For each big-name game developer, there's a major thing I can peg them as having, and that thing is drive. Love or hate their games, that the people who made them had the drive to do it is why they've got games out there and I don't.
I can envy the younger folk, and their incredible focus on learning, in that they'll develop games just because their learning drives are well engaged and to develop a game is truly a fascinating adventure. Get a little older and you're still able to learn, you may be surprised by just how much, but the natural knowledge absorption drives are considerably less ravenous. You need to cultivate a manual motivation to do it.
With my renewed focus on development, and a deadline slightly under a month, I'm now thoroughly on the offense against the mysterious mental blocks within. I've basically two prime culprits:
1. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
This is very much a blanket term for a wide range of potential problems, but the important symptom is that there's many days in which I'm just way too tired to do anything. I'm only 32, I shouldn't be this tired.
As I said, this is a blanket term for a wide range of problems, so everyone's way out of this morass is bound to be different. For me, I don't think the problem is depression, nor lack of interest in making bigger and better games. I think I need to exercise more and diet.
It's a nasty cycle. I'm tired, so I lay around to rest or eat something because I'm thinking it will give me energy. However, what I really needed to do was the opposite, exercise or lose weight.
Sadly, whether divine or scientific, it seems the forces of creation didn't favor the sedentary computer game developer in the very design of our bodies. Mayhap God doesn't like competition? Blasphemy! ;)
2. The Monkey Mind
Basically, the idea behind this is that our tendency to focus our thoughts on exactly what we want to focus them on is fleeting. Like a monkey jumping from tree to tree, the mind may combat staying on one thing at a time. The first time one tries mindfulness meditation (or even more likely, the second or third times as the meditation has by then lost its novelty) the true extent of this monkey mind really becomes apparent.
How many times have I had Dream Maker in front of me, with full intent to do something in it, and before I know it I'm browsing the net or booting up a game? More times than I can remember. Lets face it, that I'm typing this right now is a fair indicator that I'm distracted.
There's some techniques to help one grow aware of the inner monkey mind. I've been slow in their adaptation. The funny thing is, once I'm really well focused in Dream Maker, I tend to stay there for quite some time. It seems to be a difficulty in shifting gears.
Maybe I should ditch this beta testing I'm doing on Wednesday and Friday and just stick to my project, or at least somehow restrict the hours I spend doing non-development activities. The idea is that the gears aren't so far out of alignment when it comes time to shift them back to working on my game.
Laziness examined is an easy label at best.
So, there you have it. Am I working on my game? Not if actions speak louder than intentions, I haven't been. But I'm definitely working on working on my game, trust me on that. :P
I think I was in the same rut when I was in my twenties. Caffeine was ravaging my sleep pattern and I was thinking to myself that just a daily routine would be the solution.
Now I'm in an entirely different rut, but maybe I can help you get over yours earlier. ;) One thing I've found really helps with a sleeping pattern are Melatonin tablets. Seriously - they're not just herbal hocus pocus. Caffeine affects me for a long time, even 6-8 hours and sometimes much later, but 3 mg of Melatonin will really help counteract it. An hour or two after taking it, I get genuinely tired enough to drag myself off the computer and into bed. Then, when I sleep, I sleep deeply - I'll often have a dream vivid enough to remember it, and that's unusual for me. 7-8 hours later (I'm normally a 10 hour sleeper) I'm actually feeling relatively perky. Most importantly, unlike a sleeping pill, I won't be dragging around all day tired the night after taking a melatonin tablet. Now, as for a daily routine, it can be a good thing. However, the tricky thing about routines is that they can be bad as well as good. In cultivating manual motivation, I'm trying to raise above the necessity of a routine. I blamed myself for my mental shortfalls for a long time, but now I don't think there is such a thing. A lot more of it is physical than I initially thought. The reason for this is because I've fairly recently observed that just a bit of exercise - not enough to really be torture, but some kind of sustained easy activity for 20-30 minutes - makes a more or less immediate difference in my motivation. If could master making a routine out of getting a bit of exercise, this effect would probably be sustained. Altering my routine enough to do so, however, is tough. Habit is a bitch. | |
Geldonyetich wrote:
The reason for this is because I've fairly recently observed that just a bit of exercise - not enough to really enough to be torture, but some kind of sustained easy activity for 20-30 minutes - makes a more or less immediate difference in my motivation. I noticed this as well. Prior to quitting smoking, I was walking around the Unfortunately, quitting smoking sapped all my energy and desire to do so, and now it's winter and raining almost every day, severely harming my desire to pick up where I left off. I'll take a look at those tablets, something to help put me into a solid sleeping pattern (I haven't had one since I was about thirteen) would be a fantastic investment. | |
I can sure sympathize with that winter thing. My main method of exercise is an electric treadmill, which (because it weighs a ton and destroys carpets if lugged across them) is kept out in the garage. When temperatures fell to 20-30 degrees Fahrenheit, it sure made it hard to get out there.
It's a pity, I was actually doing pretty good - about 3-4 times a week I'd get on that treadmill - and I learned DM and did some of my best work with the resulting motivation. Then Winter knocked me out of the routine and now I'm lucky if I get on there once a week. My motivation is back in the pits. Last time I had a temp job, I invested in one of these, something I can not only use indoors but in conjunction with my favorite hobby. Unfortunately, I don't get to use it that often - there's not that many PC games of the style I play which I can rig up a gamepad to. If I could figure out some solution around this, such as a platform for a mouse and keyboard, I'd probably get a lot more use out of it. | |
That contraption is the weirdest thing I've ever seen ever. It's like... the Wii. Exercising and gaming will never, ever exist in harmony in my mind. Control pad > Movement.
I also don't plan to let winter stop me. Getting wet has never been a problem for me, it just means I no longer have to feel awkward when someone is walking in the opposite direction (I hate it, they look at you, you look at them, it's just awkward, at least for me) or worry about being seen eyeing off the cute joggers who are going past or coming towards me. <.< | |
I'd agree with you there, but in experience, I discovered the PCGamerBike can work surprisingly well. It's not like the Wii Fit - strange balance pad - you can actually work up a sweat on an elliptical cycle. However, how well it works depends a lot on the kind of game you're playing.
A first person shooter or a MMORPG, which have you do a lot of walking, is fairly enriched when the walking is being done in real life. I actually feel like I'm getting some precision control out of my forward and backwards movement I wouldn't have with a keyboard. The main hitch there is just if the game requires more buttons than you have on your controller (part of the reason I want to devise a means to reach my keyboard). A real time strategy game, on the other hand, doesn't have any kind of cognitive connect at all with all that walking. You need to have an actual physical tie in with the game because otherwise you'll just stop pedaling and play the game. As for awkward social situations, that's actually where mindfulness meditation comes in handy. Focusing on one's breathing is a popular recommendation for killing all kinds of stress and anxiety. Granted, it would still be tough to explain one's self if you're caught engaging in certain acts of nature's appreciation. ;) | |
Perhaps you should try what I do: Take on small projects. When you have enough small projects, make a bigger project out of them. Pretty much all of my games consisted of projects created independently and, at some point or another, merged together to create a functional game.
If you don't have the motivation to create a whole game, make parts of it - libraries, graphics, etc... Things that you think you'll use in your project, or maybe some others. I have both of the symptoms you mentioned. I have chronic fatigue that is NOT due to a lousy sleep pattern (its a family tradition), and the older I get, the harder I'm finding it to focus on things. But I've always found that if I actually want to accomplish something, I need to take on small projects. If I have to spend more than a week on a project, unless I'm unusually motivated, I likely won't finish it. As far as focus goes, it helps to put yourself in a quiet place or time where all the distractions of the day aren't in your face constantly. That's probably one of the reasons why programmers tend to stay up way too late - because that's the time when there are no distractions. | |
Maybe my trouble there is I haven't modularized my code well enough. I've actually several months of previous (albeit not so small) projects piled up on my backup drive, but the only real use I've got out of them is to re-use the art assets.
My current game is being developed to be a small project first but with an open framework for expansion. That should work out fine... but I need to bring myself to actually put any work at all into it first. | |
You don't need to push yourself to work on a project unless you're being paid to. If this is your hobby, work on it when you feel inclined to work on it, and daydream about it the rest of the time.
At the moment I'm working on trying to turn some of the features I want to include in my game(s) into libraries, so even if my intended project doesn't work out, at least I can use the library on another project, and if none of my projects work out, I can release the libraries for others to use and I've still accomplished something. | |
Turn up the pressure, turn down the pressure, it's always hard to say what will motivate one in the end.
Just once, I think I'd like to finish a BYOND game, if only to thank Dantom for making it. That, and I think I've a vested interest in being a game developer one day. In a way, this is the closest thing I've got to a job right now. | |
Then I suggest you make a small, easy game that won't take you very long and which you already have graphics for. :) Maybe something besides what you've been trying to make. Perhaps a room escape or hidden item game? Those are obnoxiously popular outside of BYOND, but I don't think anyone has ever made one here.
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Technically, what I'm making right now could be a small, easy game.
I just have to resist the temptation to do something really fancy with it and stick to that abstraction focus I was talking about a few days ago. It's surprisingly hard for me to do. I keep wanting to do something really fancy with it. | |
That's what I'm saying. Every time I see you working on a game, it seems like you're always trying to build the same kind of thing. If that obviously isn't working for you, try to build something else.
I've always wanted to build an epic exploration/adventure game with puzzles and dangers and lots of neat things and places to discover. That's what The Gauntlet was an attempt at. Its only a demo though. The version I have up for download here was my 3rd attempt. I'm actually working on my 6th attempt now. Have I ever finished any epic exploration/adventure games? No. But I have finished a turn-based space strategy game and a desktop clicking/puzzle game. Somehow those were easier for me to complete. What I'm saying is that, if what you've been working on isn't working for you, try working on something different. | |
I went with a little different interpretation myself. I'm thinking it's not so much the size of the game, so much as my inner motivation to work on it. I think when I reach a sticking point in my project, it's not the monolithicness of it that bothers me, but rather that my muse doesn't like the direction it's going.
The thing is, I think I actually like to do the coding part. I usually lose motivation if what I'm thinking I'm coding isn't going to turn out to be worthwhile. So developing a tiny game just to have a tiny game done won't work for me. If it's a game that doesn't innovate in any way, it definitely isn't worthwhile for me to make. The good news for me is that there's some simple games that are worthwhile simply because we don't see enough of them anymore (not to mention I get to tweak em' and I like to think I have an eye for balance). That's what I'm working on right now - it's actually heavily inspired by some 1980s games I've been playing lately (Hard Nova and Star Command). Of course, it won't be anything like those games because it's multiplayer, and that's part of where the sense of true innovation comes in. That's also where my sticking point is at right now. How to bring that together? So many possibilities to tantalize a fickle muse. Honestly, I haven't even completely settled on player role, yet. That dreaded developer's block over a critical decision! That's really what's been throwing me off track so much. What I should probably do is just forge ahead with one possibility, and weather the possibility of a rewrite, than wait in indecision. A freewrite is often the quickest solution for a block. | |
Sitting around today, I think the trouble might be I'm addicted to thinking.
I'm not saying that to tout myself up as smart. I'm saying that I enjoy thinking about what I could be doing more than I do actually doing it, and this might be a core reason why I get so little done. It intervenes even when the flow is going; in mid-process. My fingers leave the keyboard where I was just typing up something interesting in DM because I've realized I could be doing what I'm doing completely differently. I sit back and think about that a bit, what I'm doing suddenly seems less interesting, and the flow is thoroughly broken. Bad habit. These flights of fancy of mine will be the death of me yet. | |
Get a job as an adviser.
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I'd settle for a job as a sanitation worker at this point of the depression. I'd be a barely productive highly reflective sanitation worker, but at least I'd pull a wage. Instead, I'm puttering about making a travesty of my own comment threads.
You're good at recommending I just go with the flow, Foomer, and maybe you're right, but right now I'm exploring the just how much I can better myself. Seeing if it's not a complete illusion believing I can. | |
Terrible sleeping pattern produces fatigue, which is combated with mass intake of caffeine that produces an insomniac like state when attempting to get to sleep. Rinse and repeat.
As for the subject of motivation. I don't know what my problem is, I think somewhere in my mind I allocate myself a certain amount of motivation to get something done. When I spend a fair amount of time and effort solving one specific problem, I see it finished, smile to myself, then just kind of fade away until I feel it's absolutely necessary to start up again (sometimes days, sometimes months). It sucks.
I think normalisation is the key to keeping on task. A daily routine that puts someone in the mindset to work. The hard part is putting yourself in such a routine. I'd love to hit the sack at midnight, get up at 8am and do what I normally do. But presently, that'd give me three hours of sleep (I wouldn't pass out until 5am), and I couldn't function at all on such a little amount of rest and thus, whenever I try, I can't manage to find the floor. Bastard snooze buttons.