Author: DylWithlt
A very common issue I see among many friends, colleagues, and myself, is this ever present problem with burning out. Burning out, generally speaking, is when you get tired or bored of a project and then drop it.
The pattern of development goes one of a few ways, there are the planners, people who start by trying to plan every single thing in their code base before they ever write a script. There are the reckless, people who don’t know what they’re getting into, usually new to development, that just start writing random stuff and eventually it breaks because they didn’t consider something. The planners is a response to the reckless, often times an over correction. There’s also the hobbyists, people who make games for fun, not for profit, and the industrialists, people who make games for profit, not for fun.
These groups of people are important to understand the pitfalls you can run into when trying to actually finish a project.
What causes burnout?
In my opinion, burnout is caused by a complex combination of reality not aligning with expectation, getting bogged down in the details, and putting too much effort into any one action. Let’s talk about how each archetype might fall prey to burnout in their own ways.
The Reckless
The first archetype is the most obvious. A young kid or a naive adult wants to make their first game. They have seen the YouTube tutorials, they have played thousands of games, or no games at all. They get an idea, a spark, a motivation for creation that burns hot like a flame. They make the leap and they start their first project. They have no idea what they’re doing. They scrape by and create something, something simple, then another thing, and then oh wait they want this feature, and now how do they connect this feature to the other? Do they just shove it in this spot here?
Eventually they end up with a mess, a mess that barely works and was made with passion and devotion, and as the tasks compound and the knowledge base wains they start to lose that motivation. Eventually they give up, game dev is hard, a cruel reality. Maybe they should have been more organized, or started smaller?
The Planners
Planning a game sounds like a smart move, right? Why wouldn’t you want to completely understand what you’re going to do before you do it? Planning is cunning, it feels productive, but often times it’s not. Planning is not writing code, and not writing code is not building your game. A planner will spend time researching tools, and notes, and organizing into neat folders, and drawing diagrams, and creating Game Design Documents. All these things to outline their master plan for that game they will eventually make.
It will be glorious, but how am I going to visualize the connection between systems 1 and 2? How am I going to outline the order of operations the client→server communication must perform to have my perfect combat system? Making a game is a massive undertaking and you want to be prepared, but are you really going to hold all that in your head? Eventually the brain gives out, the plan can’t be reconciled, there are too many details. You never write a single line of code, or you start coding and suddenly realize, the plan didn’t account for something, now it’s back to the massive drawing board, the comfortable place of order and planning. The game has lost its wings before it has even walked.
The Industrialist
You’re gonna get rich, and game dev is your ticket. So many youtubers, and influencers constantly reassuring you that, actually it’s not that hard, and it’s technically free, right? If they can do it why can’t you? You hear that simulator games or the cash grab “slop” is so easy to make that anyone can do it. All it takes is time and effort right? You might even have the skill to pull it off!
The passion of profit drives you, and you are chasing that green. However, nobody is paying you for building this game, the profit comes at the end, maybe? Making this “cash grab” is harder than you thought it’d be, nobody considers data management or progression curves when dreaming about their game. This is hard. You might not even make anything from this game, so what’s the point? How good can your idea really be?
Self doubt creeps in like a parasite and sucks you dry of that profit driven motivation. The few games that make it through don’t even have the funds for marketing so nobody ever plays it and you end up poor anyways, or worse, you put a ton of your own money into your game and it flops hard. It’s not fun. Another game dead.
The Hobbyist
You LOVE games. You have been playing games since you were little and you learned to develop to express your own ideas thought gaming. You don’t need anything but your love for gaming, passion, and the diverse skill set you’ve developed to enjoy your hobby. You can be a bit ambitious, but you’re not worried, you’ll power through because this is what you enjoy doing.
Money’s getting a little tight though, maybe you’ll take a break from this game. Or maybe you just had another GREAT idea, one better than this one, and this one is getting boring to work on anyways. Time to start a new project. Or maybe you’re putting EVERYTHING into this project, your masterpiece. You spend all day and all night, every moment of your free time learning and developing and designing what you love. This can tire you out too, a short break and you feel free, a different high you don’t have to work so hard on, and suddenly the game is forgotten, you got to focus on you.
What’s the solution?
These anecdotal stories highlight a common trend. Motivation being met with reality; hard. When people think about creation they are either not skilled enough to accomplish something beyond their skill level, or they over commit. The real key to not being destroyed but these many pitfalls is by being ALL of these at once. Each one of these archetypes has a unique advantage over the others, but they also have their own unique weakness. Try to be the strengths without the weakness.
Be a planner, but not too much of a planner that you never get started. Be reckless, build your game in a way that it won’t crumble if plans change, but build it aggressively. Be a hobbyist, have fun doing what you love, have fun building, enjoy the process, but don’t commit for that reason because the mind is fickle. Making games it not a competition, even when it is you shouldn’t treat it like it is. Be an industrialist, plan for your game to be successful, but do not prematurely do so. Do not start your game with the intention of getting rich, but consider the potential this game might have on your future success, let that motivate you.
Conclusion
The solution, like all things in life, is balance. Through understanding what can go wrong you can change your mental approach to not be as disappointed, not quit as easily, not lose sight of what’s important. Take breaks often, and don’t overwork yourself. Worth noting, comparison is the thief of joy, if you compare yourself to others and their work you may become very unmotivated to continue.