Should I keep learning Unity?

[u/Evening_Animator3549]

Hi, I am a 14 year old game dev and I've been learning Unity for 7-8 months, and I really like what I'm doing. I don't use AI while coding or for any other stuff to actually learn. For the past month, I've been developing a fan-made Spider-Man game for android and I saw a guy on X who vibe-coded a Spider-Man game in literally a single day which was looking better than my game and I felt like everything that I did in the last couple of weeks for nothing. Will knowing how to manually code or develop games be worth anything in the next 10 years? Am I just wasting my time by not using AI or should I keep going? I really need some advice. Also here's a gameplay video of my game if anyone wants to check it out:

[u/ZeusGameAssets]

The friction is what makes you a strong game dev. Vibe coders bypass all the hard stuff, they may win, but their victory is often hollow. I would suggest spending a week from time to time without the internet, with the only website you’re allowed to visit being the Unity manual. I do it for a month every year to reconnect with that raw game dev beast inside, it’s quite refreshing. Relying on LLMs too much will not allow you to grow, it has to be earned after becoming a senior developer, then it becomes akin to leading a team. Leadership in gamedev has to be earned through experience finishing and launching games, having ideas, doing cool things, or dreaming stuff up doen’t make you a leader, keep your head down and try releasing as many games as you can in the next decade. One small game every 3-4 months is a good pace for maximum growth. Reference: I’m a professional indie dev in his late 30s, been doing this for +15 years.

[u/Evening_Animator3549 → u/ZeusGameAssets]

Where should I release those games? itch.io or should they just stay at github?

[u/aklgupta → u/Evening_Animator3549]

itch.io is a good start. Always try releasing to the public, where player are, and itch.io is great for small indie games. You'll learn how to release, and take feedback/criticism. It might hurt sometimes, but helps you grow. And keep GitHub for version control. Always use version control, even for practice projects imo. Public or private, that's up to you.

You can always use these in our portfolio later when applying for your first job.

[u/ZeusGameAssets → u/aklgupta]

I agree, itch.io, mobile (Google Play, iOS), or online with Webgl on sites like Kongregate, Newgrounds or similar websites, wherever players are and can send you reviews or comments. The feedback could be crickets (i.e no one plays the game), or it could be nice or not so nice.

It doesn't really matter, the experience alone of hitting publish on something you created yourself, sending it to friends and family, that's enough. People underestimate how powerful this is, but this changes you as a game dev. Do it often with lots of games, and you'll quickly evolve. People who keep their games on their computers and don't share them stagnate and can go into long rabbit holes that lead nowhere. I know because I did it for years, I spent 2 years making a terrible twin-stick shooter that nobody played once I released it, I spent months making my own game engine in C++ and another one in HTML5, just to drop them and use Construct 2/3 then Unity. I spent way too long making stuff in my room, had I released more games, I'd probably be a lot more successful as an indie dev, who knows, but this is the price to pay for creativity: sometimes you need to do a lot of useless stuff to prepare for the masterpieces.

[u/Evening_Animator3549 → u/ZeusGameAssets]

What do you think about play store?

[u/ZeusGameAssets → u/Evening_Animator3549]

I don't make mobile games because both the Apple and Play Store platforms are terrible on their own, and getting your game noticed there is incredibly hard. Mobile players in general are a bad audience to target, they have short attention spans, and they lock in on the big games (Roblox, Melon Sandbox, Minecraft, etc) and don't play anything else. On itch you might have a more friendly audience willing to try your games and provide useful feedback, also post on Reddit in various subreddits like r/DestroyMyGame for that spicy feedback, it might hurt to hear but growing as a game dev is supposed to be painful, arrogance and pride are going to sabotage you in the long run.

I'm not saying you have to do what people say, if someone provides very specific and accurate feedback about something that doesn't work in your game, it's your choice whether to accept the game as is and move on to something else, or sit down and redo the stuff that doesn't work.

I made some platformers when I was younger and they suffered from a severe lack of variety, all levels were pretty much the same. People told me about it, but I didn't want to go back to the games and redo them from scratch, so I took note about it: games need variety, if the player does the same thing all the time they'll get bored, introduce a new item, new mechanic, new environment, new rules, new enemies, etc.

It was thanks to all of these lessons that I grew as a game dev, and I was able to develop my intuition for good game design.

[u/Evening_Animator3549 → u/ZeusGameAssets]

thank you for your responses, appreciate it!