Before Starting – Motivation and momentum

Before beginning, we need to address two key things: motivation and momentum.

Motivation is all about believing that you can do this. I’m not a professional programmer. The only time I took a formal course on programming was in high school. Who am I to try and make a real video game? The thing is, technology has come a long way. The tools we can use – like Unity – solve so many underlying problems, leaving you free to solve the more interesting ones. In all the years I’ve been fooling around, I have yet to come across a programming problem I wasn’t able to eventually solve – albeit I’m sure quite inefficiently. If making a game is something you really want to do, trust in yourself that you can do this if you persevere.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to scrap what you have and start over. I felt really bad about doing this over and over until I discovered that not only is this ok, it’s fairly normal. Unless you’re really far along in your project, it won’t take nearly as long as you think to scrap a project with a bad foundation and replace it with one with a better one.

Momentum is about making time to consistently work on your game. One of my projects in the past died because I didn’t touch it for several months. When I returned, I couldn’t recall why I had done some things the way I had and what I was wanting to accomplish next. Even if it’s something little, try to contribute to your game at least a few times a week.