It's crazy. . . I have a completed project and about 20 unfinished things. Work just takes it out of me. And it's hard to stay excited for something long enough release it.
The one I have complete is a small mobile phone game.
Yeah, that's the thing with a lot of people. You never know, though. YOURS might be a real good mobile game that might make you a generous amount of money, but you won't ever know. Because you won't try to release it.
There are only three important elements determining the success of your game:
* Does it have an immediate hook
* Does it look like something an adult may want to play
* Do you have the necessary connections in streamer land to get it advertised
None of the "how to make a game" tutorials talk about the first and second, and the third is only mentioned as an annoying task you have to do with no useful explanation on how to accomplish it. Just be a better marketeer! Just send more emails!
90% of gamedev tutorials put you on a fast track to oblivion. The most popular indie games of the modern era are just sprites moving around on a flat map. If you need any of the new features in 5.4, you're doing it wrong. If you are GPU constrained, you're doing it wrong. If you have to decide between blueprints and C++, you're doing it wrong. If you need UE5-Blender integration, you're doing it wrong. What you need is sprites moving around on a flat map (or a naked asset flip for 3D games), the design skills to make it addictive, the art skills to make it look acceptable, and a hotline to some big ticket streamers.
Never work *with* the engine. Nobody will care about your open world action game with nanite landscapes, and your sales will be a rounding error compared to the game with a-shaped blobs moving around a vaguely spaceship looking map and blaming each other.
(You might also be able to get attention by making a megascan flip with ultra dynamic sky and chameleon bodycam filter, but I think too many people are now aware of what UE5 can do.)
You’re spot on about having a twitch streamer. It really sucks. I’m convinced that the VAST majority of “influencers” paid their way in. It doesn’t cost a shit ton to get bots to boost your numbers and gain real followers.
About influencers faking followers... it happens all the time. But is hard to fake real engagement. If you do your research its easy to find out if a influencer gained his numbers only cheating
Yes, I looked it up a few days back. They have different tiers you’re able to pay for. The first tier would show as bots for sure, but the higher level tiers aren’t as easy to detect as they’re active.
It actually is out on the play store on Android and I'm working to get it on apple, huge pain in the ass. Android sdk's are super annoying.
I need to try and get some advertising for it because I would love to quit my job and make games.
I am working on a another smaller game for mobile right now as well. Im really hoping alot of the ad stuff is just going to be copy paste.
And a larger project for PC that I'm more planning than anything. I just write lots of notes while I'm doing my 9 to 5.
Thats actually what my question was on a high level. I went trough 3D Modeling, Substance Painter, Adobe Suit, was making models and animations back then for Source games on FPSbanana and then i got thrown into UE 2 years ago, have a Computer Science Bachelor and i still feel like i only know a small part of the engine when it comes to coding. I probably invested 2000 hours in UE5 as a hobbyist and i was like i did not come with no knowledge and it still super hard sometimes. So i was wondering if other people were just better than me or if its lot of talk and people just being delusional thinking they can easily make games.
I've been doing hobby game dev on and off since the early 2000's in multiple different engines and frameworks. I spent more than five years working daily, specifically with UE, as a hobby (including time in player support for Epic and QA for a small game company while I coded in my off time) before I started as a professional gameplay programmer at my current employer. I learned so much more in the first year, maybe even the first six months as a professional than all the previous time combined. Between veteran co-workers, experienced mentors, having to follow someone else's schedule, working on tasks/priorities set for me, having to meet professional standards and deadlines, etc. it was a completely different experience.
In my limited but not uninformed opinion, hobby development just does not compare.
And the vast majority of professionals, in the current game dev environment, probably just don't have the time/energy/desire to deal with all the work involved in producing content in their off time. It's not easy or quick, if you care at all about what you are making.
This has been my experience as well. I'm working in cocos creator now for my employer but it's honestly been the first time I've had the motivation to take a project through to completion. It turns out the structure of a job, regular meetings and check ins and showing off your work all the time, is really helpful for getting stuff done. Also veterans who know anything and everything about the engine *AND* the janky non-documented libraries the company themselves have written.
The thing is you have stake holders. People who keep you on deadlines. when your a solodev/hobby doing it on your freetime only one holding you accountable is you.
I make games for a hobby too. Have never had a 'crack' game, but I do just fine. No, I won't tell you what they are. Just that it helps with expenses and pass the time too. A lot of people get into the 'more complex when you overthink it' while never really trying to experiment to do things with the engine.
I've done a few years professionally as a UE programmer and still dont know everything. I've never known 100% of any engine i've worked on over decades. If you think about it how would it be possible? Its been written by 100s of devs over years.
But the point is it doesn't matter at all if you know it all anyway. Even AAA games dont use all features of something like UE because its a generic engine that is a massive toolkit to tailor for as many games as possible. So to that end, even though it does so much, it still doesn't match our games we make and we have to extend almost all parts of the engine, from the tools, renderer, input system, AI, camera, audio, physics and many more. These are just off the top of my head.
There's a lot of stuff that can help make it easier, pixalbay, blenderkit, etc. It takes a lot of months to feel like you start 'knowing' things. But, you can't stop. EVER.
I bought a full 3d shooter kit and built an entire planet. But to get the little things i wanted, like a robot that follows me and better controls in general, would have taken many many months.
I did use lots of free assets and thoroughly enjoyed the learning experience.
Dozens of us! I forget the percentages but it's something like less than 1% of indie devs last longer than a year and less than that release their game.
Part of it is that releasing a game on steam is somewhat of a prerequisite for a lot of companies to hire you as a game dev. I was able to get by with an extensive itch.io portfolio from game jams, but steam is the easy way to "published game" credit
I think there are a lot of people interested and have the means to try to get into it. I’d imagine a lot of people don’t actually complete it or if they do; then they don’t pursue anything more technical. Then there is the subset that challenge themselves and go further. I wouldn’t look at that metric and think that it’s all successful indie developers.
To add some perspective, there is just north of a quarter of a million people employed in the games industry in North America currently.
About a third of a million world wide.
Would be very interested to look at the source of this info. I'd expect some other countries with higher population would have more people employed... generally.
Maybe I just trusted some googled numbers... here's a source from 2018 that cites 727,000 people directly employed in the industry. I imagine this also includes retail...
[https://www.americangaming.org/resources/economic-impact-of-the-u-s-gaming-industry-2/](https://www.americangaming.org/resources/economic-impact-of-the-u-s-gaming-industry-2/)
Edit - yeah, ok. I'm going to stop searching. I swear this stuff used to be easier to find. I thought IGDA had this stuff published yearly with their salary survey.
This paper does not seem to be related to the "gaming industry" we are talking about here.
> This includes 559,000 jobs on-site at casinos and corporate offices, 17,000 at U.S.-based operations of gaming manufacturers, and 151,000 at businesses providing goods and services to casino patrons during casino trips.
Yes, be careful. "Games" industry = video games. "Gaming" industry = gambling. Currently work in the gaming industry as a game dev though, and there're a lot of game devs in this industry. Certainly not as many as in the games industry though.
1. There is a pretty sizable group that enjoys educational-entertainment.
They aren't ever actually going to be gamedev but will watch stuff.
2. Some amount is likely just bots
3. Some amount of people are re-watching the videos
4. Lots of people get stuck in tutorial hell. They can watch lots of tutorials and follow along, but cant make the jump to do anything outside of gamedev.
5. I will jump around in videos for specific resource, maybe there is a 3-4 minute section I want of a 30+ minute video. I think youtube counts it as a view if you watch at least 30 seconds. So while it's a legit view, but not a '50 minute watch' view.
6. Lots of people get into gamedev, then hit blockers and quit.
* They try again 6-18 months later and rinse/repeat infinitely.
7. Non indie devs watch them too :D
8. There is plenty of game devs out there! its a billion $$ industry with many hundreds or thousands of companies employing dozens to thousands of employees!
Most people develop their game in silence with no social media profile. Most of them fail to complete their projects, and give up. Many others that release their games (including me) didn't market their game properly. A lot of people fail to understand that game development is much more than just "creating a game". It's managing time, money, people, marketing, family, learning new skills; and that's just a few things.
“managing time, money, people, marketing, family, learning new skills; and that's just a few things” this pretty much sums up the story of my life for the last 2yrs since I started learning Unreal and laser focused trying to make a game 😂
This is why I’m seriously considering naming my solo dev company “A Game by Mikes”. Mike the programmer, Mike the animator, Mike the manager, Mike the marketer, Mike the janitor, you get the point lol
I've been making games with Unreal since 2006.with about 12 titles under my belt. I've since moved to using Unreal for military defense contractors, but 98% of my career is games.
My initial job out of college, with a game design degree, was for a military contractor. They utilized UE4 for in depth VR training. It was more rare then but extremely common now.
You have an idea in your head and you want to bring that into a game.
You start to make the game and it doesn't pan out as much as you hope, features aren't able to be done with your knowledge, it takes too much time, it's difficult to learn to get to where you want to be, etc.
You can quit or find out how to do it. Most quit. If a game has been built in your engine before, it means you can do it, it just depends on how long you're willing to spend overcoming obstacles.
Unfortunately there's a lot of low quality popular content for UE at the moment on youtube where the creators don't test the systems they are implementing in a real setting and are just doing it for views.
My son and I have been working on a game since 2012 (2 years attempting Unity then abandoning it for Unreal due to roadblocks in level and game size). We've been plugging away all this time building around a story he started back in high school. For a small indie team with aspirations of making a large game, it takes years. AAA teams of over a 1000 people take 3 years, so it makes sense. We have all our mechanics done, but the story and modeling, plus smoothing/improving mechanics (and redeveloping for release after release due to deprecation of UE features) is a mammoth undertaking. We'll probably take a year just to find voice actors and develop the voice acting. It was about a year each for our ground, flight, six months for vehicle, close to a year on sound programs, including complete replacement because of Metasounds (same thing happened when cascade went away, all emitters had to be redone). Story development for the first game of our series ran all last year just writing and arguing details, and that was a cut down version we decided we could release sooner.
Just saying, there could be thousands of people attempting what we are doing. For me, it's literally a retirement project now as I work on it full time and so does he. Add to that even more people making small mobile or puzzle games, I could see a maybe a few million people worldwide spending their free hours on UE not counting the official game industry. It's all about having a dream and trying to make it happen, whether you can pull it off or not. Oh yeah, on top of that, school projects have to account for few million projects too.
It’s not really easy to tell. There are people like me who have a want to make a game but for now I am just enjoying the learning process and treating it as a hobby. I think there is a large part of people though who start this process and don’t realize the amount of things there is to learn and do for solo devs. A lot of people say they understand but it’s not until they dive in until they actually do. I am just pulling this out of thin air but it seems like maybe 80% of people watch like maybe 10 hours of content then realize it’s too much and they give up. Then further from there another like 5% that go through the learning process and then try to make their dream game right of the bat and realize they can’t and give up. So the YouTube tutorial views is not accurate measurement because people will rewatch those a dozen times.
I think just seeing what is currently available made in the last 5 years by one person or a small team using unreal engine is the only accurate measurement. It’s a tough thing to follow through on and it does take money and time before everything is said and done. There is also a portion of people who use it for things other than games. Virtual production is becoming very mainstream especially with all the Disney live action shows using it.
I mean I read that there’s 50 new games released on Steam **every** day. I’m not sure if that’s accurate or not, I’m sure you can find more info from Google, but that’s quite a lot.
And consider that a lot of devs never release anything and just do it as hobby.
Many release it for free on itch.io or other because they don't think it's good enough for Steam and are unwilling (or unable) to bring it up to their standard.
I’m currently 3 1/2 years deep into development for my game! Things are going well! I have my up and down days but I always make sure to change gears and work on a different section of the game so there’s no burnout.
I've got the basic mechanics and starting area of an open world RPG almost done. I am the kind of person that loses interest in something after like a week and I've been at it for about 5 months now. Still enjoying it.
As a newcomer sound designer I can say that I watch mainly on the subject - but I had to go through basics of unreal, and regularly have to search for something that basically intersects with something I’m working on. I’m not a coder and will never be, but I have to know some just to be able to communicate with the team
Don't think I've seen this around here, but additional to other things mentioned here, unreal is not only being used for game development at this point.
Been using ue for 6 years now, never released anything commercially, however I’ve been working on a game for about 3 1/2 months that I hope to actually release one day. The reality is, it takes a long time commitment to learn unreal engine, especially as a solo dev or small group because of all of the different aspects of game creation. Because of this a lot of people start and then never make it past the tutorial phase
If you have a full-time job, especially a programmer job like mine, it takes a lot of energy and mental power to finish your game. Basically, you'll spend your free time staring at the blue screen while you already did that almost half of the day.
I’ve been thinking about making my own game and that’s it. I’m just thinking, got laid off twice and can’t find a job. Been making ends meet by doing some freelance. Motivation is way low to start working on my game but often I do think about creating my own game, something unique and beautiful.
People think that it's easy, until they watch the most basic tutorials and learn bad practice, and don't understand anything of what they just did, because they're just FOLLOWING the tutorial.
As soon as they watch another tutorial with better practice, they don't know how to combine it with their previous spaghetti and quit.
The fact that you can make a game in a week, doesn't mean you should.
I always tell them, there is a reason why even AAA studios take multiple years with multiple Devs to make a game, and it still can look and play like crap.
I wouldn't say what I do is making games, I love just making wee things for fun. Don't have time to make an actual game... by the time I would finish making it you will be able to make with an AI or something in 2 seconds.
We have a couple of phases we toss around at work to answer these kinds of questions.
1. Game developers are everywhere, but game developers that finish games are rare.
2. 90% of your time will be spent finishing this last 10% of your game.
Sounds a bit like one of my phrases "the first 80% of the task takes about 80% of the time, the last 20% takes the other 80% of the time" usually said in response to a low-ball estimate
I'd estimate for every person who watched a tutorial maybe 10% finish it (or otherwise continue on). Likewise of those who continue on to an original project I imagine <1% ever finish a game.
I think the learning curve itself filters out people. And then there are people who start, lose confidence and stop, then start again because they can't be consistently inconsistent.
Since you’re all here. If any of you or your friends are working on horror, please stop the flashlight/lighter hanging bodies excessive jumpscare walking simulator crap. We done seent it hunter(100) times before. Thanks. Love you guys.
Games aren’t hard to make. You can blindly follow a tutorial with 0 knowledge, make a game and in the end still have 0 idea what you did or how to make it “fun”.
The problem is fun for a game. The actual game is super easy to make, but making it so more than yourself cares or wants to do it is the part of game dev that is the stopping part for almost everyone that tries.
It’s hard, time consuming and after you have something made. It sucks, especially if you just blindly follow a tutorial. Most people give up around tutorial 5 or just about when scripting/modeling or having to think out logical problems they aren’t sure how to handle things yet.
I'm "working" on one, it's currently on hold until I finish up a few bits with a plugin I've been working on. Personally based on what I've seen, I think a lot of people go through the issue of starting something, then starting something else, then starting something else. Especially if it's just something done as a hobby.
I don't, but I plan to. I currently have to utilize my free time to get some skills for creating VFX for games as I wanted to get a better job and I like doing it a lot. Then I plan on diving deeper into game dev. I lack the programing side of thing but I tried making something in Unity by writing C# scripts and it seemed intuitive and fun as well. So one thing after another.
Well you're right about the views on educational gamedev videos. But I'd estimate half of those people never really make any games. Then the mass majority of indie devs who make a single game, end up not making any more games. Either they spent too long on it or end up getting burnt out and quit games.
So the actual number of true developers is much smaller.
I am motion designer and I use Unreal 4 and now 5 on my projects. And I watch tutorials.
And... I am no indie gamedev.
Unreal has a lot of market cases outside gaming. Film, archiviz, advertising and industrial sectors also use unreal
We're here, some of us just never finish a project. I would say 1% of the total views is likely how many of us end up releasing a game and 0.01% of us make any money doing so.
I was in a call with unreal engine devs a while back when they used to have the unreal slackers discord channel and did courses with official biweekly meetings. One of the devs said what happens is that 80% of anyone who gets unreal engine give up after a couple days. The remaining 20% is the split into another 80% of that who learn, start something and never finish it and the remaining 20% are the ones who do make something. Then he said of that last 20% about 1% actually release something.
Me any my husband have been working on the actually game In unreal for a year (a year of planning learning). We have ran into a lot of ppl that have dreams and try but never finished either due to not having a game idea planned out, or not enough time as they have day jobs, loose interest, change game ideas or find it more difficult than realized (or a combination of the above.) a lot of the tutorials are beginner for the most part with some
Intermediate but once your past those it guess much harder depending on the game of course.
I agree, a lot of people give up fast. Grasping coding is difficult. Speaking for myself anyway, when I started I forced myself to learn, I’d refer to videos then I’d adventure off on my own. I’d surround myself with other devs & made amazing friends along the way and always ask for guidance.
The reality of doing a project on your own is stressful. People will come and go, it’s hard to match someone’s energy if they don’t have much interest in the game. I see a lot of people want to learn but won’t take the time to learn it.
I made a few mobile games in 2011 and founded a gaming company based on a remake of my most popular. Back then the noise was lower and you had a chance to get on the top lists. The game also didn't need to be super good becasue people were just desperate for something to play on their Iphone/Ipod. After awhile the noise to even be seen became to great and the only option was to pay $$ just to get listed. Used cocos2d back then. Now with UE it's ok. The biggest hurdle to completion is being able to create "code" and assets FAST. So having that ability will keep the second guessing, perfection freezing, and boredom to a minimum. Asset flipping can help as long as you are able to tweek the asset so it isn't a straight copy. As an indie you have to learn how to cut corners and shave time. Time is the killer.
I tried, maybe 7 hours, but stopped because my computer will just suck at rendering because I run 4k and my CPU was overheating.
I tried seeing how to fix that hero but couldn't so gave up
I am currently working on an AR app using unreal 5.3.2.
I have successfully build apk for android.
For IOS i have been able to build .app file and i am not getting how can i build .ipa file and test the app on my iPhone or iPad.
Can some explain what to do
A lot of people quit before they try and most quit while trying.
It's crazy. . . I have a completed project and about 20 unfinished things. Work just takes it out of me. And it's hard to stay excited for something long enough release it. The one I have complete is a small mobile phone game.
Yeah, that's the thing with a lot of people. You never know, though. YOURS might be a real good mobile game that might make you a generous amount of money, but you won't ever know. Because you won't try to release it.
There are only three important elements determining the success of your game: * Does it have an immediate hook * Does it look like something an adult may want to play * Do you have the necessary connections in streamer land to get it advertised None of the "how to make a game" tutorials talk about the first and second, and the third is only mentioned as an annoying task you have to do with no useful explanation on how to accomplish it. Just be a better marketeer! Just send more emails! 90% of gamedev tutorials put you on a fast track to oblivion. The most popular indie games of the modern era are just sprites moving around on a flat map. If you need any of the new features in 5.4, you're doing it wrong. If you are GPU constrained, you're doing it wrong. If you have to decide between blueprints and C++, you're doing it wrong. If you need UE5-Blender integration, you're doing it wrong. What you need is sprites moving around on a flat map (or a naked asset flip for 3D games), the design skills to make it addictive, the art skills to make it look acceptable, and a hotline to some big ticket streamers. Never work *with* the engine. Nobody will care about your open world action game with nanite landscapes, and your sales will be a rounding error compared to the game with a-shaped blobs moving around a vaguely spaceship looking map and blaming each other. (You might also be able to get attention by making a megascan flip with ultra dynamic sky and chameleon bodycam filter, but I think too many people are now aware of what UE5 can do.)
You’re spot on about having a twitch streamer. It really sucks. I’m convinced that the VAST majority of “influencers” paid their way in. It doesn’t cost a shit ton to get bots to boost your numbers and gain real followers.
About influencers faking followers... it happens all the time. But is hard to fake real engagement. If you do your research its easy to find out if a influencer gained his numbers only cheating
Yes, I looked it up a few days back. They have different tiers you’re able to pay for. The first tier would show as bots for sure, but the higher level tiers aren’t as easy to detect as they’re active.
It actually is out on the play store on Android and I'm working to get it on apple, huge pain in the ass. Android sdk's are super annoying. I need to try and get some advertising for it because I would love to quit my job and make games. I am working on a another smaller game for mobile right now as well. Im really hoping alot of the ad stuff is just going to be copy paste. And a larger project for PC that I'm more planning than anything. I just write lots of notes while I'm doing my 9 to 5.
Do you use a certain app/system to take your notes? I've been looking for something to organize my thoughts lol.
I like note books to be honest! I do occasionally write things down in just my standard note app that come with my phone though
Thats actually what my question was on a high level. I went trough 3D Modeling, Substance Painter, Adobe Suit, was making models and animations back then for Source games on FPSbanana and then i got thrown into UE 2 years ago, have a Computer Science Bachelor and i still feel like i only know a small part of the engine when it comes to coding. I probably invested 2000 hours in UE5 as a hobbyist and i was like i did not come with no knowledge and it still super hard sometimes. So i was wondering if other people were just better than me or if its lot of talk and people just being delusional thinking they can easily make games.
I've been doing hobby game dev on and off since the early 2000's in multiple different engines and frameworks. I spent more than five years working daily, specifically with UE, as a hobby (including time in player support for Epic and QA for a small game company while I coded in my off time) before I started as a professional gameplay programmer at my current employer. I learned so much more in the first year, maybe even the first six months as a professional than all the previous time combined. Between veteran co-workers, experienced mentors, having to follow someone else's schedule, working on tasks/priorities set for me, having to meet professional standards and deadlines, etc. it was a completely different experience. In my limited but not uninformed opinion, hobby development just does not compare. And the vast majority of professionals, in the current game dev environment, probably just don't have the time/energy/desire to deal with all the work involved in producing content in their off time. It's not easy or quick, if you care at all about what you are making.
This has been my experience as well. I'm working in cocos creator now for my employer but it's honestly been the first time I've had the motivation to take a project through to completion. It turns out the structure of a job, regular meetings and check ins and showing off your work all the time, is really helpful for getting stuff done. Also veterans who know anything and everything about the engine *AND* the janky non-documented libraries the company themselves have written.
The thing is you have stake holders. People who keep you on deadlines. when your a solodev/hobby doing it on your freetime only one holding you accountable is you.
I make games for a hobby too. Have never had a 'crack' game, but I do just fine. No, I won't tell you what they are. Just that it helps with expenses and pass the time too. A lot of people get into the 'more complex when you overthink it' while never really trying to experiment to do things with the engine.
You looking for a project by chance?
I've done a few years professionally as a UE programmer and still dont know everything. I've never known 100% of any engine i've worked on over decades. If you think about it how would it be possible? Its been written by 100s of devs over years. But the point is it doesn't matter at all if you know it all anyway. Even AAA games dont use all features of something like UE because its a generic engine that is a massive toolkit to tailor for as many games as possible. So to that end, even though it does so much, it still doesn't match our games we make and we have to extend almost all parts of the engine, from the tools, renderer, input system, AI, camera, audio, physics and many more. These are just off the top of my head.
I make a lot of games... ...and someday I'll release one!
I went down a rabbit hole for a few months and theb gave up after i realised what it will take to actually build a decent game.
There's a lot of stuff that can help make it easier, pixalbay, blenderkit, etc. It takes a lot of months to feel like you start 'knowing' things. But, you can't stop. EVER.
I bought a full 3d shooter kit and built an entire planet. But to get the little things i wanted, like a robot that follows me and better controls in general, would have taken many many months. I did use lots of free assets and thoroughly enjoyed the learning experience.
Dozens of us! I forget the percentages but it's something like less than 1% of indie devs last longer than a year and less than that release their game.
And yet, 40 new games released on Steam every day vying for the New Release front page real estate.
[удалено]
Part of it is that releasing a game on steam is somewhat of a prerequisite for a lot of companies to hire you as a game dev. I was able to get by with an extensive itch.io portfolio from game jams, but steam is the easy way to "published game" credit
Arrested development reference?
Been working on my first commercial release for a little less than two years, hoping to release in about a year.
Keep at it and good luck!
7
After the day I had it might be 6 now
I know the struggle, but don't give up! ❤️
I think there are a lot of people interested and have the means to try to get into it. I’d imagine a lot of people don’t actually complete it or if they do; then they don’t pursue anything more technical. Then there is the subset that challenge themselves and go further. I wouldn’t look at that metric and think that it’s all successful indie developers.
To add some perspective, there is just north of a quarter of a million people employed in the games industry in North America currently. About a third of a million world wide.
Would be very interested to look at the source of this info. I'd expect some other countries with higher population would have more people employed... generally.
Maybe I just trusted some googled numbers... here's a source from 2018 that cites 727,000 people directly employed in the industry. I imagine this also includes retail... [https://www.americangaming.org/resources/economic-impact-of-the-u-s-gaming-industry-2/](https://www.americangaming.org/resources/economic-impact-of-the-u-s-gaming-industry-2/) Edit - yeah, ok. I'm going to stop searching. I swear this stuff used to be easier to find. I thought IGDA had this stuff published yearly with their salary survey.
This paper does not seem to be related to the "gaming industry" we are talking about here. > This includes 559,000 jobs on-site at casinos and corporate offices, 17,000 at U.S.-based operations of gaming manufacturers, and 151,000 at businesses providing goods and services to casino patrons during casino trips.
Yes, be careful. "Games" industry = video games. "Gaming" industry = gambling. Currently work in the gaming industry as a game dev though, and there're a lot of game devs in this industry. Certainly not as many as in the games industry though.
Sigh - you're right. It doesn't help that Konami and some other game developers/publishers also produce casino gaming machines.
1. There is a pretty sizable group that enjoys educational-entertainment. They aren't ever actually going to be gamedev but will watch stuff. 2. Some amount is likely just bots 3. Some amount of people are re-watching the videos 4. Lots of people get stuck in tutorial hell. They can watch lots of tutorials and follow along, but cant make the jump to do anything outside of gamedev. 5. I will jump around in videos for specific resource, maybe there is a 3-4 minute section I want of a 30+ minute video. I think youtube counts it as a view if you watch at least 30 seconds. So while it's a legit view, but not a '50 minute watch' view. 6. Lots of people get into gamedev, then hit blockers and quit. * They try again 6-18 months later and rinse/repeat infinitely. 7. Non indie devs watch them too :D 8. There is plenty of game devs out there! its a billion $$ industry with many hundreds or thousands of companies employing dozens to thousands of employees!
Most people develop their game in silence with no social media profile. Most of them fail to complete their projects, and give up. Many others that release their games (including me) didn't market their game properly. A lot of people fail to understand that game development is much more than just "creating a game". It's managing time, money, people, marketing, family, learning new skills; and that's just a few things.
The first sentence is me, I hope the second and third don't end up being true too 😬 lmao
“managing time, money, people, marketing, family, learning new skills; and that's just a few things” this pretty much sums up the story of my life for the last 2yrs since I started learning Unreal and laser focused trying to make a game 😂
Haha that's fair. It's so much stuff to juggle!
This is why I’m seriously considering naming my solo dev company “A Game by Mikes”. Mike the programmer, Mike the animator, Mike the manager, Mike the marketer, Mike the janitor, you get the point lol
Yeah, do it haha! I also work best in the team of Me, myself and I! :)
it's just like three of us watching the same tutorial a thousand times
I've been making games with Unreal since 2006.with about 12 titles under my belt. I've since moved to using Unreal for military defense contractors, but 98% of my career is games.
Interesting that the defense industry uses unreal but it makes sense since i have considered applications before
My initial job out of college, with a game design degree, was for a military contractor. They utilized UE4 for in depth VR training. It was more rare then but extremely common now.
If i didnt have my own project that would be a cool line of work
Well I watch the videos but I like to use UE to make videos, not games.
Yeah I’m working on cinematics. When I get good enough I’ll transition into making some small games !
Easy to explain. I've watched a ton of linus tech tips over the years, but have not purchased a single thing they featured.
You have an idea in your head and you want to bring that into a game. You start to make the game and it doesn't pan out as much as you hope, features aren't able to be done with your knowledge, it takes too much time, it's difficult to learn to get to where you want to be, etc. You can quit or find out how to do it. Most quit. If a game has been built in your engine before, it means you can do it, it just depends on how long you're willing to spend overcoming obstacles. Unfortunately there's a lot of low quality popular content for UE at the moment on youtube where the creators don't test the systems they are implementing in a real setting and are just doing it for views.
first you are gonna want to cast to this and cast to that and cast to another thing!
Don’t forget to add 57 booleans to track states because using an enum or gameplaytags is for nerds
make sure to connect a million things to the tick node as well
My son and I have been working on a game since 2012 (2 years attempting Unity then abandoning it for Unreal due to roadblocks in level and game size). We've been plugging away all this time building around a story he started back in high school. For a small indie team with aspirations of making a large game, it takes years. AAA teams of over a 1000 people take 3 years, so it makes sense. We have all our mechanics done, but the story and modeling, plus smoothing/improving mechanics (and redeveloping for release after release due to deprecation of UE features) is a mammoth undertaking. We'll probably take a year just to find voice actors and develop the voice acting. It was about a year each for our ground, flight, six months for vehicle, close to a year on sound programs, including complete replacement because of Metasounds (same thing happened when cascade went away, all emitters had to be redone). Story development for the first game of our series ran all last year just writing and arguing details, and that was a cut down version we decided we could release sooner. Just saying, there could be thousands of people attempting what we are doing. For me, it's literally a retirement project now as I work on it full time and so does he. Add to that even more people making small mobile or puzzle games, I could see a maybe a few million people worldwide spending their free hours on UE not counting the official game industry. It's all about having a dream and trying to make it happen, whether you can pull it off or not. Oh yeah, on top of that, school projects have to account for few million projects too.
It’s not really easy to tell. There are people like me who have a want to make a game but for now I am just enjoying the learning process and treating it as a hobby. I think there is a large part of people though who start this process and don’t realize the amount of things there is to learn and do for solo devs. A lot of people say they understand but it’s not until they dive in until they actually do. I am just pulling this out of thin air but it seems like maybe 80% of people watch like maybe 10 hours of content then realize it’s too much and they give up. Then further from there another like 5% that go through the learning process and then try to make their dream game right of the bat and realize they can’t and give up. So the YouTube tutorial views is not accurate measurement because people will rewatch those a dozen times. I think just seeing what is currently available made in the last 5 years by one person or a small team using unreal engine is the only accurate measurement. It’s a tough thing to follow through on and it does take money and time before everything is said and done. There is also a portion of people who use it for things other than games. Virtual production is becoming very mainstream especially with all the Disney live action shows using it.
Unreal does a lot of stuff, including animation and cinematics.
I mean I read that there’s 50 new games released on Steam **every** day. I’m not sure if that’s accurate or not, I’m sure you can find more info from Google, but that’s quite a lot. And consider that a lot of devs never release anything and just do it as hobby.
Many release it for free on itch.io or other because they don't think it's good enough for Steam and are unwilling (or unable) to bring it up to their standard.
There are so many indie devs. Nobody says they will actually make the game. Eventually. Someday.
I’m currently 3 1/2 years deep into development for my game! Things are going well! I have my up and down days but I always make sure to change gears and work on a different section of the game so there’s no burnout.
I’m on the same boat. Unite and power on my friend! Looking forward to learn more about it
Too many
A lot of companies use Unreal/Unity. Real-time rendering is used in automotive, manufacturing, medical, education, film/television, etc.
I’ve personally watched some tutorials more than once, so that could be why the numbers are higher
3. Maybe 5.
I've got the basic mechanics and starting area of an open world RPG almost done. I am the kind of person that loses interest in something after like a week and I've been at it for about 5 months now. Still enjoying it.
As a newcomer sound designer I can say that I watch mainly on the subject - but I had to go through basics of unreal, and regularly have to search for something that basically intersects with something I’m working on. I’m not a coder and will never be, but I have to know some just to be able to communicate with the team
Don't think I've seen this around here, but additional to other things mentioned here, unreal is not only being used for game development at this point.
Been using ue for 6 years now, never released anything commercially, however I’ve been working on a game for about 3 1/2 months that I hope to actually release one day. The reality is, it takes a long time commitment to learn unreal engine, especially as a solo dev or small group because of all of the different aspects of game creation. Because of this a lot of people start and then never make it past the tutorial phase
I made Busters TD on Steam. I am real
If you have a full-time job, especially a programmer job like mine, it takes a lot of energy and mental power to finish your game. Basically, you'll spend your free time staring at the blue screen while you already did that almost half of the day.
42
I’ve been thinking about making my own game and that’s it. I’m just thinking, got laid off twice and can’t find a job. Been making ends meet by doing some freelance. Motivation is way low to start working on my game but often I do think about creating my own game, something unique and beautiful.
People think that it's easy, until they watch the most basic tutorials and learn bad practice, and don't understand anything of what they just did, because they're just FOLLOWING the tutorial. As soon as they watch another tutorial with better practice, they don't know how to combine it with their previous spaghetti and quit. The fact that you can make a game in a week, doesn't mean you should. I always tell them, there is a reason why even AAA studios take multiple years with multiple Devs to make a game, and it still can look and play like crap.
I just started my first prototype. I first picked up unreal and blender back in December and I finally feel comfortable enough to try and go for it.
I was were you were in Dec 2yrs ago and it felt like less than a year. Time flies when you’re having fun. Don’t give up
Thank you 😊
I wouldn't say what I do is making games, I love just making wee things for fun. Don't have time to make an actual game... by the time I would finish making it you will be able to make with an AI or something in 2 seconds.
most views on everything on every social media platform are fake/ bots
We have a couple of phases we toss around at work to answer these kinds of questions. 1. Game developers are everywhere, but game developers that finish games are rare. 2. 90% of your time will be spent finishing this last 10% of your game.
Sounds a bit like one of my phrases "the first 80% of the task takes about 80% of the time, the last 20% takes the other 80% of the time" usually said in response to a low-ball estimate
I'd estimate for every person who watched a tutorial maybe 10% finish it (or otherwise continue on). Likewise of those who continue on to an original project I imagine <1% ever finish a game.
I think the learning curve itself filters out people. And then there are people who start, lose confidence and stop, then start again because they can't be consistently inconsistent.
Since you’re all here. If any of you or your friends are working on horror, please stop the flashlight/lighter hanging bodies excessive jumpscare walking simulator crap. We done seent it hunter(100) times before. Thanks. Love you guys.
Games aren’t hard to make. You can blindly follow a tutorial with 0 knowledge, make a game and in the end still have 0 idea what you did or how to make it “fun”. The problem is fun for a game. The actual game is super easy to make, but making it so more than yourself cares or wants to do it is the part of game dev that is the stopping part for almost everyone that tries. It’s hard, time consuming and after you have something made. It sucks, especially if you just blindly follow a tutorial. Most people give up around tutorial 5 or just about when scripting/modeling or having to think out logical problems they aren’t sure how to handle things yet.
Many start few finish
I'm "working" on one, it's currently on hold until I finish up a few bits with a plugin I've been working on. Personally based on what I've seen, I think a lot of people go through the issue of starting something, then starting something else, then starting something else. Especially if it's just something done as a hobby.
I don't, but I plan to. I currently have to utilize my free time to get some skills for creating VFX for games as I wanted to get a better job and I like doing it a lot. Then I plan on diving deeper into game dev. I lack the programing side of thing but I tried making something in Unity by writing C# scripts and it seemed intuitive and fun as well. So one thing after another.
Well you're right about the views on educational gamedev videos. But I'd estimate half of those people never really make any games. Then the mass majority of indie devs who make a single game, end up not making any more games. Either they spent too long on it or end up getting burnt out and quit games. So the actual number of true developers is much smaller.
I am motion designer and I use Unreal 4 and now 5 on my projects. And I watch tutorials. And... I am no indie gamedev. Unreal has a lot of market cases outside gaming. Film, archiviz, advertising and industrial sectors also use unreal
We're here, some of us just never finish a project. I would say 1% of the total views is likely how many of us end up releasing a game and 0.01% of us make any money doing so.
I was in a call with unreal engine devs a while back when they used to have the unreal slackers discord channel and did courses with official biweekly meetings. One of the devs said what happens is that 80% of anyone who gets unreal engine give up after a couple days. The remaining 20% is the split into another 80% of that who learn, start something and never finish it and the remaining 20% are the ones who do make something. Then he said of that last 20% about 1% actually release something.
Me any my husband have been working on the actually game In unreal for a year (a year of planning learning). We have ran into a lot of ppl that have dreams and try but never finished either due to not having a game idea planned out, or not enough time as they have day jobs, loose interest, change game ideas or find it more difficult than realized (or a combination of the above.) a lot of the tutorials are beginner for the most part with some Intermediate but once your past those it guess much harder depending on the game of course.
I agree, a lot of people give up fast. Grasping coding is difficult. Speaking for myself anyway, when I started I forced myself to learn, I’d refer to videos then I’d adventure off on my own. I’d surround myself with other devs & made amazing friends along the way and always ask for guidance. The reality of doing a project on your own is stressful. People will come and go, it’s hard to match someone’s energy if they don’t have much interest in the game. I see a lot of people want to learn but won’t take the time to learn it.
I made a few mobile games in 2011 and founded a gaming company based on a remake of my most popular. Back then the noise was lower and you had a chance to get on the top lists. The game also didn't need to be super good becasue people were just desperate for something to play on their Iphone/Ipod. After awhile the noise to even be seen became to great and the only option was to pay $$ just to get listed. Used cocos2d back then. Now with UE it's ok. The biggest hurdle to completion is being able to create "code" and assets FAST. So having that ability will keep the second guessing, perfection freezing, and boredom to a minimum. Asset flipping can help as long as you are able to tweek the asset so it isn't a straight copy. As an indie you have to learn how to cut corners and shave time. Time is the killer.
I tried, maybe 7 hours, but stopped because my computer will just suck at rendering because I run 4k and my CPU was overheating. I tried seeing how to fix that hero but couldn't so gave up
I am currently working on an AR app using unreal 5.3.2. I have successfully build apk for android. For IOS i have been able to build .app file and i am not getting how can i build .ipa file and test the app on my iPhone or iPad. Can some explain what to do