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dsgus · 2018-08-22T02:07:52

I don't know if this forum is the right place to post this but anyway... I'm a 20 years old junior software engineering student. I've always wanted to be a game developer and now I go to the uni & the department I've always wanted in order to achieve this goal. Yet, I suck so badly at school and most importantly, I still have almost 0 knowlegde about programming or anything related to my field. Basically all I know is really basic and now half (or mostly) forgotten knowlegde about C and C++ that they taught us in the freshman year, and some SQL from last semester. Since animation & art seemed to require more subjectivity and creativity (though I like to draw and stuff) I decided to end up being a game programmer since it's more straight forward and objective. Programming is the actual game itself and the rest of it is just polish (roughly) and I really adore & see John Carmack as my idol, and the fact that what made id Software's games revolutionary was their programming... are some other reasons why I want to be a programmer. Anyway, eventhough I get the proper education and all, I couldn't be less motivated & more clueless. I'm in a state where I think I wasted all my time to achieve my dreams doing nothing. Rarely when I feel kind of motivated to actually do something I get stuck having no idea what to do since I don't know anything. I try to watch tutorials and I don't understand what I'm doing. I've begun lots and lots of tutorials lately. I watch a couple of episodes and get confused and bored and give up. My last attempt was last week, I decided to start learning C++ all over again and learn it for real so I could move on to work on games. But I got really bored, the beginning parts were things that I already knew but I wanted to still go through them to make sure, then I didn't have enough patience for the rest of it cause I got bored and started to think "this isn't gonna help me". The conclusion is, I'm depressed, unmotivated, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't wanna end up graduating from uni and become a waiter (I've tried working at several jobs during summer vacations, I couldn't stand any of them so I can't even become a waiter). I need guidance from someone that actually cares and will actually help me through, like a wise motivation buddy, I guess, since I don't see any hope in me succeeding anything by myself at this point. I doubt if anyone will even read this tho.

GeneralJist

1,498

August 21, 2018 03:20 AM

To respond, you can either go to the top of the page next to the OP, and click "Reply to this topic" or you can scroll to the bottom of the page, and just start typing, where you see your name. You don't need to quote people, unless you want to. If you go @dsgus and it will get their attention.
mobile games are very different from PC games.From skills to market to production turn around, if your goal is to one day get to AAA PC games, then learning how to make phone games isn't likely to help you in the long run. I
There are many Resources you can find for looking for a team, or starting your own:
1. The Classifieds> Hobby projects: https://www.gamedev.net/forums/forum/29-hobby-project-classifieds/ Section of this site is made for small indie non paid projects, and people looking to just gain experience.
2. https://www.moddb.com/ is the modding hub I use, type in any game, and search for mods. You can also go to the forums, there are many helpful sections, one of which is recruiting and resumes. There is also a jobs tab you can look at,they have everything from modding to indie. the indie hub is here: https://www.indiedb.com/ The same person runs both. I meat him at GDC 2017, he's really nice.
3. There is also Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/ for more serious projects, and https://www.reddit.com/r/INAT/ for smaller projects(There are more, but this should get you a god start, and should keep you busy for a while,not to mention the annoying habit inn the games and many industries of not centralizing nor streamlining resources. Because of this, there are a lot of sites, but they very drastically in quality. This is on of the reasons I've stuck with gamedev.net for so long,
You can look at the clubs and research institutes at your school, I didn't know my school had a game dev club until my last quarter. One of the big reasons I didn't know this was because of all the time I spent working on my project, and connected to online communities. Online and offline communities both have their pros and cons It's about trying to balance them. Not to mention most online communities will be there after you leave school, and your paying a lot, not just to go to class, but to network. That is one thing I didn't do that well at school. But the other thing is that most students have a hard time balancing their school work, and game work. I sure did.
Sometimes academic departments have mailing lists, it's tough to get on one, but if you can reach out there, it might help.
What do you mean all your ideas for games are AAA? If you mean hey are huge games that require teams of people working then maybe you should simplify them, or shelf them for now, and hold them in reserve. You never know when you might get the chance to work in your pet project, hell, as part of the team I'm on, I waited 7 years to see my pet deigns see the light of day. Stuff like that happens when your part of a team, you agree to come back to things later after the core deign is done, and sometimes the team comes back to it, sometimes not. And for other stuff I did,I rolled a past project's story into my current project's story, hoping one day I'd get to tell the masterpiece I had, It took a while, but I did.
My Lawyer once told me, if you just want to make games any games, then join a games company, but if you want to create your own IP, and direct a game, you need to start a company.
Since you weren't taking your pills as instructed, it's no surprise it didn't work. I'd recommend you get as much mental health support as you can, while your at school, because you're already paying for it. I struggled with a uniagnosed mental disorder during most of my university years, and It's a chicken or egg issue. Are you not doing well because your mental health issue is setting you up for failure, or are you failing because of other non mental health issues? It becomes impossible to tell.
Hoping once you become successful that all your problems will go away is a common fallacy. Success just brings on new problems and challenges prime among them how to maintain your existing success rate. Look up the creator of Super Meat Boy, he suffered from this exact issue, despite being wildly successful.
A common concern with taking some medications for mental health, is you're afraid you won't be as creative. I've seen it enough now, that it does come back. The question you have to ask your self is would you rather have a more stable life? or would you rather not be able to function anywhere near your potential at all?
Many creative people throughout history have struggled with mental health issues, and other horrible life circumstances. It's about putting your self back together, to be the best that you can be.
The more you learn, the more you can draw upon. It's common for students to refuse to learn or deprioritize learning something they think they will never use, but you never know what you might need in the future. I learned things years ago that I hall out once in a while, I'm surprised it applies, but I'm glad I did my best to learn it. It is however true that most of our modern society and many companies want specialists not generalists. They do this since they want to put you in a little box, so they know what to do with you.The allowed people to gain transferable skills in things that would normally take years to learn in a non digital age. society is still trying to figure out how to deal with that. Look, I've held multiple hats for so long, most recruiters don't know what to do with me.
I'm not sure if you should be looking for friends just because they can offer you something you want, it should be a natural sharing of interests and life experiences. Looking for people with specific qualities to fill a gap is more like recruitment.I'm not friends with all of my team members, but I'm ok with that. I learned long ago the difference between a fried and a co-worker. Maybe it's just me, but I have very strict lines between them.
I'm posting all this here, instead of just responding to your PM,since this all might help others in similar situations.