Here is a quick summary of the 18 laws: Law 1: Never make your dream game; Use small games as a start Law 2: Finish projects at all cost; Iterate relentlessly Law 3: Reflect -> Evolve -> Post Mortem Law 4: Serve the player, Not oneself Law 5: Build games, not tech Law 6: Tools are for purpose, not for burden Law 7: Keep it simple stupid Law 8: Kill your darlings (Cut, Add & Adapt) Law 9: Don't fall in love with the outcome but fall in love with the progress Law 10: Specialize for mastery not mediocrity Law 11: Gamedev is greater than the sum of its parts Law 12: Befriend other gamedevs Law 13: Practice crushes theory (Make theory your side dish) Law 14: Never fully follow tutorials Law 15: Never relearn what you have already learnt Law 16: Resist grand temptations Law 17: Time equals money Law 18: Death of passion is death of gamedev Bonus Law: 80/20 rule
I would replace the following 2: Law 5: If you want to make games then don't create tools, but if you love making tools then show them off with games. Law 6: All tools are always a burden, but if you have the best tools then you have least burden.
I'd say there are a few exceptions to listen to the player if the project is meant to be something very niche, since the general audience would probably have advice that is harmful to the overall game's ability to be what is intended, though that would probably be more useful if you were making a more general game.
No you are right, you should absolutely listen to the players, since they are the consumers. But it's important to not take all their words to heart and do what they say. An example of this is companies that listen too much on professionals in their games. Whilst that is great for the people that plays the game competetive, it becomes a split community and game for the casuals.
I could easily add one more thing that kills most games in pre alpha: over or under engineering. Basically, before pre production you kind of know what the game is going to be, so use that to your advantage. If the game is just a puzzle game, that required basic shooting for 4 puzzles, then you wont need a complex, multi threaded, gpu parallelized, extensive weapon system that realistically calculates knock back, muzzle flash, weapon clogging, dirt accumulation in the barrel etc. On the other hand, if you have an fps shooter, then making a basic idle-shoot-hide enemy AI isnt gonna cut it, and the later you realize it, the worse. In that case it would actually be pretty smart to have a complex behavior tree with advanced decision making; thats what makes your AI noteworthy and challenging after all. Some would people say that pre production isnt meant to be too complex, but that it should rather deliver a MVP before anything else. And to be honest, look at yandere simulator. The developer had under engineered the students, and a decade later he is in a massive tech dept with unimaginably slow progress on the game. TL:DR, create according to your scope.
I'm in my twenties and have reached a crossroads where I need to decide what to pursue full-time with complete focus. Should I follow my passion for game development, or focus on web development for financial stability?. Thank you :}
It’s really hard to answer that question for you, weight the pros and cons and see what makes more sense. What I can contribute with is that gamedev is not an “unstable financial market” anymore, it makes more than movies and music combined per year, it’s just difficult to get into. Also, you are not set for life with your decision, see it as seasons instead, you can try gamedev for a few years, and if you don’t like how it’s going, you can always do something else :)
@@oskar_schramm, Thank you so much! I will try for a year; let's see how it goes. Thank you for the quick reply. I look forward to more content from you! :)
I respect your point, and I agree that repetition can be important to grasp things and gain knowledge. What I do want to highlight is the issue I’ve seen, especially in game dev-people (myself included) redoing the same project or feature repeatedly because we’ve learned something new, and then getting stuck in a cycle. The challenge is to avoid getting caught in endless rework, which can keep you from making real progress.
Repeating is about solidifying knowledge, not expanding. Not the best with a practice that needs many hats, unless you have an intentional improvement plan. For example, I built a game of a bad unity tutorial. Rn I'm trying to use what I've learned to "follow" the tutorial without using the same code. This skill is one that can allow any tutorial to be used and me understanding how to use the code, and make it clean and fixable. After that, I will make a good Unity tutorial about it, which will allow a deeper understanding, and build devlog skill. Then, make the game following my new tutorial in Godot, to gain the ability to use even tutorials for other engines or without code, and build them. Then make the final video. Godot is a newer game engine that changes constantly, and I plan to build onto the default engine. These combine to limit the amount of help I can get. So the ability to use help regardless of if it matches my techstack, and avoid tutorial hell.
Completely agree with ditching the idea of a "dream game." Everyone wants to make their "dream game" and then expect to sell a million copies of it. That's just a fantasy. I think it's better to find a way to make smaller projects really cool. Like making a simple, small scale game but have a really cool character design or a really cool premise that you really like.
Absolutely. Well the biggest issue with making your dream game is that it’s hard to set boundaries and specific goals for when it is done. You will often get in a rut of just keep making and never finalizing
I hear people talk about how much money it takes to make a game . Like what the assts ? Not if you make them yourself. Paying people? not if you make the game yourself . I get like paying somebody to make music and sound effects I get advertising
Well if you are serious about any product you will have professionals in each regard do their thing, and pay them salary or outsourcing. Of course one can do everything themselves, but then the scope becomes smaller, and the time horizon longer. The new AAA games can't be made by 1 person, but a fun indie game can.
Really solid advice. I do not agree with "lot small projects" though, because this is not how the all time greats did it. Minecraft and Stardew Valley were not made by guys who did millions of small projects. They did however finish the one thing they started.
those guys who made minecraft stardew already have experience of making small project thats the reason they have learned skills to make big games. 'lot of small projects' is a good rule, every new game dev should follow small project rules to build skills of debugging, solving bugs,glitches,errors,mistakes before thinking of making gta or coll of duty type games, small project means making games which can be completed in weeks to few months , like flappy birds,ludo etc . which helps to build skills. and later on build more complex and bigger games. otherwise it will like studying in high schools and trying to solve quantam mechanics equation.
There absolutely comes a point, where you should make a bigger game, but getting to that point is way further away than most people think/want to to be.
I make tutorials for the small engine I use and I get questions from people that dont want to do the small projects. They just want to make a mmo. Or they want to make the next minecraft, but they lack the experience to even start. Yet no advice is good enough. At the end of the day you need to learn and master your tools. The best way to do that is to grind small projects. Otherwise you will just have a big dream and no way to realize it.
@@loxaevion I think where the discussion goes wrong is: The size of the project is an issue of workload, knowledge, consistency and timeframe for the first rewards vs relevance to goals. If a person wants to develop a 3D MMO they haven't understood the workload/requirements of it. Lets say 5 years of a team of a least 20 people full time. That would mean either 8hrs x 255 workdays x 5 x 20 (for people) then you get 320k workhours (not accounting for needing to learn skills). You can try to do this in 100 years or look for something that is more measurabel. When people answer this question with "start small" it sound more like someone wants to sell your their religion . Do this analysis with Stardew Valley, you get 5 years of daily 12 hrs = 15.3k work hours. Working hours is an insanely consistent (though not the hole truth) measurement. Picking a type of workload with a suiting example I think works better in communication. Not everybody likes flappy birds. I for example hate tetris. If someone tells me to code tetris I choose the corporate 9 to 5 job over that. Gauntlet or roguelike? Maybe more. But that is just me.
Excellent advice! Knowing is different from having internalized it. I think i had to make all the mistakes to go from knowing about this to following most of it. And i think that made all the difference in transitioning from "i'm making yet again a game where my ambition vastly overshadows my skill and i'll abandon it when it reaches 20% finished and the exciting bits are done" to "hey i'm actually finishing reasonably scoped games" :D
@@oskar_schramm I laughed because the way you present it, it appears to me that the phrase implies that no one should ever make the gamer of their dreams :) . But I know you meant "as the first project"
Toby Fox followed these rules. Toby worked with Temmie Chang, he did make some small earthbound hacks before he undertook Undertale. He loves making the games, and he doesn't have any unnecessary features.
Fun fact when I was bigger Ther it's person that have learn my the biscis for code's. But indeed copy and paste exactly what this person tall my I mixed max this line's the talld my and this person have impressed 😁. It's not that I have made completely code back I don't know most off codeing back then but wean I code instead of fallow the tutorial later be later I I just what the saying and after that I experiment in what other way I able to use those function's. And this 💯 work's not only that I use this method out site off code for example thi unity have system that call line rendering I have figured out that this system works perfectly for billboard's even thins system disaing for rops and lasers it works perfectly for billboard's so I use it.
the best thing is just a group of passionists, visionist, artists, ritualists, writers,... goes to game dev school. And this school needs to be at your near local school place of curse
Smaller projects will never give you the skills required to build a large project. So starting with a dream game is the quickest way to understand programming and game design. Just don't do produce graphics till you have gameplay complete. Same with caring about customers: if you are making your dream project, you're the customer, so you dont need any market research.
I agree with the point you made that smaller games won’t give you the experience to work in a big production/longer game, but I really don’t think making your dream game is a good idea. But what I do think is smart, is working your way up like a staircase. Not all your games have to be small, but start small and build bigger and bigger projects and after getting comfortable with many smaller projects, you can and should take on that bigger project (that still isn’t your dream game imo)
Is your latter point sarcastic or do you actually believe you don't need any market research if you make what you want to make? Question: how many games have you shipped this way?
