Why Games?
- D ThePro
- Dec 2, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 5, 2024
2017 - the year I started making games. Well not strictly making, more like exploring around in the Unity editor. I was a 13 year old kid and liked games in general. I also liked animated movies from the likes of Disney and DreamWorks and my interests fluctuated from film-making and directing movies to 3D animation.
And then I played Tomb Raider, the 2013 reboot. I still vividly remember the impact that game had on me. This was the first time I played a AAA game with high graphical fidelity (cause I didn't have a decent computer before this) and it made me eager to create something similar of my own. I knew I couldn't match the quality of a AAA game, but something is better than nothing. This led me to create my first game - Gravitee, in 2021. By then I was in 11th grade and had some basic understanding of computer programming in Java and Python. I liked art and programming and the natural culmination of these two interests resulted in me pursuing game development.
O N E : I N S P I R A T I O N
I don't exactly remember the path of evolution my interests took before finally coming across game development and sticking with it, but what I do remember is that I was always fascinated by computer generated graphics, be that animation or VFX. I remember watching Disney's Frozen and be completely obsessed with it, learning "Let It Go" and singing it every chance I got. I used to do watercolor paintings of Elsa's face and go around the house showing it to everyone. Eventually, after watching it a total of 18 times, I moved on, but a year or two later, Frozen 2 came out and by then, I was a bit more experienced with 3D modeling. So I tried modeling Anna, and in the process, learned a lot about poly-modeling and rendering.
So, as you can understand, Frozen actually helped me a lot in dabbling in the arts and eventually hone my 3D modeling skills, which would go on to be of immense help later in my game development journey.
Somewhere between all of these shenanigans, I played Tomb Raider and was super inspired to make something similar. I was fascinated with the notion of story-based games, because when you play something, you get more involved in it and the stories become more heartfelt, imo. Sure, I've played many other types of games over the years, MMOs, survival RPGs, FPSs, etc, but I still feel, the best sort of games are the choice-based, the story-based, the visual novels.
T W O : S T A R T I N G O U T W I T H U N I T Y
Ah, Unity. The game engine of choice for soo many indie developers. And for good reason. The day I opened the editor for the first time, I was not overwhelmed. I just saw 4 clearly separated windows and very less buttons. But one downside of that is that I didn't know what to do. Where are all the stuff, I thought.
So I visited our trusty friend, YouTube and looked up a few tutorials. There, I found a guy called Brackeys, who had a playlist called "How to make a Video Game in Unity". This was the first set of video tutorials I watched while learning Unity. They were great, it's for a reason Brackeys is called the king of Unity on YouTube. I copied all the tutorials while trying to understand the complex game logic he kept mentioning. Things like physics, materials, lighting etc.
The game he showed was very simple. It was just a cube traveling at a high speed and the player is supposed to dodge obstacles by weaving through them using arrow keys. This is the place from where the inspiration for my first game Gravitee came. It was also a cube dodging obstacles, but during the development of that game, I was determined that I will not just copy whatever Brackeys showed, I will also change it and add new and unique mechanics to the game.
T H R E E : D I S A S T E R
Gravitee is a game where you dodge obstacles by moving to the left or right using your arrow keys, while you keep getting faster. It's a physics based game, where all the movement is force-based. Now comes the fun part. You can press G to invert gravity, which means you will fly upwards towards the ceiling. If there's no ceiling, and you fly high enough to go out of bounds, it's a crash, but when there is a ceiling, you may go along the ceiling to dodge certain big obstacle. But the player must remember that when switching gravity, the small amount of time the player is still in the air falling upwards, the speed will increase significantly due to the fact that there is no friction, since the player is in the air and not touching anything. Also while in inverted gravity mode, the controls get inverted, so the left arrow moves you to the right and vice versa.
It's been 3 years since I made this and sometimes, when I try to play it now, I can't even get past the second level 😅. Anyway, all of this sounds tremendous but then came a catastrophe. My PC got infected with a ransomware. And of course, being a beginner game developer, I didn't back my project files up anywhere. Those, along with all my other data, school work, other stuff that I made, etc, etc, all got encrypted with the STOP ransomware. I tried many types of recovery software, but none really helped, so my only option was to reinstall Windows.
So yeah, I lost my project files. So the only thing i have left now is the executable file of the game, which I can't convert back to the raw project, obviously. After this, I got really demotivated, but soldiered on, and since then until a year ago, I made many prototypes and did a course on game dev. And now, I've embarked on crafting my dream game.
F O U R : Y O U L I K E G A M E D E V E L O P M E N T ? H E R E A R E S O M E T I P S
If you're someone who doesn't know whether they'll like game development, but are prepared to try something new, fair warning, if you do, you'll become like those coders we see in memes, staying up late and living off of coffee. And when cold pizza starts feeling like a gourmet meal, and you catch yourself explaining game mechanics to your pet at 2 a.m., congrats, you’re officially hooked.
OK, jokes aside, game development is an incredibly wide area of work and study. Game development usually means full stack game development, which involves programming, 3D modeling, texturing, level design, lighting, sounds effects, voice overs, story writing, animations and many more sub topics. If you're a full stack game dev, it usually means you are able to do most of these on your own. Programming is of course one of the most important part, and it is due to this that game dev is mostly considered to be a technical subject.
Be ready to dedicate a lot of time to this.
Take it slow. Don't try to make a MMORPG or an FPS as your first game. Try making a simple puzzle game, or games like flappy bird, tic tac toe, etc.
Work on your game on a regular basis. This is coming from first-hand experience. If you skip just a few days, the next time you come back to your game, you'd have lost a sense of continuity and feel demotivated.
Slowly work your way up. You've got this. Now that you're working on your game, or just a prototype every day (pretty much), no one can stop you.
Here are some resources that should help you start out on your game dev journey.
Brackeys - How to make a Video Game in Unity
Thomas Brush - Watch This Before You Make Your First Game
samyam - choosing a game engine is easy actually
The following are channels that I personally watch regularly for game dev tips and tutorials.
CodeMonkey
samyam
Thomas Brush
BlackThornProd
David Wehle
Brackeys (Less active now and his old game dev tutorials are quite outdated. Still can be a good option cause of his easy to follow videos.)
Beautifully articulated experience to become a game dev. Wish you good luck.