time (at least in my case when i am going forward but it needs and burns so much time) that is a hurdle

Motivation is the major issue, time just makes it worse. Yes the amount of time needed to even finish the smallest project assuming you don't need to study programming and are well experienced is very hard to squeeze in when you work, but getting home from work and sitting down with a whisky then trying to wake yourself up for programming can be a little tough.

Some people seem to have no problem allocating time to work on something and study, but I always run out of steam or get distracted before I get too far.

Motivation is the major issue, time just makes it worse.