I've been working on the same project for over 4 years now, and I think the biggest thing for me was realizing it was fine to step away and do other things for awhile. Because no, I have not been working on it consistently for those 4 years. I've gone months without touching the project before. But, each time I came back and rebooted it, things always turned out way better. It's not about "finishing" the project, at least not when it's a hobby, it's just about having fun with it and improving your skills. If you are achieving both of those things, eventually it will reach a state where you can say it's finished. Otherwise, take a step back and do something else for a bit until your inspiration comes back. That's been my philosophy anyways.
It's been a year since I stopped working on my dream project, I found that I don't really ready yet for the game, I still have to learn more... So yeah, There is still some part of me that whisper to me, "Hey it's time to make code name rain! It's been 1 year", I won't do it soon but I believe 1 day I will finish it.
My secret to staying on track has been to 1: Make a project map. 2: Make a short chronological to do list each day. 3. Do workouts throughout the day (pushups, hollow hold, and squats) so my muscles get stimulated and I don't feel icky and sad for seemingly no reason.
imo the biggest and most tangible tip is: whenever working on a commercial project - with no established dev name, studio, or following - never go over a year before launching. 3-6 months? Realistically a bit too short, depending on the game you're making and all of the boring/repetitive tasks needed like Steam integration, settings menu, OS compatibility, gamepad support, addressing playtesters feedback, and whatnot... but ~12 months? Comfortably enough for it all, and mostly so not to gradually lose your motivation as the horizons broaden and get so far away that it just becomes a complete chore to work on it. after all, given it goes moderately well and you didn't code it like total spaghetti, you can always added content post-launch and expand upon it... all of this ofc you set a reasonable scope and pick an easy enough genre to go with (or the one you're most experienced with).
I've been making blender projects for a while now and I've experienced burnout so many times that I have the motivation for a different project. Recently I've been trying to make a 2D game in unity and I have a ton of motivation for that but I don't get burnt out so easily with this. I found out that the reason I got burnt out so easily, is because I would lose motivation for the project that Im working on knowing it would probably be sitting on my computer not being used. I really liked how you talked about the difference between lack of motivation and burnout because that just really close to home for me.
6:17 this part can also be especially satisfying depending on the ganre of the game you make. It's fun seeing crazy ways testers tackle puzzle games, often revealing cooler solutions then the ones you planned in the first place. Or seeing how a tester reads a platformer level. Or if you're like me and you're making a semi-psychological horror sit and survive game that fucks with your players brain, seeing testers play is basically a glorified moment of pulling the most convoluted prank you could ever think of. And it's fun every time.
Great advice! It's super easy to fall into any of these traps even if you're a 'pro'. Sometimes you burn out regardless of which discipline you're currently doing. You just need to figure out how you can best mitigate it to stay motivated. If you need to take a break, take one! You know yourself best, so listen and you'll back to it in no time.
I'm constantly obsessed with design filling up documents of ideas, but what I love is how diverse making games is. What i find hard i that it is really hard to go from making music to graphics in the same day. I just go on binges of drawing or animating or making music or coding, but it's so hard to spread a bit of each daily.
Great video! Burn out is tough and really saps motivation so it's like a double whammy. Sometimes I get that but often I'm just excited to move my games by a little step.
I feel that often, besides being exhausting, the process of creating a game is the most difficult form of artistic expression, and that it is not necessary to have your game complete or oversold, but just to pass on your expression in the form of fun to others.
2:33 - I'd like to add that, at least for me, I was thinking of CONCEPTS first, meaning, I get to see the whole project working in my head, which is waaaaaay far from step 1 of a project. If someone is like me, what I'd do to avoid losing motivation is take notes of the smallest steps for that project and pick the ones I think you'd be fun, or the tricky ones if I got my coffee ready and I'm looking for a challenge. It usually works well, and I plan my leisure time around those bites to complement them. Stressful step? Let's read or walk on the beach. Easy, fun step? Let's clean the house while I rethink of how fun that step was... And so on. Another thing, use small steps to work on demos, rather than full games. I can't STRESS that enough! Demos are much more useful and show your projects potential to all your friends and the public in general. And you don't even need to stress out to make a full working project yet. Demos are way better to get suspended than a partially completed project. Because you can always come back to those demos and pick up where you left. A non-working project is usually messy and hard to find where you left off last time.
As someone who's worked on a lot of small scope projects for jams, organizing games for a club of 30+ people, and recently released my first steam game with a small group that had a development time of a year and 8 months (shout-out to my game Infernal Elements if you're interested, I did art!), I agree with a lot of points in the video, especially about reaching out to others for help. Whether that be development or play-testing, you can get so much valuable feedback from people interacting with what you've made and from learning how others approach development. Getting others involved with the games I make has helped push me through to the finish line where I am not sure I could've solely self motivated. I definitely recommend trying to look for people who mesh well with you while making smaller scope projects, and building on top of it each game. Also don't know how this happened but this is your fifth video I saw and I assumed I was subscribed and I wasn't? So that's been changed lol, keep up the good work!
That was an awesome start with burnout vs lack of motivation with Minecraft example! (literal burnout) Also I feel like sometimes burn out [in one project] can lead to lack of motivation for a new project.
Fr sleeping when done well is like a superpower. And I don't mean just one night, I mean keeping it up as much as possible and you'll see the improvements! This was one of the reasons I moved out of the city to a more quiet place.
Aiming to make a minimum viable product and then add features has helped me plan out my game's scope and not make something too big that I cannot finish.
What killed two of my last three projects was a concept i hadn't even heard of, "technical debt". Where bad decisions early in the project had a compounding effect until it was no longer possible to go forward. But i learned from each sink- hole and I'm almost done with my first project since childhood. (Which was coded in Commador Basic on a C64)😅
Anyone here has already been to the last stage, refining the game, art, music, etc. But not liking the result before finishing, and redoing the entire game from scratch? When would I just need to keep refining? That's me. Great video !
I agree, it's incredibly rewarding to work on various tasks like design, art, coding, and music, but it can also be overwhelming. From my experience, even small games require significant effort, especially if you handle every aspect yourself. I've learned it's often better to focus on your strengths and collaborate with others who excel in areas you're less skilled at, such as in my case music and art. While I admire indie developers who are passionate about every detail, the reality is that striving for full control can be costly and I do not recommend it. Instead, try to maximize the time doing something you actually enjoy doing :)
1:59 Ah, so by art you mean doodles that I whipped up in a second and then gave no more thought? And by music you surely are talking about the sound of silence as the game plays out.
I made a 2D platformer over the course of around 2 years. I published it to Steam only a few days ago. Believe me, after a year of work, motivation no longer worked. There were times when I just wanted to quit. So I just developed a mindset of discipline and focus in order to finish what I stated. And so I was able to press on until the end. As a gamedev, if you want to release your work, you CANNOT treat it as a hobby that you only work on when you're motivated enough for it. You have to treat it as a job and work on it like your future depended on it. Be strict with yourself. That's the only way to get work done as a gamedev.
Motivation is an emotion. It comes and goes. For a game dev, having discipline and focus is more important. If you only work when you're feeling motivated, you won't get much done. If you are disciplined and focused, you'll work even when you don't feel like it, and as a result, you'll be more productive and get more work done. In short, motivation = an emotion or a mood. Discipline and focus = a state of being
and there was me making a 30 hour long parody game as a joke (like seriously i never have any placeholders, i always do crap and delete it all if something else suits, and the weird bit is i never got burned im physically incapable, im a not even workalochic, like i would do so much work in a day and never touch the project and procrastinate for all week, im all over the place lol :D)
as soon as I get my Life somewhat stable, I wanna start to create something smol. Smol improvement everyday, just a little. Hope to learn a fee things from here
Hm, only problem I can think of having is that if the game is too big then I'll have already programmed the whole thing in my head making the process of actually making the game tedious and boring since it is just copying and pasting code from head to computer, but no, generally I don't have any problems finishing video games.
I was trying to make a neo geo game and I got burned out. Didn't help that I tried refactoring the code without a backup and ruined it. This was a few years ago so I don't quite remember the details. ASM is easy to get overwhelmed with
4:44 Eh, I don't really get the whole "Touch grass" joke, when not programming I'm pacing outside thinking about programming, or beating my dog until he stops leaving the yard.
Burn out would be the only reason I wouldn't choose to do full time game development, I'll rather let it be as a hobby. It's so easy to get obsessed by a personal project and not knowing it affects your mental health lol.
I mean I’ve been working on 5 - 6 hours of sleep for well over a year and I’m doing fine lol (I don’t have TT so I don’t even scroll, I just read novels a lot of the time)
I've been working on the same project for over 4 years now, and I think the biggest thing for me was realizing it was fine to step away and do other things for awhile. Because no, I have not been working on it consistently for those 4 years. I've gone months without touching the project before. But, each time I came back and rebooted it, things always turned out way better. It's not about "finishing" the project, at least not when it's a hobby, it's just about having fun with it and improving your skills. If you are achieving both of those things, eventually it will reach a state where you can say it's finished. Otherwise, take a step back and do something else for a bit until your inspiration comes back. That's been my philosophy anyways.
It's been a year since I stopped working on my dream project, I found that I don't really ready yet for the game, I still have to learn more... So yeah, There is still some part of me that whisper to me, "Hey it's time to make code name rain! It's been 1 year", I won't do it soon but I believe 1 day I will finish it.
personally, game design documents are an amazing way to mitigate burnout, since it gives you a progress bar of sorts!
My secret to staying on track has been to 1: Make a project map. 2: Make a short chronological to do list each day. 3. Do workouts throughout the day (pushups, hollow hold, and squats) so my muscles get stimulated and I don't feel icky and sad for seemingly no reason.
Good advice!!!
imo the biggest and most tangible tip is: whenever working on a commercial project - with no established dev name, studio, or following - never go over a year before launching. 3-6 months? Realistically a bit too short, depending on the game you're making and all of the boring/repetitive tasks needed like Steam integration, settings menu, OS compatibility, gamepad support, addressing playtesters feedback, and whatnot... but ~12 months? Comfortably enough for it all, and mostly so not to gradually lose your motivation as the horizons broaden and get so far away that it just becomes a complete chore to work on it.
after all, given it goes moderately well and you didn't code it like total spaghetti, you can always added content post-launch and expand upon it... all of this ofc you set a reasonable scope and pick an easy enough genre to go with (or the one you're most experienced with).
Juniper upload 🎉
I've been making blender projects for a while now and I've experienced burnout so many times that I have the motivation for a different project. Recently I've been trying to make a 2D game in unity and I have a ton of motivation for that but I don't get burnt out so easily with this. I found out that the reason I got burnt out so easily, is because I would lose motivation for the project that Im working on knowing it would probably be sitting on my computer not being used. I really liked how you talked about the difference between lack of motivation and burnout because that just really close to home for me.
Ahhh I've been there!! I'm glad this could give a lil clarity (:
6:17 this part can also be especially satisfying depending on the ganre of the game you make. It's fun seeing crazy ways testers tackle puzzle games, often revealing cooler solutions then the ones you planned in the first place. Or seeing how a tester reads a platformer level. Or if you're like me and you're making a semi-psychological horror sit and survive game that fucks with your players brain, seeing testers play is basically a glorified moment of pulling the most convoluted prank you could ever think of. And it's fun every time.
Great advice! It's super easy to fall into any of these traps even if you're a 'pro'. Sometimes you burn out regardless of which discipline you're currently doing. You just need to figure out how you can best mitigate it to stay motivated. If you need to take a break, take one! You know yourself best, so listen and you'll back to it in no time.
another banger vid. Keep up the good work juni.
This is so inspiring! All this advice is so helpful! Thanks so much for this!
Edit: That egg analogy is pretty good ngl😂
liking and commenting so it helps with the algorithm, thank you so much for the help and information! i thought i was the only one feeling all that
I'm constantly obsessed with design filling up documents of ideas, but what I love is how diverse making games is. What i find hard i that it is really hard to go from making music to graphics in the same day. I just go on binges of drawing or animating or making music or coding, but it's so hard to spread a bit of each daily.
I get no greater joy in life than watching someone playtest my game and seeing them genuinely enjoy it
Great video! Burn out is tough and really saps motivation so it's like a double whammy. Sometimes I get that but often I'm just excited to move my games by a little step.
I feel that often, besides being exhausting, the process of creating a game is the most difficult form of artistic expression, and that it is not necessary to have your game complete or oversold, but just to pass on your expression in the form of fun to others.
5:11 Why the last time I remember having a memory was...
2:33 - I'd like to add that, at least for me, I was thinking of CONCEPTS first, meaning, I get to see the whole project working in my head, which is waaaaaay far from step 1 of a project.
If someone is like me, what I'd do to avoid losing motivation is take notes of the smallest steps for that project and pick the ones I think you'd be fun, or the tricky ones if I got my coffee ready and I'm looking for a challenge.
It usually works well, and I plan my leisure time around those bites to complement them. Stressful step? Let's read or walk on the beach. Easy, fun step? Let's clean the house while I rethink of how fun that step was... And so on.
Another thing, use small steps to work on demos, rather than full games. I can't STRESS that enough! Demos are much more useful and show your projects potential to all your friends and the public in general. And you don't even need to stress out to make a full working project yet.
Demos are way better to get suspended than a partially completed project. Because you can always come back to those demos and pick up where you left. A non-working project is usually messy and hard to find where you left off last time.
As someone who's worked on a lot of small scope projects for jams, organizing games for a club of 30+ people, and recently released my first steam game with a small group that had a development time of a year and 8 months (shout-out to my game Infernal Elements if you're interested, I did art!), I agree with a lot of points in the video, especially about reaching out to others for help. Whether that be development or play-testing, you can get so much valuable feedback from people interacting with what you've made and from learning how others approach development. Getting others involved with the games I make has helped push me through to the finish line where I am not sure I could've solely self motivated. I definitely recommend trying to look for people who mesh well with you while making smaller scope projects, and building on top of it each game.
Also don't know how this happened but this is your fifth video I saw and I assumed I was subscribed and I wasn't? So that's been changed lol, keep up the good work!
That was an awesome start with burnout vs lack of motivation with Minecraft example! (literal burnout)
Also I feel like sometimes burn out [in one project] can lead to lack of motivation for a new project.
Fr sleeping when done well is like a superpower.
And I don't mean just one night, I mean keeping it up as much as possible and you'll see the improvements!
This was one of the reasons I moved out of the city to a more quiet place.
Aiming to make a minimum viable product and then add features has helped me plan out my game's scope and not make something too big that I cannot finish.
What killed two of my last three projects was a concept i hadn't even heard of, "technical debt". Where bad decisions early in the project had a compounding effect until it was no longer possible to go forward. But i learned from each sink- hole and I'm almost done with my first project since childhood.
(Which was coded in Commador Basic on a C64)😅
Lack of sleep is definitely a reoccurring stumbling block. I've had many, many evenings where I felt like an exploded egg...
5:26 I have no click clocks but I probably need one to keep better track of time, not sure what that has to do with sleep though.
Anyone here has already been to the last stage, refining the game, art, music, etc. But not liking the result before finishing, and redoing the entire game from scratch? When would I just need to keep refining? That's me. Great video !
I agree, it's incredibly rewarding to work on various tasks like design, art, coding, and music, but it can also be overwhelming. From my experience, even small games require significant effort, especially if you handle every aspect yourself.
I've learned it's often better to focus on your strengths and collaborate with others who excel in areas you're less skilled at, such as in my case music and art. While I admire indie developers who are passionate about every detail, the reality is that striving for full control can be costly and I do not recommend it.
Instead, try to maximize the time doing something you actually enjoy doing :)
4:39 Sleep? I've never heard of such a concept.
4:01 Yeah, serious refinements alright... I'm sure that I do many refinings to my sprites.
1:59 Ah, so by art you mean doodles that I whipped up in a second and then gave no more thought? And by music you surely are talking about the sound of silence as the game plays out.
Let's goo!! We needed this so much.
4:55
So what do I do if I have sleep apnea and physically cannot get a good amount of sleep?
I made a 2D platformer over the course of around 2 years. I published it to Steam only a few days ago. Believe me, after a year of work, motivation no longer worked. There were times when I just wanted to quit. So I just developed a mindset of discipline and focus in order to finish what I stated. And so I was able to press on until the end. As a gamedev, if you want to release your work, you CANNOT treat it as a hobby that you only work on when you're motivated enough for it. You have to treat it as a job and work on it like your future depended on it. Be strict with yourself. That's the only way to get work done as a gamedev.
Motivation is an emotion. It comes and goes. For a game dev, having discipline and focus is more important. If you only work when you're feeling motivated, you won't get much done. If you are disciplined and focused, you'll work even when you don't feel like it, and as a result, you'll be more productive and get more work done. In short, motivation = an emotion or a mood. Discipline and focus = a state of being
and there was me making a 30 hour long parody game as a joke (like seriously i never have any placeholders, i always do crap and delete it all if something else suits, and the weird bit is i never got burned im physically incapable, im a not even workalochic, like i would do so much work in a day and never touch the project and procrastinate for all week, im all over the place lol :D)
Oh no, I'm 2 days late for the new top tier Juniper content :O
start -> get better idea -> start -> get better ...
I definitely don't want to be that egg... Thanks for another great video!
thank you for all your sweet comments!!
I can't even START projects. I have a huge mental block when creating assets
as soon as I get my Life somewhat stable, I wanna start to create something smol.
Smol improvement everyday, just a little. Hope to learn a fee things from here
I also figured out this yerr that I need 9h of sleep. No wonder I was being so tired
Thanks
4:08 So, what if you are unable to English well enough for the bounty of information contained by the internet? Asking for a friend.
Actually in my case it is lack of skills as well so it further intensifies my Lack of Motivation to Lack of will
Hm, only problem I can think of having is that if the game is too big then I'll have already programmed the whole thing in my head making the process of actually making the game tedious and boring since it is just copying and pasting code from head to computer, but no, generally I don't have any problems finishing video games.
I was trying to make a neo geo game and I got burned out. Didn't help that I tried refactoring the code without a backup and ruined it. This was a few years ago so I don't quite remember the details. ASM is easy to get overwhelmed with
4:44 Eh, I don't really get the whole "Touch grass" joke, when not programming I'm pacing outside thinking about programming, or beating my dog until he stops leaving the yard.
true
5:46 It's as though you're implying that I should be making my games for other people to play and not myself...
Burn out would be the only reason I wouldn't choose to do full time game development, I'll rather let it be as a hobby. It's so easy to get obsessed by a personal project and not knowing it affects your mental health lol.
I mean I’ve been working on 5 - 6 hours of sleep for well over a year and I’m doing fine lol
(I don’t have TT so I don’t even scroll, I just read novels a lot of the time)
As a gamedeveloper, i leave a comment right here
Facts
5:16 YO THAT'S ILLEGAL HAHAH
HAHA someone noticed
guess burnout is now part of my monthly routine. burnout is my friend now. 😅
Burnout is an awful thing. High school pushed me to my limits but now I'm finished. Now it's time to be burnt out in college.
More and more indie devs nowadays end up a youtuber.
Best way to reach an audience to promote a game nowadays
What's your opinion on streaming coding/learning stuff in general?
10k views but only 900 likes…..so sad.❤
I am an egg
imma sound like a goofball but does this apply to making geometry dash levels
Anything for you dogboi
dogboi my goat
whats the song playin in the background
Scarlet Forest from Deltarune (:
I have one question tho: hollow knight or Celeste?
Hk 🤭
@@JuniperDev YESSS
Joke's on you, I can't even start...
It's always fun to watch young people talking as if they already figured out 3 lifed, you are not wrong though 😂
WE GETTING OUT OF BURNOUT WITH THIS ONE 🗣🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥
:)