The Art of Making Video Games

Making games is really tedious in a couple of ways. One thing that I have learned is that whether you work on a team or work alone your game will always be horrible in the making. Working alone means you need to be proficient in all of your game design skills. These skill include programming, making art, designing levels, and animating. If you work with a team and have people that have expertise in their own skills, then it is a matter of cooperation and worrying whether or not your team members will follow through for the benefit of the group or laze around browsing Reddit. Regardless, making games can be really fun and really frustrating.
I find that a major frustration in game design is coding and trying to make sure that the computer does what you want it to do. Coding is like telling someone who is completely mindless how to make a PB and J sandwich. You have to Say every little thing to make sure that the process is complete. For example, to make a PB and J, you would have to say something like this:
1.) Use your hand to twist the bread tie off of the bag.
2.) Open the bag from the side where you removed the tie.
3.) Pull out a slice of bread.
Look at that 3 lines of code just to tell you how to get a single piece of bread from the bag, and that is assuming that you have the bread bag in your hand when you start. Another frustrating thing about coding is that when coding, you have to act like you are talking to that friend who is a grammar Nazi and pretends to not know what you are saying unless you say it right. You have to remember spelling and to add endings to your lines of code.

The next frustration about game design is the art and animation. You can do something two dimensional, or make it three dimensional. if it is three dimensional, then you have to try to make complex three dimensional shapes from basic cubes, pyramids, and spheres. You then have to texture your work and ensure that the textures are mapped properly. You then must animate your characters and vehicles. In order to do this you must rig your model and map the influence of it's joints.

If you make two dimensional art, then you must keep in mind that pixel placement is important and when animating you must deal with that for hours. Even having proper tools for the job takes a lot of effort and commitment.


Yes games look really bad and gross when they are being made. but remember the final product will be remastered to not look bad. Despite the process being tedious and infuriating, it can also be a very fun and rewarding experience.