This might be great but like my number one, my number
number, number one thing for every single person who makes
games. If you want to make games, make small games, a lot
of them, as many as you possibly can work with a lot of different people.
Do not commit to anything more than a three month project
until you've made at least ten games, period.
Don't do it. You're going to dig yourself into a
hole. You're not going to learn that much. You will learn so much from rapid
prototyping small games, game jams, you know,
you will learn, you will get incredibly skilled
in making, finishing and releasing a game.
And I, that's my, that's my number one. The majority of people that I know
that have, that have had really great success and longevity in their career,
made a lot of really good stuff, all started out making a
bunch of small games. There's a lot of flash in the pans, you know what
I mean? Like, oh, I came out of nowhere and I made this one game
and then that's it. But the people with the staying power are the people
who had made tons of games previously because
they're game makers. You just learn,
you learn so much more from doing than anything
else and I highly recommend
it. It's also less dangerous. The point I was making too is like I've been
in situations where I've locked myself with people who are terrible.
I can stand them, you know, a few months in, it's just like this is
not going to work. And they. I've lost years, I've lost years of my
life on projects that went nowhere,
but whatever, because I was probably also working on two other projects at that
point in time. And you know, you don't put all your eggs in one basket,
especially when you're starting out and you kind of, kind of got to ride
the wave. You got to ride the wave of inspiration and you got to know
when it feels right. And the only way to know is from experience. You're not
going to until you've done it a few times. Well, maybe better to make little
mistakes, not big giant mistakes where you throw away
your life. Well, maybe talk a little about what you learned about from finishing games.
Right. One of the things you have to do with these, these three month games,
you gotta finish them. Yeah. Close them out. So maybe
talk about that. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta lock down.
You have to make a, a mental note of I will not
cross this line. Which is very hard to do especially with games
these days because you're going to always be Questioning yourself and being like, well,
if I just add a little bit more here, then it'll be better.
But the thing is, is usually once you have the core,
once you have the core design of whatever it is that you're making,
and that core is fun, right? And you
expand upon it a little bit, and then once you've hit that, those,
those, those boundaries essentially of like, well, I could add
a gardening mode. I could add the ability to, you know,
change 15 different hairstyles, or maybe I'll
do a versus mode. You know, that sort of stuff. It's like,
it's. When you're learning, it's so much better to just stop it where it
is, say it's done, close it. Like it's just
an exercise, really. Like, you're. You're not going to make the greatest thing
in the world in three months, but you're going to make something,
and that's that. Making something is really important because
a lot of people, a lot of game designers,
I've known people who've worked on the same game and are still working on
the same game after 20 years, and the game's not done. It's just
this theoretical thing that they've been working on for forever. And it's just
like, it's painful because these people probably would have
been amazing if they would have just made a bunch of small games and just
cut it off and stopped working on this gigantic project for
their whole life. It's just, it's. It's something to be
careful of because it's really, you know, us as
human, we are designed to, like, want it bigger
and better. And what if I just add this? And what if I just do
this? But I say, save that for your 11th game.