Game development is the best worst hobby

[BarbWire]

Hear! Hear! Wham.  It is so nice to see that video gaming has really taken off over the last year. Far from being the bad influence, once thought, encouraging the
populus to get up to every unspeakable attrocity, it is now being recognised as a great stress reliever and a way to ward off altzeimers. An accolade rightly deserved   

[Galen]

The true and unfulfilling answer always relies on reducing scope. Make your adventure game 5 minutes long. Your book a short story. Your movie with two friends and your smartphone. Your grand painting a sketch.
Picking massive projects by yourself that you don't have the time and inspiration for is a recipe for never getting there. Even authors with 30 novel series only ever wrote single books at a time.

Something very short may pale in respect to the magnum opus in your mind, but even getting small projects out of the door is pretty rewarding. Gamejams,
NaNoWriMo, etc are all a good way to actually get things out into the world.

[WHAM]

Something very short may pale in respect to the magnum opus in your mind, but even getting small projects out of the door is pretty rewarding. Gamejams,

This is true if the goal is to release something and get that fulfillment out of completing a project, but if one sets out a goal to, even once in a lifetime, to build something bigger and more complex, then it doesn't quite work.
Knowing what the project is, and setting goals you can reach and a timeline you can follow to reach that goal are important, and come right back around to project management skills.

[LimpingFish]

Yes. Yes it is.

...

Having said that, I've recently been making some long overdue progress on a project, and it feels SO good!

[Danvzare]

Hear! Hear! Wham.  It is so nice to see that video gaming has really taken off over the last year. Far from being the bad influence, once thought, encouraging the
populus to get up to every unspeakable attrocity, it is now being recognised as a great stress reliever and a way to ward off altzeimers. An accolade rightly deserved   

*Picks up cane and starts waving it around like a madman.* Gaming died over a decade ago!

Ahem. Now I've gotten that out of my system. I honestly didn't realize gaming had taken off last year. I'm pretty sure games had become well-established mainstream nearly two decades ago (roughly around the time "AAA" became a common term). Did Covid really bring that many new people in?

[deadsuperhero]

Having said that, I've recently been making some long overdue progress on a project, and it feels SO good!

Nice! I hear you there - I've recently caught a second wind in development by focusing on small parts that excite me. I built a method for traveling around the game that feels goofy and fun, and it's kind of motivating me to develop entirely new areas and stick them together. There's still not a whole lot for players to actually do, but connecting isolated scenes together feels like progress.

Did Covid really bring that many new people in?

I can't really point to any specific figures, but I will say, anecdotally of course, that there's greater demand from people buying gaming hardware...and one could guess by extension, games as well. There's also a bit of a silicon shortage, though, due to the pandemic.

I will say that I've been playing way more adventure games than ever before!

[Blondbraid]

Hear! Hear! Wham.  It is so nice to see that video gaming has really taken off over the last year. Far from being the bad influence, once thought, encouraging the
populus to get up to every unspeakable attrocity, it is now being recognised as a great stress reliever and a way to ward off altzeimers. An accolade rightly deserved   

*Picks up cane and starts waving it around like a madman.* Gaming died over a decade ago!

Ahem. Now I've gotten that out of my system. I honestly didn't realize gaming had taken off last year. I'm pretty sure games had become well-established mainstream nearly two decades ago (roughly around the time "AAA" became a common term). Did Covid really bring that many new people in?

It kinda reminds me of those who still treat the comic book and superhero fandoms as these obscure nerdy underdogs, even after a full decade of blockbuster Superhero flicks dominating cinemas.

[FormosaFalanster]

Hear! Hear! Wham.  It is so nice to see that video gaming has really taken off over the last year. Far from being the bad influence, once thought, encouraging the
populus to get up to every unspeakable attrocity, it is now being recognised as a great stress reliever and a way to ward off altzeimers. An accolade rightly deserved   

*Picks up cane and starts waving it around like a madman.* Gaming died over a decade ago!

Ahem. Now I've gotten that out of my system. I honestly didn't realize gaming had taken off last year. I'm pretty sure games had become well-established mainstream nearly two decades ago (roughly around the time "AAA" became a common term). Did Covid really bring that many new people in?

It kinda reminds me of those who still treat the comic book and superhero fandoms as these obscure nerdy underdogs, even after a full decade of blockbuster Superhero flicks dominating cinemas.

That is not in every culture. There are many different cultures in Mainland Europe or East Asia that are not sensitive to superhero stuff. If only because they have their own brand of pop culture and do not need Marvel. It is seen there as an American oddity with very heavy marketing, and only a very niche audience is showing interest.

As per videogames it has been established for very long. What we observe though is a huge rise in independent developpers. In its infancy the videogame industry was made by small teams or solo developpers, then came the age when you could not do a game unless you were a Hollywood-size studio, then we reverted to an age when big studios and small independents are coexisting. Which is good for players and hobbyist developpers alike.

Movies have been the same though, there are lots of independent movies that appear here and there. Even in the US the independent cinema industry is rather flourishing and it is popular abroad.

[Creamy]

Reading all of this makes me think it might be interesting to create a new thread, probably in the Rumpus Room, where people can post about "the lost projects". I have at least a dozen projects of my own that reached various stages of prototyping and documentation, but died out, or have been on hold for years and years. I might make one over the coming week, to see if people are interested, unless someone beats me to it.

I'd like to see the release something thread come back. I bet we all have unrealized deas.

Having said that, I've recently been making some long overdue progress on a project, and it feels SO good!

Sometimes, I still toy with old projects that have been baking for years.

I work on a computer all day long so my eyes won't allow me long sessions in the evening.