No Time To Play

When it comes to starting out with game development, people seem to be divided into three main categories. First, there are the kids who show up on forums with posts along the lines of:

I’m 13 years old, and I have this idea for the next big MMORPG that will topple WoW, but I don’t know any programming or 3D modeling. Where do I start? Would you like to work on it? Help!

Then there are those who will promptly and mercilessly mock the poor kid without offering one word of useful advice. And then there are those who will happily tell you how hard it is to make a MMORPG (hint: it’s really difficult). Or even an apparently simple game. Or just a single encounter. And they’d be right. But that misses the point.

Point is, it’s natural for gamers to want to make their own games. Especially nowadays that the means for doing it are cheap (often free) and information is so accessible. Why, then, are we making it so hard to get started for those who want to try?

In the next paragraphs, I will try to give a few pointers from my own experience. Hopefully you’ll find them useful. But first, a word.

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