At 8/23/15 02:29 AM, Kwing wrote:
How do you deal with it? You spend half a year or so working on a project, then all of a sudden it's done and your life is empty. You'd be lucky to get a single dollar out of ad revenue or views creeping into four figures. Regardless of the hours invested, your game may as well not have existed nor have ever existed.
As a game dev you should be making games that you love and you should also love the process of doing so. If you truly love these two things then screw the logistics of how well your game does. Learn from them of course and use that knowledge to make your next game even better, but don't get too wrapped up in it. Yes, the game is now done spending that time working on it and now you feel a void....well, fill that void by getting back to work on making a new game even if it is just a prototype to test out new code/techniques you are learning.
I just took 7th in the portal today and I'm feeling that right now. Knowing that yesterday's Daily Feature has less than twice the views of my game, I don't know whether to feel better or worse. I don't know whether to shrug my shoulders or get caught masturbating on a street corner like the Kony guy.
This goes along with what I said above but I recommend not comparing your game's "success" to other people's "success". It's too easy to get caught up in that stuff and in my opinion it's like sipping poison.
Exposure (pun not intended) is something I was worried about before releasing the game in the first place, hence why I decided to ask about what languages I might want to learn in the future. The answers I got were highly constructive and rich with information, but terribly inconclusive.
They were not inconclusive they gave you viable options. There is no one single language that does it all but there are languages that they suggested to you that will do what you are looking for. You just have to way the pros and cons of each language and choose one that you think you would enjoy learning. I'd honestly just pick one. If after a few months you hate it then try another. Time spent learning a new language will definitely not be time wasted.
What languages do you work in? What do and don't you like about it?
I spent dabbled in AS3 (my first language) in 2013 while attending film school. Loved it so much I switched majors (Game Development) in 2014 and dedicated all my free time learning AS3 that whole year. I used Flash as my IDE. Every time I learned some new code that I wasn't comfortable with (like arrays/loops for example) I would build a small game or prototype around it to reinforce my knowledge/understanding of it. I love AS3 but I'm sure if I was a lot more experienced like some other devs on here I would have some negatives to say about it (I think I'm more on the lower Intermediate level). The Flash IDE was great but as time went on I did learn the woes of using it aka frames (in animations as I used OOP). I was getting to the point where I was going to switch from the Flash IDE to a better game engine like Flixel or FlashPunk when...
What kind of exposure have you gotten using different platforms?
I switched to Unity (mainly because our school uses it). It uses C# and the syntax was very similar to AS3 so I was able to pick it up rather easily. That said, there is so much more I have to learn in this language that I've never seen before. It's super nice having an actual game engine though (unlike Flash) and it makes my life a lot simpler. Like some of the other languages that others suggested in your other post Unity also allows me to target any platform. Like those other languages there will always be some pros/cons to each. In Unity's case it has to do with their crisis right now with getting their games to run on the web as of late. They are working on their WebGL to fix this but currently isn't finished and buggy as all hell. It does make me nervous about using it for that target. But you know what? I don't need a one-stop do all language - if my target is mobile or an executable (for Steam, PC, Mac, Linux, etc) I could make my game in Unity/C# while if I really want to punch out a web browser game I have the ability to do that with Flash/AS3. Or hell, they even have Scaleform to transfer my Flash work to Unity if I really wanted to.
I want every single person reading this to give me the juicy details of life as a game developer.
Essentially dude... Don't stress about it all. Make games because you love doing so. The tools you use to make them are not nearly as important as the execution of your ideas. You're also only 20 years old man. I only wish I had started to learn to program at that age if not younger like you have. So trust me dude you have plenty of time to try out lots of languages and find the one that you like best (or learn them all). Like I suggested earlier I think you need to just pick one of the languages suggested to you in that one post and run with it for awhile.
If you have anymore questions feel free to reply here or send me a PM. Best of luck to you.
