I’ve decided to address the topic of making video games and how hard it is to actually do it, because I often hear comments suggesting people don’t understand how hard it is to make them, they don’t understand the difficulties in making one. They have the concept that you somehow magically think of what you want to happen, drag and drop a few things, and it’s done, you have an awesome video game. Not true.
I’ve seen quite a few posts, for example the infamous, “I have no clue how to do anything, but I’m going to make an MMORPG”, posts that all of us regular visitors and members of the forum know about. I’ve also seen posts like “im a newbbb, i don now wut 2 do, som1 HELP plzzzzz”, as most of us have, often by people who have no idea what it actually takes to make a video game, and expect to sit down create it easily, and within a day or two, no problem. This is why I’m making this post, of course the large majority of us, being actual game developers ourselves, obviously know what it takes to make a game, so this obviously isn’t aimed toward you, but rather those who post the kind of threads I’ve mentioned
.
Why would it take video game companies with teams of 30+ people 2-3 years to produce a video game, all they have to do is click a few places, type a few words? Just for some credibility as to making this thread, although I’m not near as good a programmer as 90% of the people on here, I know what it takes, and I’ve made quite a few projects, mostly small ones myself, as well as my main one, “Pirates of Port Royale”(http://www.popr.gwgaming.net/ to prove I’m not just making this up). I spend most of my free time playing video games, thinking how they could be better, or creating them. Now that I’m fed up with some clueless people coming in, having no knowledge of what it takes to make one, I’ve decided to address the topic. So, why IS it so hard to make a video game? First of all, there are steps, lots of steps, lots and lots of steps, and it all starts with designing.
WARNING: Reading past this point, unless you have no clue about what it takes to make a video game, or are a complete newbie to making them, may cause extreme boredom and may possibly be sleep inducing. I am not liable for any injuries, mental or physical, or time-wastage that may occur while reading these pages. (j/k 
)
Designing is a crucial part of making video games, if you start a game without design, there’s probably a 95% chance it wont turn out either making since, the way you wanted it to, or you wont even finish the game. Game producers have to know what they want, not just the type of game, the title, the general idea, but every detail down to what kind of details you want on an NPC’s gun. Down to every little screen, every little nook and cranny in a level/world, every little texture on every little detail. I know I spent about 6 months designing my game, and I’m still designing it. And designing is only the beginning.
Now I’m not sure in what exact order professional companies do it, they probably do it all at the same time, actually. The “it” I’m talking about is modeling, texturing, programming, boning and animating, sound engineering, debugging and more. I could go into incredible detail about why each of these things takes so long, but I’ll just cover the basics.
First of all, programming, it probably takes the longest and one of the more difficult tasks of those. To program, its almost like learning another language, not a simple task. You try learning the thousands of commands there are, and then actually putting them to use, grouping them into functions, making them work together. Imagine writing a thousand page paper in a different language, which is practically what they’re doing. A professional video game is normally hundreds of THOUSANDS of lines. Here’s some example C++ code:
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
void odd (int a);
void even (int a);
int main ()
{
int i;
do {
cout << "Type a number: (0 to exit) ";
cin >> i;
odd (i);
} while (i!=0);
return 0;
}
void odd (int a)
{
if ((a%2)!=0) cout << "Number is odd.\n";
else even (a);
}
void even (int a)
{
if ((a%2)==0) cout << "Number is even.\n";
else odd (a);
}
Not the most difficult thing in the world, but try memorizing all the commands then making something as big as something like “The Movies” or “Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” out of it. I could go into detail about how every miniscule thing must be programmed, and give a ton of examples, and if you want me to, just ask, I’ll be happy to, but I don’t want to bore you to death.
Next we’ll talk about modeling, also a difficult task. Imagine having to individually move the points of 1000’s of triangles to make something recognizable, namely a character, or an object. Now think of not only doing this once but hundreds, thousands of times. Not so easy sounding is it? It isn’t, just go out and try a free trial for a 3D modeler like Truespace, see for yourself.
Not only do you have to make these models, you have to bone and animate them, as in, make them move. I’m not exactly sure how this process works, because I’ve never tried it, but I have an idea. You have to create, using a special program, each limb, each joint you want to move, place it within the model, and then animate them by moving these bones almost frame by frame. After this you call the animation to play in the game at the right times with programming.
Texturing…unless you want everything in the game to be white, textures are important, and it’s difficult to get realistic, good ones. They can be made from pictures, or a photo editor like Photoshop. No big deal right? All you have to do is take pictures. Only a few thousand of them, and they have to be good, fine tuned, often to where there’s no “seam” in them, where if they are repeated on a surface, you won’t notice.
Then there’s sound engineering, where hundreds of sounds are recorded, combined, and altered to get them just right, the perfect length, the perfect volume, the perfect tone, for the game.
Lastly, but not least, there’s debugging, as in if a programmer types a wrong key, someone has to scan through the hundreds of thousands of lines of code to find it, as in, the program does something weird, like makes you jump at some point, so someone has to find out where that is and fix it.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to discourage you to make games, I’m just giving you a reality check, and telling you to ask yourself, “Do I really want to get involved with the long, multi-month, or year, process of making a video game? Will it be a waste of time?” Now that I’ve made making video games seem like the most boring thing that you will ever experience, let me tell you the upside of it, why I love it.
In making a video game, you are telling a story, you are creating a world, the closest thing to an alternate reality. Video games have the power to get us closer than ever before to jumping into movies, jumping back in time, jumping into others shoes. Things that were before thought of impossible are now possible, and it’s all thanks to video games. You have the power to create hours of entertainment, make the impossible happen, create a world, an alternate universe, to tell a story, all at the power of your fingertips. That’s why I make video games; it’s not so much about the process, which actually isn’t as boring as it sounds, but more the experience, and mostly…the result.
Pirates of Port Royale:
http://www.popr.gwgaming.net
Live the life of a citizen from the 17th century. Anything from being an infamous pirate to a lowly blacksmith.
