Do I Have What It Takes to Make Games?
Doubts of an indie developer
I often worry I don’t have what it takes to make games.
Making games is hard. I’ve been making games for nearly 2 decades now. I’ve used GameMaker, Godot, Microsoft Make Code Arcade, Love2D, Unreal, Unity, GDevelop, JavaScript and plain old pencil and paper. I’ve released one commercial game and dozens of free games. I’ve made hundreds of prototypes and participated in several game jams. You’d think by now, making games would be easy for me, but it’s not. In fact, it’s still probably the hardest thing I know how to do.
“Making a game is sometimes like trying to build a house blindfolded,”
— Ryan Benno, environmental artist at Insomniac Games
Most aspiring indie developers never finish a game, and a large portion of the ones that do finish, never release a commercial game. I can personally relate to this struggle.
Grain War
My first attempt at making a commercial game was back in 2015. The project was titled Grain War and I managed to greenlight it through Steam (yeah, back when Steam greenlight was a thing).
After getting the project greenlit, I worked on it for about a year. My work was sporadic and scattered. I didn’t know how to manage a project, and while I could program the basic systems for the game, the scope of the project was way outside my abilities. I had a crushing sense of this-is-never-going-to-be-finished that haunted my efforts to work on it.
I eventually cancelled Grain War, citing on my YouTube channel that it just wasn’t different enough from Hyper Light Drifter to justify finishing, and while that is true, I also doubted my ability to complete it.
Maybe I Don’t Have What It Takes
“To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that’s understandable enough, given that not many other activities routinely call one’s basic self-worth into question”
— David Bayles, Art and Fear
“I wonder now… am I cut out… to spend my time this way?”
— Why, Tick Tick BOOM!
Maybe I don’t have what it takes. Maybe you’ve felt this way too. Know that you aren’t alone. I don’t think this fear will ever completely leave me. I can face it, though. I can face it and go on creating anyways.
It’s possible I don’t have what it takes to make games, but I’m sure as the ever-rising sun going to try.
Thanks for reading,
Ben
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As a professional game artist, I can relate to this so much. Every single piece that I make triggers my brain to tell me: "What are you even doing? This isn't remotely good". But every time, I just fight through it and just keep creating.
Humans and creativity have a strange relationship... it's as if we were constantly self-reflecting.
Thanks for showing your vulnerability, it makes me feel less alone in this journey!
Thanks for sharing this. It's brave to do so but really helpful for others because we all struggle with this in some form. I've also been a software dev for over 20 years now but there still isn't a week that goes by where I don't have some sort of encounter with imposter's syndrome. It helps to know we're not alone.
Keep on keeping on!