Devs, why do you make games?

thepaperpilot Admin , 1 month ago

I like feeling productive, the sense of accomplishment when it's done, and seeing people enjoy a creation of mine. I think most people also just enjoy feeling creative, knowing that they can bring things into this world from nothing.

I started developing incredibly young. My first game was when I was 10 or so - a text adventure in Java. But I really wanted graphics and didn't know how to do that in Java so I switched to RPG maker XP (I've actually bought most RPG maker versions since then, even though I don't use them very often - very cool that they use JavaScript instead of ruby now!). Eventually I switched to flash to make other kinds of games, which is the first time I learned what classes and instances were! (Lowkey kinda embarrassing to have been programming for a couple years without knowing - the dangers of being self taught!). From there I went back to Java (using lwjgl this time), then to unity in college where I made many game developer friends including my wife, made my own engine called vecs, and now I mainly do web games, typically in profectus. Here and there I've also dabbled with pygame, Godot, and other engines.

Suffice to say, game development has been a primary hobby of mine for my entire life. I think I got started with it because I really enjoyed playing games, sort of looking up to developers, and thus wanted to become one myself. Over time I learned about the industry and decided I did not want to become a professional game developer (although after college I did apply to Id and a few other studios local to DFW), but continued developing on a hobby level. It's just fun I suppose, and it's a creative outlet I think I'm halfway decent at.