HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I love that energy, and totally sympathize with the desire to take charge of your own vision. One of the great things about this industry is the willingness to take risks. Creating my own successful game is one of my life goals as well! Game creation can be a really meaningful experience and its a great combination of a lot of different skillsets. It's also a ton of fun.

But.

If you want to make this successful, first you're going to need to understand the risks here, as well as define explicitly what you're looking to get out of this. Are you looking to just make money, or execute a creative vision? What will you decide to do if those two things come into conflict?

Second, of all the potential business models out there, making a game is probably one of the riskiest ones you can possibly work on. You're going to need to come into this knowing what you're doing.

At minimum, you should be able to answer the question - "Why does the world need this game?" Why would someone play this game, and more importantly, pay for it?

If you were an experienced game developer who had released some number of small indie titles and looking to spend some time on a title you know can have an impact, thats one thing. But making a good game that people want to play is very difficult, time consuming, and requires a lot of experience. It takes years to build the skillsets needed to be successful in this industry, and thats even with a programming background. The fact that you don't have an idea yet of what game you want to make, nor have a familiarity with an engine yet, tells me you're a couple years away from being able to quit your job. Also, the fact that you say you're motivated to do this because you're bored of your job and want some self-actualization, tells me you're doing this for the wrong reasons. You should only quit your job and make the jump if you're already progressing on a game you know can be successful and just need time to develop and publish it.

So here is my advice. Keep your job for now, or if you don't like it, find a new one. Join a game jam on itch.io, timebox yourself and your partner for some short amount of time, like a week or a month, to create several small "throwaway" games to build skills and the understanding of how much you can accomplish. If you don't have many obligations outside your job (kids, family, etc.) you should be able to accomplish a small complete game in a month in your spare time. Do this for a year or two, and if eventually you find yourself making a really great game you just need more time to work on, then you have your answer. But by choosing to quit your job before you have even started exercising these skills you're setting yourself up for failure.

I sincerely hope you succeed and find your vision. But in order to succeed, you need to have a good understanding of the risks involved, and the skills and experience to know how to overcome them in concrete terms.

As someone who's just completed a game jam with a small game, this is a fantastic hobby at minimum and I hope you're not deterred from being creative. I only advise caution when talking about turning this into a job. Who knows, by doing this just as a hobby at first you may even find that this gives you the right outlet you need to enjoy your day job more! That was more or less the case for me, since my present job means I'm not building things as much and deal more with a lot of team dynamics and bureaucracy.

Edit: This video was pretty enlightening to me in terms of pitching game design - if he won't accept your pitch, why should you? Theres a lot of other good videos on the GDC channel as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LTtr45y7P0&ab_channel=GDC

⬐ nicpottier

A million yes to all this!

⬐ fileeditview

There are a lot of replies in this thread but yours is the only one worth reading. You gave really valuable advice and insight instead of the usual "game making is lottery" and "don't do it" babble that does not give any reasons at all. I hope the OP reads your post.

Just commented to say thanks for the quality post :)

⬐ headcanon

Appreciate it! Thank you.