I didn't find a topic like this, so I opened it.

As the topic says, why are you programming games?
Just for fun, for learning, hoping to be the next Indie-star?

If as hobby, did you manage to get from programming as a hobby to earn a living?
Why did you start with programming anyway?

I'm not asking just for fun.
Right now, I'm feeling very lost in this whole big big big world of programming.
Sure, for a big percentag I do this as a hobby, but also for learning. It's much
easier to learn while doing something you like, than reading old, dusty book
Well, to be honest, there is a part of me, who hopes to get a job with some
references somewhen(of course, not at blizzard, or valve, more at a small local
company, not creating games but something boring, but you need to get money, right),
so I can't see it as a hobby only, but also as some kind of work.

What demotivates / demotivated you in your game programming career and how did you
get over it?

The most demotivational for me is the big, almost not ending number of games that are
so much better than mines.
There is actually nothing I can do against this thought, but I can get new motivation
when sending my games to friends, who in most of the cases like them, or at least
pretend to do to motivate me to go on*g*

What game / program you wrote, are you most proud of(links / video?)
Right now for me, it's my Mario-Clone(1,2) I got working almost good.

Looking forward to read your thoughts

As the topic says, why are you programming games?
I do this as a hobby these days, though most of my life I've wanted to do it for a living, or at least make some money from it so I wouldn't be dead broke all the time. I think over the course of my "career", I've made a total of $35 from some "begware" I wrote about a decade ago.

Now I just do it for the love of making something come to life, as it were.

What demotivates / demotivated you in your game programming career and how did you get over it?
Main thing that I had problems with is trying to make it into a career, without being able to spend a career-caliber amount of time on it. I wasn't happy just coding... I had to do art, design, writing, music, sound, everything. I've become somewhat able to do most of it all, but I'm not strong enough in all of them to make a product with consistency in quality. This is problematic, especially when you're not so good at staying focused.

Of course, I've learned a lot of skills into which I would not have otherwise delved. I have no musical background, but my desire to make music for my games led me to learn to play a bit of guitar and piano.

What game / program you wrote, are you most proud of(links / video?)
As sad as it is to say it, I'd have to go with my old game "Attack of the Blue Stickmen." I keep saying to myself I'll make an updated version (the original is extremely rough), but I have yet to finish it. See what I mean? Can't stay focused.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Hehe, I know that problem with the focus*g*


It sounds like you have a lot of skill gained in several topics, never thought about looking for some people
online who also like to make a good game?
(The GP-Wiki game is coming! xD)


That sure it bad:|
But, imagine you got that time and still don't get it done
I have all the time I want, but without any real-life people I can meet, discuss ideas,
doing programming weekends and so on, I find it hard to, as you said, stay focused.


b.t.w there is a conversation I like to share:
I: I made a game, look at this!
Friend: Can you sell it?
I: No.
Friend: It's useless then.

Most annoying attitude I encountered*g*

Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt, burned it for warmth the following winter.


Indeed. Just speaks to the degree to which materialism has permeated the psyche of society as a whole.

_________________
What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

As the topic says, why are you programming games?

I do it for several reasons. The technical challenge to implement some feature/logic or technique, the game-design and mechanics that make the game fun, the music, the art. Everything is something i like to do, so it seems like a perfect fit to me.
Of course i some time want to be able to create a game that will sell to sustain myself, but in the end i just want to make a game that others enjoy.

What demotivates / demotivated you in your game programming career and how did you
get over it?

Demotivation appears quite often for me. I get bored with a certain game or concept idea, or getting stuck with a specific implementation can be a huge let down.
I usually find new motivation through new ideas i can look forward to.
Other demotivation can occur if i have too high expectations of my designs and it doesn't invoke the kind of feedback i'm looking for. In fact it is a bad thing to have any expectations in that regard. What matters in the end is that you are proud of your game, however s***ty it is, because you put a lot of work in it and probably learned a thing or two. Even if the thing you learned is that it is in fact a s***ty game.

What game / program you wrote, are you most proud of(links / video?)
Hard to say. There's no real games i could show off at this point. I did a bunch of prototypes and compo games that are not really bad, but not quite good either.

Here are some of them compiled:
http://redwatergames.blogspot.com/p/projects.html

_________________
Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

As the topic says, why are you programming games?
Fun, experimenting with ideas, figuring out how they work internally, talking to people that also like to program.

yes (but not games), tinkering with algorithms was fun (although I had no idea it was called 'algorithms' at the time :p

What demotivates / demotivated you in your game programming career and how did you get over it?
I don't have much of 'game programming career' tbh. The biggest demotivation is probably the waiting until a patch gets accepted.
Another demotivation is severe lack of time to do more game programming.

All will change when I retire, I am sure :p

What game / program you wrote, are you most proud of(links / video?)
Oh dear, I have written more programs than I can remember :p
At work, I have written a few compilers and simulators that turned out really well (it's all pretty much dead nowadays).
I re-wrote the entire gui system in OpenTTD (you cannot see it really, as it looks just like the old one).
And currently I am writing FreeRCT (see links in my signature), but it's not complete yet ;)

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My project: Messing about in FreeRCT, dev blog, and IRC #freerct at oftc.net

Why are you programming games?

I'm a creative person, coding is a nice outlet for my need to build stuff. I probably won't ever do it as a job because it takes that fun out of it when you get told what to do rather than just fiddling with cool stuff.

I've always loved coding, from right back in the days of the ZX81s and the BBC model B. Doing graphical demos and games is a nice way of getting an end result that other people can also appreciate, even if they have no understanding of what's going on under the hood.

What demotivates / demotivated you in your game programming career and how did you
get over it?

I go in cycles. I'll be a pure couch potato console gamer for a while, then go through a web dev phase (actually doing something on the Wiki ), next I might play with a 3d renderer for a month or two before picking up the compiler and peeking into my code folder for an old project to tinker with.

My coding phases often fizzle out as I have grand ideas, but can't be bothered building up to the point where the fun stuff actually happens. Back in the DOS Mode13h/ModeX days I could get to the good stuff in a couple of hours. Thesedays, OpenGL makes me do at least a day or two of groundwork before I get my 'good stuff' fix. I've never really got over that hump and that's why I do less and less dev work recently.

What game / program you wrote, are you most proud of(links / video?)
I did some very cool stuff in AMBER, but I've never finished it.
My Leaky Apps coding contest entry was alot of fun to make. I wrote it in two or three nights (when I was on a very quiet guard duty).

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Why are you programming games?

Since I was 4 years old I've been fascinated with the idea of making things, digital or physical, to suit my whims When I got older I learned how I could actually make this dream a reality, through programming and workshop. All of my best projects are code though... except one, which is a physical box with an arduino in it, and that has all the code so, yeah. I guess computers just like me better

But I also want to make it my career. I'm not dead-set on writing games for a living, but I certainly want to be an engineer/programmer and since I'm 17 I feel a great deal of urgency on this matter.

What demotivates / demotivated you in your game programming career and how did you
get over it?

I'm not always sure. Sometimes I can work all day every day for a week and not get bored, sometimes I don't open eclips for days. But in general I do it for the fun of it. That's pretty much why I do everything. Despite the fact that I want to make it my career, I find the very concept of money very boring and consequently it does not motivate me at all.

What game / program you wrote, are you most proud of(links / video?)

I guess probably my most polished, fun, and inventive game is GraviPong. It's kinda a pong clone I guess, but it plays MUCH differently with all the features I added. It's a lot of fun and I hope to be able to publish it this summer. I'd provide a link but my web developer hasn't finished the site yet

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I code theirfor I am.
And more importently, theirfor my program am.
wait is that right... theirfor my code ams? no...theirfor i is... no... oh idk

Very well put, i can totally relate

_________________
Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

So true, doing something for money absolutely doesn't motivate me(could have made some money with webdesign,
but I dislike webdesign and since there was no motivation going for it....*g*).

Very nice to read your answers, thank you all
Gone through your links and that motivates me. Seeing, you do things like freeRCT, Astronaught(hope you'll get it founded!)
is really great.

@Codehead: Since you are working on the wiki, the LeakyApps links don't work anymore.
I hope I once will have enough knowledge to get to work in a small team,
I imagine that as a really interesting experience(if the team is friendly).

Another thing which is a bit demotivating for me is,
that there are flashgames, much too good.
Even I usually won't download a game, if a similar game is available for playing online.

Did someone ever publish something on Steam? I think, astronaught is closest from what I was until now, or?
This is a far-away(years) goal for me. Creating a game which will be published there(for free).

It is cancelled actually. I didn't manage to get the funding Another huge demotivational part, but i learned from it: don't start a funding campaign if you don't have something reasonable and interesting to show, unless you are Tim Schafer.



I don't think steam is a platform you should aim for. They have a pretty untransparent process of approval, so they might just ignore a big bunch of smaller projects that didn't get much press unless you're lucky.
There's a wide range of platforms you can apply to though: Indievania, Desura and Indiecity are only some of them that are more friendly toward newcomer game devs.

_________________
Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

Fixed.

_________________
10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

I take it to an extreme, and loathe it. It tends to make things more complicated than they should be... but you have to have it to survive. Getting it makes everything more complicated... then when you have it, it makes things more complicated... and when you run out, it gets more complicated...

It's a vicious cycle.

_________________
What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Wow! I wasn't expecting such resounding agreement on my feelings towards money! Lol, and Mugai likes it even less! I guess programmers of a feather dislike money together. That's probably why programmers ussualy just make as much money as they need instead of getting filthy rich. Which is good actually, richness has been correlated to unhappiness!

_________________
I code theirfor I am.
And more importently, theirfor my program am.
wait is that right... theirfor my code ams? no...theirfor i is... no... oh idk

I make games(or try to, lol) because after years and years of playing them, I got to the point where I wanted to make my own. I've always liked making art, and game development is art in one of it's purest forms.

What motivates me is 2 things:

1) creating something and being like, "hey, cool! as if i did that!"
2) The idea of someone else enjoying something that I've created.

What de-motivates me?

1) Distractions... bang my head off the wall trying to debug something, or play Diablo 3?.. hrm..
2) Looking too far down the development cycle and comparing it to where I actually am

I get over that stuff by just remembering that 'rome wasn't built in a day', things take time, and by sometimes just looking at how far I've come and thinking "no way i can abandon it now".

For the project I'm most proud of, it would be the one i'm currently working on, "Tankz". I don't have any game media for you ATM, but I post semi-regular updates on my blog (in sig) and I'm hoping to have a video up soon.

_________________
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

Oh, cool, that's just like me!



Oh, and that.



Oh, that too.

Those are major problems, aren't they? Thinking way ahead of your self. I do that far too often.

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Ghost of John Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Ddgec36Jk&feature=youtu.be