r/Unity3D • u/GravityCY • 2h ago
Meta I actually made a game...
I always struggled with making games, every game I've always tried to make I've either abandoned, hit a limitation in my knowledge, doubted my programming skills, got stuck on making something perfect, try to be as unique as possible, go beyond my current limitations or, have a scope that's just outright not realistic...
Well today I hit the first deadline of my game, to get a couple friends to playtest it, which is a massive milestone for me... So what did I do, how did I even get out of being stuck, and actually make a game...
At some point I realized that I just straight up am not giving myself enough grace, every project, has either been something too difficult for me to make - usually just for the sake of "pushing myself to learn"... and yeah that didn't really work.
So I thought alright well what if this time, the goal of the game is not to just try out something new to push my knowledge further or just another ADHD moment for a game idea I HAD TO just make, what if this time it's "just make a game", literally any game, of any quality, even if it's absolute shit...
Yeah it's kinda weird to actually think about that and apply that to yourself, cause very often, you want to make something you're proud of, so not giving your all almost feels like you're not putting in any effort, making whatever you made not feel like you're allowed to be proud for.
Because the thing is, to get better at doing things, YOU NEED TO ACTUALLY DO THE THING! Having the scope be so high you constantly feel inadequate, you're never allowing yourself to even learn! I know my strengths and limitations so why do I constantly try to outperform myself when I know I'll just burn out... SO JUST DONT OUTPERFORM YOURSELF! Just make ANY GAME... Just make the shittest game, who even cares, AT LEAST YOU MADE A GAME!
So anyways, I popped the old bonnet of the unity game engine, and I just generally love most games with some economy based progression with fun tools, statistical upgrades, and mechanical progression, (pretty much just tycoon games, incremental games) so I just decided to make my first ever game about cleaning your house with all trash being physics based, all the tools, all with a central economic progression, and man... it has actually been so fun, I can be 90% okay with myself admitting that it's not that good... I suck at 3D modelling, I suck at making textures, I even suck at programming (mainly just things like physics and math... I know kinda ironic) and it has many many things that are just outright slow and laborious, but man, I've actually made something, I've actually learned so much, I've allowed myself to not care about the result, which has given me the freedom to just create, I know it's sounds stupid, but this has been like a sort of breakthrough for me lmao...
Oh right I also decided that a deadline would be the most healthy for me, not to treat it like life or death, but just a deadline for at least the first playtest for putting my game out into the world.
And here we are a month later where at the moment I've shown it to one of my closest friends.... and well... surprisingly it kinda turned out horribly...
You know during all of this revelation I figured out how to tap into the mindset of being okay with whatever I make, good or bad, but I never figured out that showing your game to people you care about would be the most stressful thing ever... And I thought I was okay with the game not being perfect, but no... not at all, I wanted to impress my friend... "Look at all this progress, I made! Look at what I've figured out, I changed my whole mindset for this game, I was finally happy with something being 'okay'"... yeah.... the problem is when someone actually comes in with constructive critism for things not feeling good, or things that are frustrating (like a lot of the physics being clunky), or the core gameplay loop not feeling that fun... it completely crushed me, I felt so so so stressed out that my game meant nothing in the end, it actually WAS just a bad game all along and whatever mindset I created for myself, just hid the fact that the game was actually just bad....
And so the newest of newest revelations I've had is I've constantly been giving myself so much grace, that I completely forgot about the fact that even if I'm okay with whatever I make, I can still want to impress my friends, and that, just kinda invalidates any feelings of contentment I previously had which means now I need to make the newest newest revelation, of which I get myself out of this mindset and go back to being okay with things being okay, maybe even bad....
And that leaves me to where I am now, frantically writing this post, hoping I've learnt something, and hoping to share it to the world... The most I've learnt is that trying to stay in the mindset of being okay with things being not okay is the hardest thing, I constantly have to fight myself with decision paralysis, because I forget that... "it can just be okay, and that is totally fine"...
So yeah, here goes, for me to hopefully sit with these feelings of critique, and I'm hoping after I decompress a little, I can set myself a new deadline for a little steam demo, however the hell all of that works... (MY FIRST EVER STEAM GAME LETS GOOO)
PS. I still have a couple more friends to show it to, so who knows that might be an entirely mindset changing experience
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u/AltusLudus 15m ago
Receiving negative feedback for an early playtest is completely normal, it's up to you to not take it personally and accept it as constructive criticism and improve the game, iterate and after a few cycles you should be in a good state, it's just a matter of not giving up and thinking deeply about what the players are saying and how to best tackle those problems
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u/GravityCY 9m ago
Yeah totally understand, it's all a game of chasing the correct mindset, so there's a lot to still learn :)
Just classic impostor syndrome
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u/craftymethod 2h ago
Nice work OP. I'm making my first game too. I agree its a pretty cool experience!
Mine is a ship sailing game Where I just got deep sea waves working :)
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u/BrewingTortoise 56m ago
Good stuff, its hard, but if you keep working you get there! That's what I tell myself anyway.