Game Development

I Had Made Basic Games 🔠, Not Any Big Thing!

I made my first game, Snakes, using PyGame right after learning Python in Class 6 on YouTube. And and made my own customizations to it, like adding background music, death sound, eating apple sound, day leaderboard with overall leaderboard.

Of course, I went on to recreate Flappy Bird next. That was a bit of a pain.

Vice City Dreams 🌆🌇

This will Of course won't help me create anything close to my favorite game of all time Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

By Class 10, I started to understand game development more seriously. Mostly from YouTube videos. That’s when I first learned about "Indie Game Development". Creating games solo or in very small teams.

Mostly people make Indie Games with GODOT or UNITY Game Engine. But the games I wanted to create will require me to learn Unreal Engine. When UE5 beta was released with some bugs and new technologies like MetaHumans and Lumen were epic and The Matrix Awakens Trailer that was launched was just made me Love it soo much. I bought my RTX 3050 laptop so It was running like water (with bugs cuz beta build).

Money Money 💸💸

I made a 3D runner game but It was not what I wanted it to be. I didn't had the 3D assets I wanted, not the animations I wanted. For 3D assets I could either buy them(which I can't) For Animations I could either buy them(I didn’t have the money [having a laptop is enough of a privilege for me]) record it myself with body capture - but again no money :(
For further refining the things I needed to learn Blender (which I did), Maya, 3DS Max, etc softwares. (Of course, I didn't had an eternity to make it.)

At that time, I didn’t had the resources and that taught me how crucial tools and budget really are in game development.

Conclusive Thoughts 💭

I had that dream in my brain, like many other free-minded kids, to create the next AAA title!

What I realized was that it is possible, but for that, I’d have to compromise many things in life. So, I decided not to pursue it.

It’s not hard to make a AAA game, but it’s going to take longer if you’re doing it alone—maybe 1 to 5 years. The main problem in this equation is that you’re not going to get much help on the project. You might get good funding if you’ve done a great showcase, but not getting paid for 5 years? Most people can't afford that risk! What are you even going to eat?

It’s only possible if you approach it in a healthy way, like working a job while doing it in your breaks or during midnight sessions. Don’t go full nerd—it might look easy, but it’s not simple. At some point, you’re going to have to compromise on your core idea due to machine restrictions or bugs, so think it through before you start!

That’s what I learned from being in this space. I didn’t build a AAA game, but I built the mind of someone who understands what it would take. And that changed how I build everything else. And I’m happy about that. I was completely blank before, not knowing how these things even worked, but now I have much of the understanding! That knowledge actually helps me break down problems in other areas too. It’s increased my ability to visualize and imagine things more clearly.