Best Advice If You Want To Make Games - Edmund McMillen

Best Advice If You Want To Make Games - Edmund McMillen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIxZNBEwmaY

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.