5 Mistakes I Made When I Started Making Games

[@landon7612]

Mistakes: 1:05 #1 Tried to build his own game engine for his game as a beginner 2:53 #2 Started on a game that was too big 4:45 #3 Didn't show anybody his game 8:04 #4 Tried to please everybody with his game 11:07 #5 Got stuck in perfectionism

[@tim-ruswick]

Appreciate the summary and timestamps :)

[@HistoMagouri]

Thanks. I just watched the video yesterday so I needed to keep track.

[@henrykobutra]

life saver

[@zayanwatchel8780]

Wait? He tried to write a fucking engine? Ah that's rich

[@adibmukhlis5256]

mistake #6 : this video description "we all 'make' mistakes"

[@SnepKaunt]

My top 5 mistakes: 1) Not enough emphasis on nice graphics. When players start playing and the game is engaging, they won't mind the poor graphics. But poor graphics will stop a lot of them from giving the game a chance in the first place. 2) Giving players too much freedom. It's arguably good for gameplay but it makes it so much harder to develop and test. 3) Underestimating how long writing takes and how hard it is. In my RPG I thought writing and coming up with quest ideas was going to be a breeze compared to programming. Instead writing is like 2/3 of my development time. Writing is especially complicated when you give players too much freedom so you have to write multiple versions of pretty much everything. 4) Spending too much time on unimportant details. Just one example: my first game takes place in the past and I looked up the phases of the moon for that date and location, then I made the moon in the game look the same. Of course no one cares about that stuff but I can't help it sometimes. 5) Not enough emphasis on promoting the game. Not advertising though. Player engagement is a big factor in how your game gets ranked on app stores, much more than reviews (which can be bought). So you want your first players to be the people who you know already love your game and are going to play it. That's why it's better to have a few hundred fans from the get go than like 10k pay-per-install players who are going to try your game for 2 minutes then give up.

[@tim-ruswick]

Thanks for sharing! #1 is great and really important for me..

[@igorthelight]

Number 4 makes me sad... C'mon guys! 100% realistic historical accurate moon phases! No? Fuck... Feel for you :-)

[@gamedesignwithmichael]

Number 4 can be a killer, but I think it is good to have 1 or two of those because they are things you can say about your game that make people go, "AWWW, coooool." But yeah, most people will be totally oblivious.

[@josephbrandenburg4373]

SnepKaunt I think if you're gonna have tiny details, I think you have to tip people off somehow. For example, if you beat a NewGame+ in Chrono Trigger at the first opportunity, you go to a room with messages from the game's staff. Some of them point out tiny details, like "check out the shadow on that guy's sword!"

[@TricoliciSerghei]

This is gold. Thank you

[@DoobieDoctor5000]

One big mistake I've made is not giving myself enough credit for the work I put in, and not being confident about what I produce. This is actually one I continue to struggle with. If someone asks me about my first game, Indy 1945, I'd describe it as "a buggy mess". They don't want to hear that. They want to hear, "It's a game about being stranded in the water and fighting off sharks and saving people." Also I spoke with people from WayForward a couple years ago at E3, and they were looking at a XenoHorizon game I was helping make. I was like, "Oh yeah he did most of the work but I did a little bit here and there..." and my partner at the time later was like, "Dude. Quit selling yourself short. You work really hard on this game. Just because I have more time to put into it doesn't mean what you do isn't worthwhile." It really made me think.

[@tim-ruswick]

Yeah for sure dude. This is one of those lessons I probably took for granted having learned this in marketing/PR and having it kind of ingrained in my personality now, but yeah I remember that feeling. You need the perfect balance of confidence/humbleness. One of the ways I actually combatted this was rather than put myself down, I'd acknowledge my work, and then I raised others up. "Thanks, it was a ton of fun. Just glad Im surrounded by great people". Something like that.

[@JanosTerroz]

Great piece of advice. Learn to credit your accomplishments and take compliments. It will advance your motivation to do more.

[@Isaacminer1]

My biggest mistake: having so many ideas and wanting to start on them with no knowledge of coding at all.

[@aleksandarpolic3647]

Wanna pair up and make a team?

[@Isaacminer1]

Aleksandar Polic that would be awesome but I'm not sure I have what it takes to be completely honest

[@aleksandarpolic3647]

Both of you, add me on discord, we will come up with something. DiscordID: ExAmbitionAl#5664

[@aleksandarpolic3647]

discord.gg/kh9JDy try with my server

[@Wayne4472]

can i join you, guys?

[@skygamer7971]

I started Unity about a week ago and I can agree with literally all of these. This video helps a lot, and I've been stuck with number 5 for a while, so I'm just gonna give up with the little thing that I can't find out how to do because it's good enough.

[@A-SocialHermit]

Hey Tim, thank you very much for sharing your story. Honestly it's helped me realise a lot, I'm a beginner developer and this is my second go around after a couple months of beating myself up about not tackling and just quitting a huge game that has been in my head most of my life. Now I'm starting out smaller and am working on many small games and just trying to actually learn skill sets to eventually re tackle my dream game that I do eventually want to make. So appreciate your willingness to share your trials to help me see what I did wrong that discouraged me, and possibly see things that could do that in the future and readjust my course when necessary. Thanks man!

[@tim-ruswick]

Glad to help man. I wish you luck!

[@FreeFlyGamesYoutube]

if you are new, make sure start with the small games...

[@loserchips1112]

I'm going for a Visual Novel, and I'm using Ren'py So far, I've written a few lines of script and it's going well. I don't plan on it being too huge, I'll probably end up working on it WITH my little sister. Meaning: -She can help me with Game Ideas -She can help me with art design -We can keep each other motivated Honestly, I think making a game would be more fun when you are working with someone. Because then you can talk to them about the progress and how happy you are to get this far in development.. I'm only eleven.. and I know that's a really young age. But I REALLY want to make games. And.. why not start now? It's not too big, I won't be alone, and I already know most of the things because the engine I'm using has tutorials on it. :D

[@meggycrystal99]

Jifiggleburg Hey, good luck! 11 isn’t too young, good luck on developing your skills! It’ll give you an edge later, make sure to try and keep the magic alive that you have right now :’) I know that it can be tempting to use a good idea for your first game, especially on an engine that seems simple like Renpy, but something that I think is helpful for using a new engine is to make a silly game that you don’t have too much attachment to. This is used for testing how the code works, how easy and hard certain concepts are to code, what will break the code, and how long things will take. It can be a little fangame (I remember doing a silly dating sim for the visual novel 999, which was good cause it had the sprites already made for me.) or a trope-filled funny story you make up as it goes. I wish you and your sister the best of luck on your game!

[@MsSomeonenew]

Persistence is the main ingredient no matter what age you are. Just try to keep it within doable reason, it takes whole professional teams years to make bigger games.

[@ChrisField13]

This was super helpful. I tried making a game that was too big, lost focus, and gave up on game dev. But now I have an idea of how to cut the game in half and actually finish it!

[@platinumsketch]

No joke, the first game me and my crew are making is pong lol

[@tim-ruswick]

Good! Starting too small is always better than starting too big.

[@retrocademediaofficial]

Me too, just with space invaders added in. Don't ask how that works

[@EpicTastyPapple]

how does it work?

[@retrocademediaofficial]

Christian Billman well, paddles on left and right, and space invaders at the top, the ball duplicated when it was hit, and hitting a space invader gave you extra points.

[@starxhilmie]

You dont need a crew to make Pong game LOL..

[@skybeast2738]

Been looking for this kind of video, so many crap on KZbin with hundreds of thousands of views and the simplest but most informing video only has 2k views... Oh well, you earned a suscriber.

[@tim-ruswick]

Thank you dude, I appreciate that!

[@RebrandSoon0000]

I also subbed to you GDU.

[@lukethis2924]

Hey Tim. Thanks for sharing this, it's given me a lot more confidence knowing not just that I'm the only one that has fallen into at least most of those 5 (I didn't try to build a game engine but definitely guilty of the others). I'm still learning how to overcome them after 4 years (most of that time has been part time as I was working and learning how to do game design). This year though, I'm working on a game that I've programmed almost all the features for and I'm now just making the levels and finishing it up hoping to have it out by the end of next month. As I just watched this now, I find your advise very encouraging.

[@hayleyseeney8829]

Dude, all of this stuff seems like it should probably be super obvious and intuitive - but I swear I was gonna get stuck in at least 3 of these before I watched this. Informative, honest and genuinely helpful. Thank you.

[@guilleacq]

Dude, your videos are so great and so useful! Thank you for spending your time to inform us, it really means a lot for people joining the industry just as I am.

[@Rauzul]

This is great dude, thanks a lot for the time you put into this! I would love if if at the end of these videos you would list the things and read through them fast so we can re digest them for the second time (if at all possible and convenient to you!)

[@thomasborges4216]

I am so glad you mentioned the perfectionist syndrome. I had been tweaking my jump and run speed for almost a month and have given up hope. Lost interest after so many passionate hours of work. Put it down for a week went back and realized I had been way too critical, and blinded by over exposure to one aspect of the product. Great insight and such a wonderful channel

[@dazzmarshall]

These 5 steps sound like the story of my life. LOL. Actually 4, i never did number one, but it did prevent me from getting into the game industry earlier, as I thought you had to build a game engine in order to be taken seriously. Starting on smaller projects as an indie is paramount, even though I went Tim's route. Something I would add for new developers is this; Indie development is guerilla warfare, you need to play to your strengths, and against AAA's weaknesses. If your not artistic, don't make an FPS trying to topple Doom4's graphics. Do something totally unique with the mechanics, a good example would be the game 'Superhot', the graphics are functional, but its the 'moving time only when you move' mechanic that makes it stand out. If your not much of a programmer, but a good artist; make a simple game like pacman, but give it a crazy art style that blows people away. And yes finish the damned game!

[@tim-ruswick]

Agree 100% on playing to strengths. Starting small is great not only so that you actually have a shot at finishing, but also because when your scope is small you can try a lot of interesting things relatively quickly and see what sticks.

[@officialsouthsoul5223]

hey guys, do y'all feel like a 2D platform/ with a rich story would be to much for a beginner? i come from a music background and i will be composing the music myself and will be hiring acters for the voice acting. i have build stuff in the past like go carts and i can draw pretty good. i feel like all the art design i can do perfect, i just never messed with coding but the thought excites me and i feel passionate about it. i just download unity yesterday. it's gonna be a side scroller but there will be moments when a key aspect in the story will lead the character facing down falling. (kinda like skydiving). would that be hard to implement in unity? (appreciate any advice, much love!)

[@hydrocarbon8658]

lol same

[@merpysoup6505]

Sounds great! I can help with the level design if your interested. When your done, post it on itch.io and send me a link

[@wickedprophet2375]

#2 is my biggest problem...I’ve been planning it for a while and only recently began to make any physical progress using the unreal engine...I learn more and more everyday tho through videos like these. Keep up the good work, this was helpful

[@TricoliciSerghei]

I'll be creating a game based on your advise from various videos, thanks a ton for sharing your personal experience with us. It helps enourmously!

[@qdeanc]

This is so real. I've abandoned at least 5 different projects and all these problems apply to my process.

[@ericvaneldik7331]

pretty much sums up all my problems I have had to conquer and some I still find my self repeating, like making the game to difficult.

[@kylew6425]

Just found your videos. In the first year of uni doing Games Dev and Programming. Video was a big insight, subbed :)

[@williamcorley2477]

I subscribed to you just because youre a cool guy. I like your attitude and how you clnvey yourself in your videos. Plus your content. Youre brutally honest and i love it!

[@mraznonge]

I think my biggest mistake was being impatient with programming. My next was not subscribing to you sooner. Your content is amazing and it pushed me to make my own game. It's only mobile right now and no where near steam polish, but I will say it's a big step from failing Java in high school. Barely getting through C and mobile app development in electrical engineering. It shattered my dream of being a dev. It wasn't till near the end of last year that I got the encouragement to try it out. It's been a steep learning curve and a lot of hours of patience, but you have kept me motivated to keep on my path to becoming a game dev. Thank you so much man!

[@StealerSlain]

Another common problem can be having an inspirational huge general(!) idea with no design document, end goal or storyline whatsoever.

[@SoullessAIMusic]

these videos are really helping me as a lone first time dev.

[@SharifSourour]

Purely for learning purposes I attempted creating an engine and found the exact same thing. It's very esoteric yet just as enlightening.

[@TheMoeHawk]

Dude, I can definitely feel like your experiences came from a lot of painful big life moments. Thank you for sharing and giving your insight man.

[@TheMoeHawk]

I would like to say that I am currently not a Game dev but I am a lover of games , and I have dabbled with idea of possibly going into one day (which gamer hasn't). Which makes your insight even more valuable and meaningful. Thanks again, love your content, man

[@jessicalee333]

This is great advice. I've been a developer in a specific niche for about ten years (with modest success) and I learned these kinds of lessons the hard way. I've got to remember not to make these mistakes again now that I'm moving into a different area.

[@jandd661]

OMG. Your talking to me! If I ever worked for someone else, that would be my performance review. Just before I was sent out the door. Great video.

[@twohitcombo8605]

Solid advice. You're experience is really showing in this video and anyone that went through this very same process can see you know what you're talking about. Encountered all of these in development. Wish I had the wisdom to listen to this sort of advice when I first started. Have you released any games since? What was it like the second time around? What are you working on now? Whats your depth of experience in development?

[@virtuality2000]

Great video! I can't stop watching them! Thank you for all the great advice! (Also, the description needs a little tweaking.)

[@miwwie1504]

Perfections and expectations are creative killers. When you have an expectation of something, you're essentially immediately setting yourself up for failure, because you are creating an illusion of something that does not exist yet. There was a lot of thinking power, but nothing there to make it a game

[@icedragongamemaster6797]

Your first game must be complete in one month. Mine took 2 years...

[@tim-ruswick]

Mone took me 10 years! Wish I wouldve started smaller.

[@HistoMagouri]

Cuphead and Senua's Sacrifice took at least 5 years or so and they came out good. Did yours too as well?

[@icedragongamemaster6797]

My game came out as I wanted it to be. So I count it as a sucess. Check it here:kzbin.info/www/bejne/kKHEqGSjnLWEsNE

[@HistoMagouri]

Now THAT'S years of hard work!

[@VikasPoonia]

Mine ended in 4 days

[@CYON4D]

Very true points. I fell for all of them except trying to make an engine from scratch.

[@otesunki]

Same.

[@rohitkrishna2691]

I could be wrong in interpretation in some places, but I think in short this is it. 1. When making a game, focus on making the game but don't create technology. 2. When starting out, don't makes games that are big. Start with something simple, like pong. 3. Since games are made for people, show it to them and let them play. Observe them while they do so. Their interaction will provide the information required in order to tweak the game to be fun. 4. Show the game to people who come into the target audience, i.e. they are used to playing that genre of games. 5. Don't aim for "Perfection". Aim for "Good Enough". I made the 2nd, 4th and 5th mistakes. But also, I made the mistake of thinking that making a simple game made me eligible for a difficult one

[@tim-ruswick]

Id say this is a pretty accurate summary. And yes! Ive made that mistake too...finishing something small and then jumping on to something massive. I did that with GDU actually.

[@rohitkrishna2691]

Game Dev Underground Good to know that Game Developers are human after all. We make miskates😉. I was scouring KZbin for informative videos from experienced developers, and I found this channel pretty informative. There's GDC of course. But it's these little individual contributions that make up a community. Thanks for the video and I look forward to more.

[@QueenOfMissiles]

I'm not a game developer (yet) but have been producing mods for 8 years. From what I've seen both share a lot of the same skill set and problems. The biggest mistake I've ever made as a mod developer was giving up too soon. A lot of times when developing a project you can get beat down by failure. When I first started making mods I had a lot of small projects, some good & some bad. A few of these projects I had release early to help boost attention to another project. This other project was meant to act as a community focused mod API for a game. At first it worked well with the project taking off and my smaller projects with it. However, after a while my lack of skills start to show in my work. A lot of bugs showed up and I took hits. The main project suffered a similar problem due to mis-management. This went on for a few years with other problems happening (drama, politics, beef between developers, etc). After a while it became too much and I started to give in on the projects doing well. This resulted in me merging a lot of my small projects into someone else's large project. In effect I gave up and let someone else do well. Doing so resulted in the project doing extremely well off my work. For a while things were even good and downloads were very high. Sadly in the end the project died due to mis-management. I found out long after this project failed that people loved my work. Not just the project I merged but all the mods I produced. It turns out I had been producing very unique content. Not only was the content unique some of the later stuff was higher quality than other mods. If I had only kept up with it I might have noticed and not given up.

[@JoeCensored]

Scope is probably the most important one on the list. I have a lot of time sunk into games I stopped developing after months due to realizing the scope was too large. I finally scoped a game properly, even though it still took twice as long as expected, and released it on Steam. Very proud moment. The two biggest killers with scope are wanting to include network multiplayer, and scope creep. Adding networking will multiply your dev time by 3, and scope creep will lead to a never ending dev cycle. So for your first finished game make it single player, and lock in the scope from the beginning outside of minor changes. You'll actually finish it that way.

[@inputfunny]

What's the name of your Steam game?

[@JoeCensored]

Omega Reaction kzbin.info/www/bejne/aIa4lZmdo9Zka8U

[@dacypher22]

For me, perfectionism was my shield against criticism, a failure to attract an audience and essentially everything that can go wrong and deflate you after launching. By sitting by myself, endless tweaking, I didn't have to put my creation out there and be vulnerable. In reality, I already should have had something out there by that stage (the "show off your work early" advice), but this was the loop I got stuck in.

[@JackPS9]

I've spent a whole month before, just working on some basic world generation. Just trying to make it as optimized as possible. Though while I was doing it I kept learning more and more. Just remember everyone your mistakes while doing game dev are just lessons to learn from.

[@voidvev]

Fking loved the video mate, hope you continue to make videos like this.

[@balorprice]

I am making ALL these mistakes. This is great. Thank you for pointing all this out.

[@MrYesman41]

You know, I like this video because I go through this same thing with music producing/creating. I remember back then, i used to release music on my channel constantly but now I slowly release stuff because I suffer from these 5 mistakes. I'm glad I watched this

[@tim-ruswick]

Its Very similar for most artistic endevors I think. Thanks for sharing!

[@sabertooth4324]

This video was so incredibly helpful to me. THANK YOU!!

[@harrysanders818]

Dont know if I jus watched this 1st time or if I rewatched it :) Anyway, great tips. Love your channel! THX from the heart!

[@ariestaWA]

Thanks for share your experiences! It inspires me to make one the more I watch

[@Copier777]

This video is really really helpful, because I really dream of being an indie game dev one day and I can totally imagine myself making all of those mistake. A question that popped up in my mind, however, goes as follows: Is it a good idea to make little sort of mini-games that you may be able to use for that Big Dream Project of yours?

[@wiipronhi]

Man, my first game what an asteroid game where the asteroids could collide and would wrap around the screen. So when the asteroid when off the left screen it would re-appear on the right. It was such a mess, After about 30 seconds there would be so many asteroids on screen that you couldn't move without having a panic attack. spent about a month working on it learning how the engine worked and learning the engine language. Would definitely say that it was worth doing, never "finished" it, in the end I had what was essentially a prototype that would take me less than a day to make today. Everyone starts with humble beginnings :)

[@diegamingtante4576]

Great Video! Thanks for sharing your mistakes with us. :) For me, as a beginner, this is so helpful.

[@nymphcore5916]

My biggest mistake also was getting it PERFECT. Scrapped so many games because I felt like it is not up to the norm of what counts a polished. Make what you can, move on & maybe revisit a remake of that project later on, see how you improved!

[@lee1davis1]

Two thumbs up pep talk vid. All new programmers need to watch this video. A very easy calm msg about prioritizing projects and scope. I certainly made the same mistakes.

[@tim-ruswick]

I think we all have, even when we read about them dude. Thanks for the kind words!

[@StradShow]

Damn. Definitely needed to hear this. Thanks so much.

[@mlpfimguy]

If I could go back in time and give myself a tip it would be to MAKE BACKUPS you never know when your computer will start acting up, I've lost so many projects because of this

[@curtisyue182]

Thankfully I've not had to learn this lesson the hard way.

[@abdoudjam6846]

Thanks , that was really helpful, for me , i think it's perfectionism, i kept recreating assets for my platformer and yet i never felt satisfied, until i decided to go on no matter what , then everything started to fit , and the scene looked "good enough" !

[@bibekghosh5423]

you are right about that perfectionism thing I have that I will work on that now

[@lukedraper3888]

Same as your #1 I'm playing around with Godot at the moment but when I first started I tried to build an OpenGL based voxel render engine from scratch. Needless to say, that did not get far before I took a long break from development.

[@ericramirez5660]

Great video. Extremely helpful, appreciate the advice

[@DragmoraProductions]

I found out that one of my problems with making games is that i focus on the grafic first. lerning blender to make a character and realistic backgrounds. But no i know that the best thing to focus on is making the player go from start to finish and when i have a working game i can focus on the grafics.

[@JoshuaWilsonNZ]

fantastic content man ! thanks for effort put into these.

[@tim-ruswick]

Thank you dude I appreciate it.

[@thisguy5718]

im currently making my first platformer with a friend of mine , your advise is really helpfull

[@alfredenglund]

i have a tip for facing large projects, lets say you want to make an awesome RTS then dont set the goal as an RTS YET! your first goal should be for ex, building placement, and then creating some sorts of AI, split the large project up in small parts and make 1 part at a time and keep that part as your "goal" and then once you finish it work on the next part of the project. and then when you got ex 7/7 parts then just combine em and you got yourself a game :) consider the small parts of the large projects as a game

[@killer777881]

one my mistakes was trying to gathering up a big team at first steps with zero knowledge of how to manage that team and even my self.

[@pixelmaverick7812]

Worked 3 years on my first game, Candlelight. The time was mostly spent on learning Unity and learning to create the art. I shipped the game on PS4 and on Steam but no one knew it existed. Biggest mistake was underestimating the importance of marketing. With so many games out there right now, it does not matter if the game is good or bad. If people don't know it exists in the list of 100k other games you are doomed to fail. I'm working on my next game, Dragon's Eye and will definitely work with a publisher this time around.

[@TricoliciSerghei]

Great video, REAL PROBLEMS, easy to understand!! Liked!

[@8bitaffiliate243]

Great vid. I have made 3 or 4 games now all unfinished and abandoned. I think everyone must do this right? Huge mistake seeking perfection in the first few games I think is the main cause of loss of interest and therefore not finishing.

[@tim-ruswick]

It's pretty common. Most of the time it's "shiny object syndrome" where you get past the fun parts of a project and then abandon it for the new one that looks like more fun. Perfectionism def doesn't help

[@jessepitman2994]

These are all issues I'm having with my first game I'm current working on. Except that first one, fuck all that. Good advise though man, you're the first channel I've subscribed to since KZbin launched.

[@annogaming9535]

So I'm sitting here trying to program a game and I agree. I had to redo the whole thing 4 times just because I want it to be perfect with event systems and templates and so on. The problem is that I just don't know enough about these things and it gets overwhelming. Now I try to keep it simple and ignore a bit of "bad code" just so I can make progress. I tell myself that a game is a game and not a rocket engine where everything needs to be 100% perfect all the time lol. The games don't just disappear and when you learn something new you can always add it later on and just update the game instead of updating the "toe" of it. It is not even a game or anything yet and you just keep going in circles otherwise.

[@SniperNinja115]

great list and video, brother black_heart*.. I tend to always try to optimize & simplify everything to the best it can be and with the simplest of things, I am stuck on it for a very long time.. I've learned to not do that as much fairly recently and to get the gist of things working and then perhaps work on those things more after the base is working.. much love, brother, keep it up and take care black_heart*..

[@TGameDev]

Definitely fell into the overly ambitious point when I first got started. Arguably still there even having dialled it down A lot (I like making my own art and music, but gotta program and write too).

[@nirantali]

I also think another mistake that could be tied to 5. too is to be afraid or to be to shy to seek help from other devs, coders, designers, musicians in the community. Doing everything yourself is hard enough, but at the same time going for perfection is deadly. There are people out there eager to help you, so don't be too proud to ask for and also don't try reinventing the "perfect" wheel yourself.

[@liamsutton6202]

Really great stuff to listen to, thanks for sharing stuff like this with us! :)

[@tim-ruswick]

No problem! Thanks for watching.

[@nisa7961]

I cant totally relate with mistake number 3! I didn't show my friends my game until it was finished. My game was wayyyyy to hard. However this made a great wee story for my job interview when they ask you to give an example of a mistake u learned from :D

[@WastelandSeven]

Excellent advice. I like what Rami Ismael (from Vlambeer) said about community input on Nuclear Thrones, "We'll listen to your ideas....but, its our game" Nothing made by a committee of people working on the project. is going to be particularly good. If you please one person you'll piss off another. That's why Cuphead has raised such a fuss. The people who love difficult run and gun shooters were ecstatic. The people who don't were upset at the difficulty level. Know who your target audience is because they're the ones who will buy your game. People who were put off by Cuphead's difficulty were people who would probably have got a refund anyway. But, the people who loved it were the ones who were going to keep the game.

[@SharifSourour]

I definitely get stuck in #5 and sometimes #4 with many projects.

[@cryptomike6287]

Great Video, thanks a lot.. My biggest Mistake was to create multiples casual games at the same time... The quality was awful, and the players get bored... Now I have a limit.. at least 1 month of work for each game.

[@solidboko]

Thank you so much, that was really really HELPFUL !

[@suicune2001]

I'm definitely a dabbler. I start making games then never finish them. :( I've made a couple games when I first started. My very first one was a 3D first person game where you were a caveman throwing boulders at dinosaurs. The next game I made was a side-scrolling space shooter. That was 4+ years ago. :( I've started many projects but finished none. Now I'm trying to make a 2D survival game. I plan on finishing it no matter what. I'm stuck right now in making an inventory. I've never made an inventory before. If I can't make one for whatever reason, then I'll have to tweak it so I don't need one.

[@suicune2001]

Nejcraft hraje Did the concept just not work out?

[@suicune2001]

Jnaejnae The problem I am having is everyone uses the boxy inventory system but I need a text-based one and I have only found one tutorial for a list inventory. I also need to figure out how to scroll through the inventory using the arrow keys. I hope I have that "aha" moment with arrays because I will need it eventually. I have too many game ideas. I already have the second game I want to publish planned and even a distant third. Lol. I also want to make a choose your own adventure story game. But one game at a time!

[@suicune2001]

Thanks so much for that! I use JavaScript (or Unityscript) so that looks pretty close to what I would be using. I'm definitely going to save that so when I have some code to work with I can reference it. :) I don't quite understand it. I get a vague idea of what I need to do. I just need to read more material and watch more videos on it.

[@SamGarcia]

Arrays are just a collection of variables with a number id in its name you can reference. If you know how to handle variables, then arrays should be self-evident. If you're still stuck, look up tutorials for arrays themselves, not just inventories.

[@suicune2001]

I have looked up many tutorials about arrays. There is just something about them that my brain does not comprehend. I found a pretty good one recently I'm going to practice.

[@rickster5224]

The first game I can say I completed was a first person PacMan/Mario mashup called SuperPacMar64. Had to collect all coins to beat level. The enemies instead of ghosts were goombas with spiked koopashells around them. Whenever the player got a powerpellet the shells fell off the goombas so the player could jump on and kill them.

[@khalilulrehman9482]

Hi, These Five mistakes are really common in game developers. For me I always stuck in design of the game because always there is a big game i am on to but with less resources and time made everything down, :( . But Motivation by showing your work other is really a key that can push you to move ahead.;

[@DogMemeCoins]

great videos very helpful my mistake was also making the scope of my first game way to big!

[@kayzweller_dj]

man you're so MVP by creating a game engine before create a game. No offend man, it just really cool way of thinking. I am starting create a game by now, and can only thingking to use unity kind of stuff~

[@TheFalsoblanco]

Thank you soo much ! For sharing your experience : D you got a new sub!!

[@SevenStonesStudioOfficial]

My biggest mistake was "shiny thing syndrome" and trying combine all my shiny things together. I ended up with too many ideas and no concrete games!

[@wozzupgamer]

My first game was pong, using visual basic, using the shapes, it took me 2 weeks.

[@Palpus_X]

Thanks man. This was motivating af

[@isaaccorrea7728]

Very inspiring!

[@zombievirals]

I started off about 20 years ago trying to make games using QuickBasic, and had nothing but unfinished projects. I was too intimidated by languages like C/C++ at the time and I'm not even sure if Python existed at the time. I lost interest in video game design/programming for the most part up till recently. I started off playing around with Construct(which requires no programming at all), but once again ended up with a few unfinished projects and lost interest. I recently gave Python a try, and in parallel to that, I've recently started taking introduction to programming in college, which I believe is helping me. Nonetheless, I've started off very simple this time, making a simple asteroids type space shooter using Python and Pygame. To be even simpler, I followed a tutorial on KZbin, and within 3 days I've gained a lot of understanding, plus I'm generally having a great time. I'm finished with the tutorial, so now I'm just making my own adjustments to add a little more complexity and depth to the game. So I have the basic foundation, and I've even wrote down less than a page worth of plans for finishing this game within a month. Every so many improvements, I record footage of the game so I can look back through it and be inspired by how far I've came from when I first started. I see this now as an ultimate form of artistic expression, where you can take artwork, music, and story, and combine it with logic/code to make an interactive piece of art basically. In the past I just saw game design as just making video games, nothing more.

[@phaeton01]

the first you learn in games dev is to list all the awesome cool things you want in your game, the second thing you learn is how many of those things you have to cut before your game can get off the ground

[@alexrinconz]

Thank you very much. I appreciate a lot your speech!

[@GANONdork123]

I still haven't finished my first game but one recommendation I would make is to focus on making a game, not on finishing a game. In other words, baby steps. You gotta take it one step at a time.

[@brandonjslea1562]

One of my biggest failings, focusing too much on ideas. It's so easy to think "If I just think of the perfect idea I can make the perfect game!", but that's not true. So long as you embrace change, the ideas and mechanics will become great over time. In truth the ideas play such a small part because if you're game is developing then the ideas develop themselves.

[@divyangjain5334]

This is not only for games, But I have faced same while developing my first cool software project!

[@Salamaleikum80]

One thing i wonder about is wheter or not i should focus more on drawing/game-art or game-programming?

[@juancamilorozojimenez5723]

Thank you for share your experience! Appreciate it :)

[@manfromtheoutside7227]

This is very useful thanks for what you doing I appreciate it.

[@GreyVitone]

THX for the tips!

[@cscdvmp]

True, perfection is killing my time

[@IndieGamesWTF]

Thank you very much! great topic and great talk I've extremely enjoyed it! Can you show some of the games you have completed?

[@michaeljohn5130]

My first game was a platformer. The character gets stuck on the walls, you can jump infinitely (unintentionally), and you can shoot fireballs even though there were no enemies... those were good times.

[@ezpz4646]

Great video. I learned a lot thank you.