The BRAWL² Tournament Challenge has been announced!
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https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
It starts May 12, and ends Oct 17. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
What’s a realistic first step for someone trying to make their first game solo?
Hello mates 👋
If you wanted to make a small game today but had zero prior experience-no coding, no team etc. Where would you start?
Would you go straight into code, use an engine, or start with visual/WYSIWYG-style tools to understand basic mechanics first? What do you think is the most realistic path for a complete beginner?
Quick note for transparency: I’m asking because I’m researching this space for a personal project. Not promoting anything (nothing to promote yet 😁 ) just collecting opinions to validate my assumptions
If you wanted to make a small game today but had zero prior experience-no coding, no team etc. Where would you start?
Would you go straight into code, use an engine, or start with visual/WYSIWYG-style tools to understand basic mechanics first? What do you think is the most realistic path for a complete beginner?
Quick note for transparency: I’m asking because I’m researching this space for a personal project. Not promoting anything (nothing to promote yet 😁 ) just collecting opinions to validate my assumptions
Replies
Trying to create a game on your own, from scratch, is bound to be a frustrating experience. Using an already-functional game will allow you to learn via situational progress.
https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
https://sectordub.itch.io/pico-8-fanzine-1
There is a load of good stuff here.
To make my perspective a bit clearer, I’ll share some background.
The thing I believe matters is that I am not a dev of any kind As far as I am now 40yo my more then 20 years professional experience lies into business development, account management etc in B2B field with multinational companies. So again nothing actually really connects me with game dev.
Back to the main thing - I met an old friend of mine a while ago and he shared with me the project he is working on. I am not able to share the details but long story short it is kind of a game engine (not something revolutionary new I get it) but the thing that caught my attention wasn’t the tech itself, but the idea of how games created with it could be monetized. Obviously it only could work if a meaningful number of people are actually willing and able to create something using the tool. And now I am at the cross road: should I take a proposal and get involved in the project or not. It is not about the money I have no obligations to invest any or something but it is about the big amount of my personal time I will spend on it if I join. Before giving an answer to him I try to make my own research if it could work and be interesting at all. I’d really appreciate hearing perspectives from people who have experience or thoughts about
I actually think that it is the question only time could answer if I dive in it. So this topic is a kind of mine research on that matters. Cause I have my own vision from my very own perspective (but as I told before I am not a dev so I need a someones opinion who actually is)
And I played a game imagining myself as target audience and thinking if I would be interested in such kind of thing or not by myself and how I feel about it. Just never work with something I don't believe myself or don't like
It's a similar sort of thing with how projects get started and how they develop. Ideas are important but so are constraints: including choosing a game engine. So getting all of that (ideas, constraints, wants, needs, features, themes, story elements, game-play mechanics, etc.) fixed into some kind of design document or rough outline is probably a good first step while also moving into prototyping and white boxing. Start small, iterate, improve, repeat.
What the path and process looks like will vary depending on the idea and where the person is starting from. Lots of people get started by messing around with modding or by following basic game development tutorials. Some people go to university to get a degree in game development. Others do art or programing and eventually switch from whatever they were working on to making games. Sometimes as a hobby, sometimes professionally.
From a general, personal perspective: What does this project's primary goal or ideal outcome look like? Are the key metrics for that mostly monetary or non-tangible and personal? Are those elements aligned with what you personally want to do or achieve?
From an investor or stakeholder's perspective: What does a SWOT analysis of this project look like?
If the goal is to build and monetize a new game engine or even just a single game then what's the financial runway look like for everyone involved? Is there a specific threshold for the total number of users, sales, or some other metric that make this a go, no go? What's the worst that happens if the project doesn't reach the primary goal or desired outcome?
How many active third party developers, published games, and total users are requited to make this engine both financially viable and self sustaining? Is there external funding or buy out potential, not at some point in the future but right now?
From an independent developer's perspective: if an engine doesn't have any significant competitive advantage then what's the incentive to use it?
How does this new game engine compare to the top three engines most independent developers are already using? Not just in terms of features or licensing schemes, but also in terms of non-tangibles that include things like broader community support in form of third party documentation, examples, tutorials, and existing (engine specific) asset marketplaces, ready to use modular game play systems, etc...
Does this particular engine have any significant competitive advantage? Especially considering the sizeable moat established engines already have. What is the main selling point or plan for attracting developers to this new game engine?
From a monetization perspective: What does the licensing scheme for this engine look like? Is it competitive with what the top three engines are currently offering and is there a plan to avoid common pitfalls related to monetization that drive developers and users away? (If access to a game engine is either monetized right out of the gate or later pay walled then what's stopping developers from moving to a competing engine?) Unity would be a great case study to get some insight into monetization issues and how both consumers and developers react to that.
Even if the idea is as simple as monetizing a single game: How large is the target audience, who's the top three competitors in that space, what does their monetization scheme look like, and what's the draw that will pull the audience away from those existing games to this one? How do developers and players tend to respond to paywalls, subscriptions, DLC, pay to win, etc. in different market segments?
From an advertising perspective: What does the ad budget look like? How much time is left until the planned release date? Does social marketing make sense as part of the development process? What are the pros and cons of sharing parts of the development process to build awareness and interest? What's the opportunity cost and tradeoffs of doing / not doing that?
This is kind of a chicken and egg thing because there has to be enough to show potential customers but also enough time left to build awareness before release. Same with paying for ads and putting out highly polished showcases Vs sharing large portions of the development process while also leveraging the developer / development team's personality. Something that works well, right up until it doesn't...
If the goal is to develop a new skill set or have a change of pace, personal enrichment type stuff, and it's more of a hobby with the hopes of the final project having some kind of return but it's not critical that it makes money: modding or making simple games that have a very narrow scope is a good way to learn while building a portfolio and connecting with other artists. Many people get started working in game development this way.
If the goal is to leverage your existing B2B skills by assisting in developing and marketing a new game or game engine then it's more a question of formulating the core vision for the project, working through the development process, and aligning the product's features and benefits with the target audience. Part of that is understanding what people want or need and another part of that is studying the competition to see whether or not there's even room in the market for the product. Sometimes it makes more sense to pivot and fill a specific tool or platform need rather than completely reinventing the wheel.
There's small games and big games. Niche game engines and mainstream game engines. It's generally easier to start small and figure out what works before investing a lot of time and resources in something. That strategy tends to work well with individual game projects but maybe not so well with game engines if the goal is to scale immediately and compete with even the top five engines... So that question really comes down to scale and time.
In that case, outside of the more personal question of whether or not you want to work on a project like this, it's also one of those things where it's probably a good idea to have some potentially tough conversations with the other person to figure out where they're at, where they want to go, and whether or not they can realistically get there.
It's kind of trite but one of the fastest ways to ruin a friendship is to involve time or money, creative vision, and post launch compensated effort...
Run.
"[...] the big amount of my personal time I will spend on it if I join."
Time spent doing ... what ? Your original post made it seem like you, yourself, wanted to learn how to make games, hence the earlier recommendations. But if you are looking for opinions on the timeframe for this engine project : some people manage to build that kind of stuff on their own over the span of a few years, using premade assets or by going for a simple visual style ; and a few startups have attempted to get into that space by raising money for a whole team. It hasn't worked in either case (in the sense of ultimately generating revenue) as the market is already taken by Roblox and Fortnite Creative on the "easy to use walled garden" side of things, and by regular commercial 2d and 3d game engines for the target audience more serious about making games and fully owning them.
Overall, the appeal of products advertising themselves as "come use our thing ! It's easy to use, and you can even make money with it !" has fully run its course years ago IMHO. Not only because such products haven't managed to generate revenue so far, but also because people are generally growing more aware and tired of our every day dependency on online tech in general.
And to be clear : the above doesn't mean that such products can't be enjoyable to use, as some of the attempts made in the past few years were genuinely well-made ! But as far as I am aware they all failed to capture an audience. Whereas in the meantime the popularity of free to use tools like Blender and Godot has reached new heights.
Now people and small teams *do* manage to generate revenue with products that are genuinely useful for gamedev, like for instance Kenneyshape :
https://kenney.nl/tools/kenney-shape?kenney-shape/
Or the aforementioned pico8, which is not trying to lure anyone into any monetization scheme but is still a commercial product generating revenue for its owner.
All that said, good luck !
definitely start with something simple - and by that i mean very small scope as opposed to the technology - ie space invaders/flappy bird etc.
use an engine or at the very least a mature framework - i've written small games without an engine and it's a lot of work you don't want to do unless you want to learn to write an engine
godot is excellent - if you want a framework i can strongly recommend pygame-ce or ebitengine if you can do go (those are a lot more work in the long run)
the hardest part to me is the boring stuff - settings menus, scoring mechanics etc. but those are vital to a decent final product.
Awesome, good luck!
Before diving in, try out a few game engines and see which one clicks for you:
https://godotengine.org/
https://unity.com/
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US
Start really small. A 2D sidescroller or top-down game is perfect. Just make a tiny bit of a level, then park it and try something else—maybe another top-down idea or a simple FPS walking sim. Definitely avoid jumping straight into a big third-person action adventure… future you will thank you 😅
Have a wander around for beginner tutorials too. Udemy’s usually a decent place to start but there are lots of places to learn from.
https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?src=ukw&q=first+game
This YouTuber chats with loads of indie devs. He gets some flak because he sells a course to help fund his own game, but honestly, if you’re cool with that, he’s well worth a watch. A lot of the people he interviews are making their first game, which is really reassuring:
https://www.youtube.com/@thomasbrush/videos