There was this time when I wanted to add water to my platformer, I was still a beginner at the time so my first thought was that I could look up a tutorial on TH-cam. I just continued working on my game, leaving the water system for later. A week had passed and I was lost in thought while taking out the trash. I started thinking about how water works in games, what sold the concept. Then it hit me, water is like air but with more buoyancy. I instantly started thinking of ways to achieve this buoyancy. I ran back into my house and programmed for the better half of the day and in the end, I had a simple water/swimming system. I was ecstatic, nothing beats engineering solutions to problems on your own, your new understanding stays with you forever. So...yeah, self-reliance is very important.
Here's my 10 cents: Throughout my game dev journey, the hardest thing that I had to UNLEARN, which corresponds with the arguments brought up here, was the systematic spoon feeding that was a huge part of my schooling. For 14 years our lives are planned out on a roster, nothing we have to plan out on our own. When I attended college I was left completely on my own. That's how the world works. It makes me wish they gave us more responsibility in school. It was just tests, and in high school it was really boring. And I never really studied, because everything was always covered during class. Everything I've done up until now, was all me. I had to find my own solutions, find my own material, secure my own time and manage myself. The first week I was so burned out that I ate, slept, showered and brushed my teeth in nothing but game dev. This was mainly because of a fear of failure. In school I was on top, and all of a sudden, I was a worm again, studying something I had absolutely no prior knowledge off.
Totally agreed with you. World wide school systems are completely outdated (Most of them at least). They just give you things to learn: Math, Language, Science, History, Art. But they NEVER teach you HOW to learn things. I saw (and suffer) this issue you point out in my days, and I'm watching the same pattern with my kids now. Learn TO LEARN should be the most important skill they should teach kids. Cause when you finish high-school and realize you don't have it, things got really hard for most young people.
since i always hated the slow learning systems, unlearning that was something i never had to do i have the opposite problem, asking for help. i used to feel a pit in my stomach, feeling like i was the dumbest, "why couldn't i figure even THAT out on my own"
That's so true. The government life pipeline doesn't introduce responsibility or self management. I think I was fooled by it that I don't need to work as hard.
I fully agree with you. My tip is, never stop on the first link that appear on Google search. Sometimes the answer is on the 10th page of the search, you need to be patient. I created a heuristic that I follow. First I search for the question I have using my own words. Then if I don't find the objective answer, I start looking every single link and take note of the keywords that repeat most of the time. Then I reformulate my search introducing the new keyword. For example. I search: "game programming eliminate tearing". The most common word in the results is "v-sync". Then I search "game implement v-sync". This could lead me to the keywords "double buffer". So, I repeat the search "game implement double buffer". Well, you get the idea. The goal is to start with a more generic search term and then go all the way down to a more specific search term
I work in IT and there's a guy in our office that has this dead eyed stare while you explain a problem to him. The first thing he asks is "did you Google it?" if you don't explain what you tried to solve it. The idea of talking to that guy motivates me to make sure I tried everything before talking to him. He's grumpy as hell, but I'm a better tech because of it
There needs to be a balance when it comes to self-reliance or self-accountability. There are people who blame others on their problems, expect everything to be handed to them and they don't try to do anything on their own. But then you have people who are afraid to ask for help, or refuse to ask for help because they think it's more virtuous to do it on their own, or whatever reason they just refuse to get help or a mentor or anything. Success requires both, to be self-accountable as well as willing to accept help from others.
@MustafaGameDev I can relate to your comment. I started my GameDev jurney 8 months ago. Never before coded a single line. I first started with course 3D Unity and I was really confused by the end. I learned few bits but the majority I just didnt understand. Then I changed and started lerning pure C# for well over 3 months. Lerned all the basic stuff and some advance stuff. Then I started with my solo projects. Until now I have created 2 games. On first game I used structure from a youtube tutorial and solo added stuff I thought it would make the game better. During this period I chalenged myself to search online for answers and tried stuff myself. I really pushed myself to do it solo. I only have one person to ask for help anyway (do not have many programers as friends). But this is the part where I relate to your post. Sometimes I was really stuck and didnt know how to move forward. Wanted to ask for live help, coz I couldnt find anything online. But instead I kept trying myself. I conviced myself not to ask anyone and to do it solo, otherwise I will fail as a programer and start relying on others. I want to learn to be independent and rely on my own skills to search what I want and need. Now my 2nd game I fully created solo. I stated to make mobile game which I never learned how to do it. But month have passed now I do stuff all on my own. Of course I ask ChatGPT stuff coz I am still learning, but I really try my best to limit myself from making things easy. I want to understand the logic and how stuff operate and that is the thing that drives me to become even better. BTW @LostRelicGames great video. Thank you for all your thoughts and videos.
My favorite meme: WHAT I SAY: I'm a software developer WHAT PEOPLE HEAR: I can repair your computer, fix your internet, configure your printer, revive your phone, set up your email and hack into any system. All for free. WHAT I MEAN: I can google better than the average bear.
Some people mentioned school here, I think that's the main issue we have. Children don't have a good space to make mistakes and not being judged harshly for them. That's essentially what grades do to you. It doesn't help that some parents also obsess over that, and other people judge you too. On top of social media showing you how much you really suck compared to the best of the best, making mistakes will look unappealing to most people, except psychopaths or something.
I think it has also something to do with... ignoring mistakes. If you score 75% on a test, you did get 25% of it wrong, but it's good enough and you move on, you'll never improve on those 25%. But that's not how life work, if you fail 25% of what you do, you're kind of doing a shitty job. It's ok to make mistakes, but you need to learn from them and that's not how school work.
@@randomrandom450 The problem is that school spoonfeeds you much information that is unimportant. I make games since a ful year, taught C# (and oop in general) by myself and I now have a strong expertice when working with C#. We started covering oop and C# in school around 2 months ago and following to you I should get 100 % in the tests since I already good at that, what is not the case. I can write really good code, but my tests results are around 70-80 % because the tests ask for unimportant knowledge that you are going to forget instantly anyway.
@@bluefake_or_smt You missed my point. You should not get 100%, but you should learn from the things you got wrong. Grades are pointless, exams are pointless, those are not goals, those are not achievements, they are measurements. Irl, it's ok to make mistakes, you learn from them, then you do better next time. In school, you make a mistake, then you move on to something else and you never learn from that mistake. Irl, you build on your knowledge, so fixing those mistakes give you a stronger foundation to build on, so you can try new things, make new mistakes, learn again and get that foundation stronger and stronger.
@@randomrandom450 It's not comparable though because schools and universities use a very artificial means of testing what people know. In the real world you'd have access to books and people. At school they say solve this all on your own within this time limit. In the real world they say work on this, but research and collaborate as needed.
@@bluefake_or_smt Knowledge is a good in itself. Therefore whether schools teach something for which someone might have a practical application is not particularly relevant. Also what is relevant in coding is going to depend on what you do. No school can teach you only whatever the niche you're targeting or current code requires.
Being 51 and starting my programming/game dev journey way back in 1981 i couldn't agree with you more. Im old school and really enjoy doing every thing from the ground up, that way i understand every line of code and gain complete control.
I'm a little older than you, and remember worrying that I was perhaps losing my problem-solving edge once "just google it" became a debugging technique. That's one reason why, if you're a professional, it's good to have side projects you work on in your own time. That way, you can choose to exercise those self-reliance muscles, without being forced by time pressure to take the lazy way out.
@@SheeplessNW6 yeah, I remember hearing a joke about how development is just copying and changing code from code stack. Once you understand how it all works together, and you're caught in that flow state where you just type and get something that works exactly how you expect it to... That's the greatest feeling in the world
Deep understanding of a subject/language/library is something very very few people invest in in the software field nowadays. Most devs sadly have an amazingly superficial understanding of everything - which is fine most of the time. The most successful ones ride the waves of tech jargon and trends. But, it's because very few build anything from the ground up without a step by step tutorial or a 2 week course. I've seen projects change core dependencies breaking tons of code instead of starring for half an hour at the debugger for a bug.
True. Without sarcasm, even creating your own RDMS to work and continue to work EXACTLY the way you want it to without surprises is becoming increasingly tempting to me.
Regarding the "reliancy trap", which I sometimes call the inability to synthesize knowledge or sometimes "learned helplessness": I am confident that it is more of a matter of upbringing than laziness: To a degree it makes sense when you tell you 1.5 year old child that he is not allowed to cut his meal with a knife, or handle expensive electronics, other dangerous situations, but after a degree, after a certain age it becomes damaging, and the vast majority of people grow up to be forever incapable of making certain decisions on their own and figure things out on their own. Then there is also a fear of failure. Rather than try and fail most people just avoid challenges altogether. And SCHOOL. School DRILLS THIS reliancy trap into minds to a colossal degree! The whole system is set up that way. The curriculum is set up that way. Teachers are that way, and so on. School is a curse on the 21st century. There are other factors as well, but I believe that many of them play a much bigger role than laziness.
My second time watching one of your vids. Good stuff. As you say, having the initiative and drive to improve yourself through independent research & concrete experience w/o relying on others as a crutch is essential to being an effective person (in any discipline, I would imagine). Furthermore, it's important to recognize one's own limits as well: "You don't know what you don't know". After due diligence, asking questions is okay and even encouraged. As for stories, I have 2, one heard second-hand at my workplace and one of my own. First: Small team of devs (~5) maintaining ~20 small/medium web apps. Each person manages a subset with 0-1 backups (big oof already, but don't truly have time/bandwidth to keep everyone up-to-speed). Per usual, work needs doing for a new app and 1 dev is assigned to it. When asked for regular status updates, the dev gives positive updates of making progress as they toil away in isolation. It was only after an extended period, upon a direct inspection of their work, that the team discovered the developer had been struggling alone, made little relative progress given the timeline, and never asked for help when they had clearly needed it. What were their stated reasons for doing so? How did this happen? They said... a) they didn't want to interrupt others' work and slow down others, b) they wished to develop their own skills and so just did all of the work by themselves (like what you are encouraging - again, not necessarily a bad thing), c) they didn't want to appear weak/inferior/ineffective/inefficient to their coworkers/boss when it came time for performance reviews, and d) they were already naturally introverted and preferred working alone rather than having a lot of interaction with other people. These anxieties, interests/goals, and biases combined to actually cause all of the exact issues they wanted to avoid: a) the project suffered a severe slowdown since critical parts weren't ready that affected everyone's work, b) they ultimately never devised adequate solutions because they did not couple their individual work with regular, guided feedback, c) their performance review tanked as their more severe soft skill deficiencies came to light (namely, the willingness and eagerness to communicate and collaborate), and d) due to the lack of reliability, they now had more in-person oversight than they ever would have had before (until they learned to fix the aforementioned soft skills). In my opinion though, I believe the true culprit in this instance was poor management. If the "status updates" had involved clearly defined, intermediate deliverables and internal code reviews, then all manner of problems would've been caught far earlier regardless of the individual person's anxieties or biases (this has long since been fixed at my workplace). Second: With regard to mentorships, I went straight from a fundamentals-focused CS degree (C/C++/Java, OOP/algorithm analysis/SWE/Networking/OS/build & ship a complete app) straight into webdev with almost NO experience in HTML/CSS/JS/browsers, PHP/C#/servers, SQL/databases. Naturally, due to my lack of experience, I was assigned a mentor who would review my work and guide my growth. They were the best mentor I could have asked for, so I'll explain what they did in case it proves helpful for others: 1. Tasks: occasional pair programming sessions on his own projects (I code, he guides). Independent small assignments with code reviews every 1 or 2 weeks. 2. Nature: generally took a socratic approach that focused more on prompting my thinking, questioning my assumptions, and, where applicable, breaking out of that to provide context on any institutional/industry knowledge/history/background that I wouldn't be able to simply look up on my own. Rather than telling me what to do/write, he would ask me to share my own theories on what the ideal approach would be, how I might do that in webdev or the language specifically, and how I could go about implementing it. If at any point my thought process was lacking anything, he would fill in the blanks. Examples: "did you consider what happens if X assumption is invalid? How would you address that?", "that would be ideal, but unfortunately we can't because X. Given that, what's our next best option?", "(knowing) yeah, doesn't seem to work. What do you think the problem is? Have you verified that? How so? Is that the correct way to verify it?", etc. 3. Research: in the above workflows, we would both look things up as needed, and if ever he found a solution long before me, we would go over the differences in HOW we had conducted our search (which resources did we use, what terms or phrase did we look for, why did we prioritize one answer vs. disregarding/ignoring another, etc.). 4. Experimentation: whenever I had an idea about how I felt I could improve software design or an algorithm - even when it was something he himself did not believe was the best option - he would very purposefully give me the freedom to do so nonetheless while warning me about the potential issues I would need to watch out for. And while I would inevitably succumb to the exact issues he described in my quest to "improve" things, it was important that he gave me the time and opportunity to fail on my own, so that I would internalize the experience and understand intimately WHY the thought process was faulty rather than simply knowing it was supposed to be faulty at a high level w/o actually experiencing it. The strength of this freedom would then bear fruit on occasion when my creativity and novel approaches resulted in surprisingly effective/inspired solutions that the team had never previously considered. ----- Given the topics that you covered in the video (sticking to fields of study you are good at, acknowledging and working with one's lack of knowledge/experience), I'm not so sure that "self-reliance" is the best term to encourage since, as mentioned in my first story and in your video, it can be perverted into a problematic, isolationist attitude. Putting the emphasis on the "self" precludes any understanding that incorporates the team while "reliability" likewise precludes an acknowledment of one's limitations. Despite that, we still want to convey the idea that... 1. one should keep their focus on the development of their skills ("teach a man to fish"). 2. one should go through the hard work of consistent, independent education by trial and error to rapidly internalize lessons (fail fast). 3. one should take the initiative to do all this of their own accord rather than waiting on others (no lazy questions, develop confidence in your own decisions by MAKING decisions). Perhaps a more appropriate phrase would be "proactive discipline"? Morph the term into one that places emphasis on what one should actually do, and how, in a manner that produces the desired end-state as a side-effect: A. "proactive" directly covers point 3 while still conveying an implicit "self" component by means of directing one to take action. B. "discipline" in this context has two-fold meaning: both as a field of study (point 1) and as dedicated, consistent pursuit of the aforementioned field of study (point 2). This places the emphasis not on the person's ability to solve a problem themselves, but rather on their ability to apply themselves towards a discipline WITH a disciplined approach. This principle instills a focus on the core, essential lessons that themselves prompt action and *naturally* lead one to develop productive self-reliance as a by-product without leeway for negative interpretations. It also segways clearly into critical realizations of how one's disciplines may be many, varied, and require unification into an interdisciplinary team that collaborates to achieve its goals.
I think it is pretty cool that you talked about how reading Unity documentation is a skill. When I first started game dev years ago, I didn't understand most of the Unity Doc pages. It was almost gibberish to me. It took me some time to understand how documentation is supposed to be used. Also, I was trained to program by a senior dev. Basically, I would do something, he would tell me something I could have done better as far as having clean, re-usable code. Then he would mention a new programming trick I hadn't learned yet, and would tell me to study it, and implement it into my code. If it was something complicated, he would show me the advantages of it without teaching me fully how to do it. Now, 3 years later, I am a very skilled programmer/engineer for a designer. So I now work as a rapid prototyper at my company. Great video! :)
I’ve been watching lots of indie dev videos for the past few months, and each has all sorts of wisdom nuggets here and there. None have been more useful, and more convicting, than this one. Thanks for sharing!
My experience is somewhat opposite. What he’s saying makes sense for his journey. I am hesitant to ask for help- so much so I needlessly struggled. I’m trying to teach myself to ask for help. Like anything it is balance. I’ve not found many people asking stupid questions- a non sassy helpful hand is a good approach- if only a link to a good TH-cam video that covers the problem.
You're 100% right I jumped into my first Unity project where I'm trying to make an open-world survival game and it was so difficult, after taking a step back and doing some beginner Unity courses on Udemy, then doing some small game jams it really helps working on smaller things, and as time goes on your project will become too specific to jump into random youtube tutorials to really fix anything.
For many software/game dev skills, the early friction is painful and frustrating. But then you start to see the high-level patterns and things become exponentially easier. But one thing I must stress is how important it is to learn the fundamentals. I’ve been programming for years, but it was when I learned C that I felt finally confident in programming with Unreal, Unity, or any engine I desire.
I think one of the things you need to ask yourself when doing GameDev is "Can I do this myself? Can I learn this skill fast, understand it, and use it in a short period of time?" If the answer is Yes, then just do it. Don't be afraid to dive into new things if you like it. I'm a game designer, programmer, 3d artist (model and animation) and musician. Of course I still had a lot to learn on each of those skills, but I'm confident I can do it. As a dayjob I work as IT. And absolutely agreed with you about the stupid questions. People just ask things because it's easy to ask, than take 10 seconds of their lives, stop, think, google, and if can't found the solution, then ask the question. I realize when people came to me and ask me after doings some research, I'm totally willing to help them. On the other hand, when they came and say "Doesn't work, I don't know, I don't understand anything of this, and I don't care. Not my thing". That inevitably leads to a "not so happy" answer. Thank you so much for telling us your own experiences in the path.
Yep , had the same realization as a 3d artist, rigger, animator. Realized I shouldn't try to learn coding if I want my game to release in the next 2 years. So I looking for programmers. Nowi have help and I can do what I'm good at and he works his magic
Brother, this was gold. Hard words that we all need to hear. Coding is really hard for me and I only recently broke through. I can say to anyone else who is struggling that I feel your pain. It's ok to ask for help but try to always sweat before you do. When you figure something out for yourself, the feeling of satisfaction is incomparable.
Hey bud! I am very inspired by your videos, unfortunately I found you after 1 year of starting developping my first Indie game at age 34. I can feel every single word you said in your video that has already been happening through the whole year! I appeciate your passion and friendly approach to keep us motivated knowing that you are feeling the same as us! Keep it bro!
this hit me hard. one of my biggest insecurities is learning C# and C++ for game engines FOR ABOUT 3 YEARS NOW, and not knowing how to use them outside of it. I even look at how games were made for the SNES and such, but it all looks so complicated! That aside, im glad youre still very active, Lost Relic Games!
I really like this video. There is also another aspect to Google searching some people miss....I always google search my issues before trying to post on any forum (and I understand that MANY people use forums AS their search without actually using Google), but sometimes I found that my google searches failed because I was using incorrect terminology or phrased them incorrectly or TOO specifically... and when I post the question to a forum I get met with the "Perhaps you should Google it" answer (Not very often tho) which ends up pissing me off. So, understanding the issue you are having should be, I think, your first stop in google. Search for the information that defines what you are trying to accomplish FIRST, then, once you have a better understanding of what you are using (what the main-stream conventional name is or whatever) then Google your specific issue (sometimes researching the topic as a whole ends up answering my question indirectly) and then move on from there.
This is so true! There weren't any helpfull tutorials and assets available earlier. Also, If Unity was available earlier to me I would be a game developer earlier :) We do live in a time where we have all the tools we need...we just need patience and trust ourselves more to solve problems (challenges) :) Love your Vlogs, can't wait for your game ! :D
Thank you, I think every beginning game dev falls into this trap early on especially, wanting the answers served up for them rather than finding it themselves. It's a real crutch and a constant struggle. I'll start posting this video as a response to anyone who asks others to do the work for them. Thank you.
this is the vid i needed 10 years ago haha - learning the hard way though has its benefits... really hammers this lesson into your head. When im at a total loss and i go to the communities that have been helpful, just writing out the question as clearly as possible really helps the answer manifest itself. So much so that I rarely post the question these days
Brilliant! Thank you. Also Indie devs have another advantage. If stuck somewhere can continue to work in another area and return to the problem area later. Everything become easier to understand after some time and brain produces ideas by itself without effort, just needs time and work on something else.
I really thought he was gonna say something discouraging but wow the ability to derive answers from one's own self and remain autonomous can really drive you to complete a personal project, one as tumultuous as game development. thanks for the insight
My kids are learning independence and self reliance but they keep seeing me posing the question back “what have you tried?” And the blank stare back tells me I need to help them help themselves.
This is absolutely true. I started doing game development (taking it seriously at least) over 15 years ago and when I got started I was living in a rural area with satellite internet that was too slow to watch a video and could barely browse the web, and it also wasn't reliable. I had to sometimes drive to a public library to download a new DirectX SDK and documentation. There weren't tutorials for everything and you had to literally figure out how to initialize your application window, get a loop going with variable and fixed time-step, create a D3DDevice interface and make your own renderer. People don't realize how easy we've got it nowadays with Unity and Unreal. Back in the day, engines were for corporations and rich people, lol, you'd better learn DirectX or OpenGL, or later on we were blessed with XNA. If you can't solve your own problems with research, if you don't read lots of books and pursue knowledge and if you don't love code and solving technical challenges you won't make it in the game industry.
I just sent your video to my team of 200 developers. Thanks, very good summary! In my previous job, I used to give my co-workers vouchers for questions. They had 3 vouchers a day, and they had to give away one voucher by question asked. Very efficient to reduce interruption.
I started writing games back when the sole bit of info was a book that literally had the chipset specification from the chipset manufacturer (6502). So many times we've been faced with exactly that, just a book with the registers of the chip and some technical specifications. Hell there wasn't even a triangle rasterizer for the PS2 when we first got that. Point being, that there's a tendency to not have any robust response to challenge, especially as information becomes more freely available. Imagine someone who can't even google the simple coding statement usage taking on a brand new platform without any libraries? I guess maybe this is an issue for the Unity/Unreal Engine usage crowd too.
100% agree. I think it's important to not over-rely on google as well, though. I overcame reliance on others, but now find myself requiring validation from a google search on a working solution of mine, which is usually a waste of time and can even turn into procrastination. I try to send people to documentation or general resources when it overlaps with a lazy question of theirs.
Self-reliance is something that I had to kind of help teach the first semester CS students at my university when I worked as a TA. I loved the first class. Programming was so interesting to me when it was all about learning what you could do. The TA system basically worked so that students were basically being taught self-sufficiency in practice by having a list of resources to check before ever even asking a TA for help. Not all students followed it and overly depended on us, but I often would just point them to the resources (here's your textbook, here's some helpful ways to get help with your question on Google by breaking down the problem, etc.). I 100% agree that learning how to solve problems by understanding what the problem(s) are is simply a necessary skill for programming and engineering in general. Persistence, knowing your resources, figuring out how find out what your resources are if you don't know what is available, asking good questions, exhausting your search paths, etc.
Totally agree. Been a hobbyist all my life, freelancer now, hoping to get my first title on Steam next year, already published on apple and android. Anyway, yes... self reliance is absolutely vital. Anyone who is skilled will most likely be asked or involved in helping others, this is fine - all work is practice and it can be beneficial to push your own envelope outside of your influence. Like helping someone add a feature that you don't have experience with, but would be able to help figure it out - it provides that first draft of a method that is ready for when you need it. The more you practice the better you get, do not be precious about your code, rewrite, refactor, and you will improve - the previous draft is always made redundant as code and methods improve through repetition. Be prepared to learn what you need, to spend the time you need, and understand that the absolute best way to learn is through necessity... the more you need it, the better and faster you will learn it - use that!. Do not be afraid of any language - a language is just syntax, and usually libraries that have been written by people who know exactly what they need to know - you do not have to understand everything, the main thing to know is program flow and logic - and that tends to be the same no matter what language you use. If you can get to understanding C, then you already know the syntax and enough to learn most other languages. Really, these days they write entire games in scripts, why worry too much about things like languages - learn the techniques, learn to learn, and use the right tool for the job. When it comes to choosing an engine, remember that there are great languages that have engine style features, like terrains, skyboxes, collision, music, sound etc etc - like AppGameKit for example - but don't come burdoned with all the stuff that Unity and Unreal come with... sometimes you make your game engine so you can make it fast and efficient, it only needs to do what you need it to do - so why bloat or burdon something if you can help it. Look at all the development options out there, try as many as you can, and go back to them after a week or so as well - you will find something that clicks, then you have a foundation to build upon. Sorry to ramble, if you read all that I salute you sir!
You were saying verbalize your problem. For me this is huge, I created a discord server it has 2 friends of mine on it that follow my project but rarely comment. The whole chat is basically me explaining my decisions and typing out my issues (and eventual solutions) the perspective shift is real! Once I type it out I can usually see what wrong turn I've taken and at very worst am able to aticulate clearly what I need to plug into Google or make a pointed question to other developers Great video thanks for sharing your knowledge 👍
There have been multiple instances where I've created a worse version of an existing feature due to my lack of experience, but were greatly improved after watching videos and seeing what other people have done better. For beginners it's okay to be reliant because you're still learning. Ofc at some point you should be able to apply all the tools you've learned for new mechanics and projects.
Fantastic video and I couldn't agree more! Learning how to learn is just the most valuable life skill, both in and outside of gamedev. Thanks for making this 🙏
I have noticed that over the years I have developed this sort of... technical intuition. When there is a major problem, I can, most of the time, figure it all out in my head. I have this feeling where you need to dig to find your answers and can fill in the solution with some research on the web. After a few years I would classify this skill as my prime success factor that has allowed me to get as far as I did. The skill to have a few dozen roads ahead of you to solve a problem and somehow knowing which one to pick.
You speak a hard truth. I am trying to solo game dev and have to do everything myself but I thankfully enjoy the work I am doing. I don't have anything to show off yet but having personal drive is a BIG step towards moving forward. I find that scanning TH-cam helps me solve most, if not, ALL my questions and I am better for it. Only times I have posted questions is on certain videos where I am looking for an opinion versus direct direction. One of the best bits of advice I heard in a video is that it is better to learn how to code via studying others instead of just copying all your code. That way eventually you'll be able to code on your own. A lot to learn, thank you again for your video.
I'm old enough to have experienced that age of early internet and books. When I was in college and even earlier, I learned to look for the knowledge I needed to do my stuff myself first. I always tried search for my own answers first. Sure we all need a base to do something new. For this, I did an ungodly number of visits to the local library to gather knowledge and them apply. The books never gave me a ready to use recipe, but were the catalyst for my own creations. I'm in an odd position in respect to game development. Now I'm a senior software developer trying to do my own games. I'm pretty good with the development part, but I know for a fact I need to learn about game design, narrative, art etc. Self-reliance those topics too and for me is a skill I learned and that is paying off very well now. It is hard, but in the long term is invaluable. No matter what skill you need to hone, self-reliance is an important ingredient to game dev and personal growth.
I'm in the same boat. I didn't realise self reliance is a skill until I stumbled upon this video. I thought it was just a mix of experience and personality traits, but after listening to this video it has become clear to me that it's something I have learned like any other skill and that I can teach it to anyone rather than just accept that some people will never have it.
I'm so glad you mentioned the neuroplasticty, this immidiately clicked with my recent experience, and I wasn't sure if it was good I worked on "boring" nuances lately or did I waste my time and should just copy/paste the code I needed, once you mentioned it, it became so obvious, that that was the proper action I took, that led me to better Understanding, and Mastery. So obvious now. Never doubt diving into the nuances from now on!
I joined game design at my school and had a friend that started to mentor me in game design. It happened mainly because I needed help with this one programming class in C# that was incredibly brutal which I had no time for. He was willing to help me, and he did; but it started exactly what you described. A loop of me asking him for advice. It also left me feeling like I couldn’t come up with any good ideas of my own, as he would judge everything I would do. At the same time, if really seems like he was slightly socially Incompetent, because otherwise he was a really nice, inclusive, and kind person. Just recently he asked if he wanted to (literally used the words) mentor me while I make a game. I have always been independent and self reliant; I guess just from the second I started game dev he was there to help me, so I didn’t know anything else. Strange After watching this video, I’m not going to take him up on that offer 🤙🏼
Haha, pretty much knew what you were going to be talking about before the video even really got going. Once again, your words resound much further than just as it relates to game dev and programming. So many things in life require us to be self-reliant and have the ability to seek out answers for ourselves. If a problem comes up in life, you can't just sit by and expect someone to come through and fix it for you. Thanks for this video. Always love hearing your very grounded advice.
I was coding a mini program with Python today. and it began to work. after a few tests i realized it was still buggy. so i checked stack overflow and found something similar that works. i went back to my code and really appreciated its imperfections, i liked the fact that i made something that will eventually solve the problem i intended it to solve. i liked the fact that i put effort, tried to do it my way, and kept on iterating. and then i stumbled upon your video. Thanks man. my advice to beginners is to put in some work, try at least and fail. i remember telling someone how i couldn't get my code to work for 3 days and he was glad to help. i had done the work, i had evidence to show where i was stuck. Anyway my problem rite now is how to have a portfolio of mini 2d projects in unity. i don't wanna be stuck in tutorial hell lol. Don't get mad at the question heheheh
I 100% agree with this. I had some projects, in game modding and devving my own games later, that I needed some help from my friends who had said they'll help me learn some things. If I had waited for my friends to help with my projects, I'd still be waiting. At some point I decided to just research how to do those things myself, and probably ended up learning a lot more. I feel sitting around waiting for something is the worst thing to do, it's better to just continue on. I think the reason why I thought I needed help to get started on something obscure and scary that I didn't understand, was that I thought my friends had more knowledge and experience, which turned out wasn't so true.
Ive got no game dev freinds, and I'm too shy to even post questions on forums lol. I've just always learned to stop, think about it, google, think some more and try to understand what I am solving. Excericsing thought is the best way to learn. It also teaches you to teach yourself. You have just got to keep practicing it and you get better at learning to read information online. In regards to spoon feeding information. When I did my Degree, there was a massive difference between teachers who, just get up, do a lecture and thats it, just a block of inforamtion that was super hard to absorb and make me fall asleep which made me feel dumb. Compared to, teachers who actively engaged with their students, propose an issue, then try to get the answer out of the students and stimulate their trains of thought.
Very underrated video I personally think this is the most real answer you can give to someone but it’s the answer that people don’t want to hear. Recently found your channel and I love your videos bro 😎
New boss started at work on our unit 2 years ago, he didn't have any experience on what we were doing. I asked very basic questions from him every day to train him how and where to get answers if anyone has a real question that needs fast answer from bigger boss or client to keep things going.
I’m trying to be self reliant. I’m at the point where I don’t consider myself a beginner, I can problem solve through some issues I come across on my own. I like your advice “you need fire to forge steel, don’t be afraid of the fire” that’s great advice. I feel like our generation has it easy and lots of instant gratification makes learning independence hard for us. I try to push myself and not stay stuck in my comfort zone. I think you’re great John, you’re my idol : )
This the most helpful video on game dev ever for me because i used to think like if i want to implement something new or create a new feature in my game then i google it or watch a TH-cam video about that perticular feature without even given it a try to do that thing by myself This video totally chaged my thinking about how should i approach a problem, now if i want to implement a feature in my game then i would try to do that by myself without goggling it, thanks for making this video helped me a lot to be a good programmer and problem solver.
Facts!!! I just started coding and after 3 days, I called my buddy who has been coding for years. I said holy crap, is this what you do? He said "yep, just google it". Which I have been, but now I have a insight to his career that I never had. Coming from a blue collar workers background luckily I have learned to try everything then ask. Pretty much if I'm asking, I have spent hours trying to figure it out. Only way to learn. I train new people the same way. I'll make you run a round a bit to find the answer, it really helps since while you are looking for that answer you will learn other things that you won't have to ask about later. Thanks so much for your videos and encouragement. A week ago I had never coded before, now I put my kids hand drawn characters into the game and they love it. My 8 year old daughter even told me when we had a problem that it was probably the boxCollider2d. I was very impressed and happy. She told me that she learned it from me. Thanks so much.
I asked my Mandalorian on my desk why my game doesn't work and he said "This is the way". I won't be asking him again. Yeah I'm doing everything myself, even music, and it can be pretty soul crushing at times. I often run into that issue which I think you've mentioned of where your dreams/ideas are way up there but your skills are way down here. So I have to adapt what I'm doing to fit my skills. I've had an issue with growing skills though where over the years I'd be working on something and get quite a ways with it but then think, Hang on, now my skills have grown doing this game, I could make that game I couldn't before! Genius! Lets drop this perfectly reasonable prototype or game and move onto this more complex game! But then half a year later... Hang on... now my skills have grown... AAAARRRGGHHH!
i am a successful modder who created a very well rounded modding team etc, I am now trying to transition into making a quality professional game from scratch and watching this has made me aware of how reliant i have been on my mod development team, I was already aware of it, but I was not aware that it was necessarily a bad thing to be, so thank you for making this video, it has opened my eyes and made me realize I need to stop being lazy and start putting more effort into learning everything i possibly can to ensure I am growing in the direction needed to succeed later on. 😘
15:01 This is due to having an experience of being undeservingly punished just for failing or making mistakes, mostly in their childhood, either from parent, teacher, or literally anyone. Please remember that. It's a major root cause of fear of failure and fear of making mistakes. It's the stupid punishment that they thought would work but it only did the opposite of the intended.
I usually don't comment on videos here on TH-cam but this is so spot on. It is so obvious, after your thoughts on the matter, that this is something that alot of people suffer from. I see it on a daily basis in the "general" software development industry but haven't been aware of it to the point that I am now. I believe that it extends to being too reliant on Google as well, to some degree you need to develop your skillset so that you don't have to rely on Google to solve simple problems. One example that came to mind where this is so apparent is when you are undergoing a technical interview, for most people this is a situation where you have to perform when you don't feel as comfortable googling how to solve simple problems. There is such a big difference during these situations between a software developer that doesn't feel comfortable working with simple data structures, algorithms, inheritance and so on compared to someone that is more self reliant. Anyways, sorry for the long response. Love your content, keep up the good work! Sincerely, an aspiring game dev.
Excellent video 👍. I'm self educating in game design, for fun at the moment, to see where i get. I choose to code in 32bit ARM assembly language using only integer instructions. Being self reliant has taught me so much. I have learnt how to implement COS & SIN in an integer framework and the process has lead me to being able to implement an ATAN2 function. Sprite drawing i have pushed back my boundaries by simply saying it's not good enough, clipping i had to use my skills and come up with novel ways as the target machines can only draw word aligned ( every 4 pixels in 8 bit colour ) and i wanted pixel alignement, collision detection i wanted to do pixel detection rather than AABB detection because of the nature of my sprites and this lead to googling a plenty until i found a formula that i converted to assembly. I absolutely agree with what you say and to sum up what you've said, i believe it simply comes down to the old saying, its the journey to the solution that is important and not the solution so much. The journey gives far more knowledge than the result. Thank you for essentially giving me confidence that im on the right path
Very good and useful tip for beginners like myself. I'm basically 6 months in. And at first I fully relied on tutorials and Google. But as times passed, I found out that often times I spent hours trying to find a solution online or on discord servers that was simple and easy to implement if I thought about it a bit more and understood what steps ware needed to be done to achieve this. My last thing was cuphead and contra like 8-way shooting - I searched for days on how to implement this with no results... But after I just thought about it and understood what needed to be done and then I did it in 2h. Now I understand Unity animation system, animation layers ect. much clearer and It will help me implement a lot of things in the future much easier. So for some things I still rely on tutorials and ask around on discord... But mostly I try to figure things out myself and this makes me remember everything much better and clearer and be able to reuse these skills in the future.
Ive been a programmer for many many years and hes 100% right about the technology gap. there was a time i used to have to write my own drivers in the game/app for the most common video devices... audio devices, mice types... it was crazy times.
What you’re saying is so true!! Honestly there were also other habits I had to eliminate while starting to code an AR music app in unity. I quickly learned that you have to solve things yourself and squeeze as much juice as you can out of the answers that people give. It’s pretty addictive to get a mad idea and implement it into your game/app. Especially when you solve it mostly by your mind and not being spoon fed. I remember fearing the mistakes though. Some mistakes from 9 months ago came back to haunt me later 😂. Soon to be done thankfully
It’s so easy to fall into that trap of instant knowledge rather than trying just a bit longer for that eureka moment. Everyone’s been on both sides and the latter is definitely the most rewarding.
You are spot-on, this is so vital. This helped me soo much in my first job in the industry. The problem with this though is sometimes I might spend too long on a task trying to solve the problem.
I've worked as a web developer for 7 years now and started my first (and current) job more or less as a green programmer. And what you say in the video is very true and resonates with me. It makes me feel ashamed. I've gotten stuck in the loop of asking lazy questions and feel like I never really "gotten it" and I often feel imposter syndrome. I of course knew this before watching the video but it's good to be reminded. Some of my collegues that has started after me has run past me in skill and I never really felt like a coder or that I cared as much as them about getting good. But I really love programming when I solve problems myself, and can help others. Now I'm about to start working for a new company and I really want a fresh start and grow as an independant programmer and step up my game.
Man you are so down to hearth, I thank you for being that voice in the future to guide Unity enthusiasts like me, I really feel like you are an older version of me (not calling you old just older than me) thanks again for such good content.
What a fantastic video! One of the best things to ever happen to me was when I was 6 months into a part time IT job with zero prior experience, all of the other IT Techs (which was two) left within a month of each other, I was literally IT for this organisation (100 users or so at the time). It was not fun, I had many stress filled days, BUT I learned a hell of a lot because there was no one else to rely on. 9 years later, the IT team has grown as well as the organisation (200 or so now) we have a relatively new team member who basically can't do anything without a document or whatever to follow, drives me nuts.
this is good insight. i developed the nucleus of a new game during covid, working in my basement alone for a year. it worked out - it's been picked up by a major publisher and I am now a member of a team that is working on it. but to your point here, my self reliance skills were poor at the start, and pretty good at the end. it was a necessity for sure. but the pitfall for me was the lack of other perspectives. adding other people was a huge boon in creativity and on the technical side, even though i managed on my own.
I just want to say that these talks you give to us are very valueable. It's not just about gamedev, it's about life. I am realising that gamedevelopment is hard now, but you know, life is hard too. I just really want to do this, so I will be willing to try and fail. Get back up again and work my way up. I believe it is worth it!
With anything for my job and programming, it's pretty obvious when I'm working with something relatively new to me and have a question that I am not the only person in the world to have ever had this issue. A little Google nearly always finds someone asking the exact same basic question. When you get more advanced into a topic and have a question, you're less likely to find the answer with Google, but I usually have developed the skills by then to figure it out by myself, and 99% I do.
I think what a lot of Unity game developers need to learn is basic C#. I see so many people who learned coding just for Unity and as a result don't understand the answers to their problems, even when they are told what to do. Half of beginner developers don't know basic C#.
I don't have any programming friends, so I have no choice but to figure things out myself. An experience I've had recently was trying to develop an inventory system for my game. I worked through several tutorials, but could not find the specific solution I was seeking. Finally, in a fit of frustration, I decided to "push the easy button" and buy an asset off the Unity Asset Store (specifically, the Opsive Ultimate Inventory System). The problem with that, is that it was so complex and over complicated that it would have taken me nearly a year to figure out how to use it properly. In the end, I went back to one of the tutorials I had worked through and made that work.
Fairly late to the party but I'll put my chip in; I'm primarily more of an artist than a programmer, but I have enough experience with both to say with confidence that they both require the same amount of troubleshooting and problem solving, and initially when I was learning to draw people or environments I had to rely on tutorials for every little thing. I couldn't ever come up with my own methods to do things. The result was that my art was inconsistent, stiff, and could never really look unique or like I had any sense of identity. The day when I finally broke free of that was when I had to paint a galaxy in my OC's hand. No matter where I looked, I couldn't find a tutorial that taught how to do that, so instead I had to pull up some Hubble images of galaxies that looked like what I wanted and piece out exactly how to do it. I've been doing art for 8 years now, and I pretty much never look for specific mentorship or tutorials anymore. Still though, I've met tons of artists trapped in that phase where they can't do anything without guidance and never have the ability to improvise or decide their own path. It's a sad state to be in, mostly because you're so restricted in what you can do.
It's interesting your final thoughts on mentorship. I think it depends on your mentor. A good mentor and student relationship will actually encourage the student to think for themselves. The best teachers teach you how to think and problem solve yourself.
Absolutely. I think the self help market has really corrupted the word and concept of mentorship. I've likely had many mentors in my life, but it was never 'official' - rather people who organically passed through each others lives and offered guidance. I do this for others - but I cringe when I hear people talk about mentorship in most cases.
Totally agree. I’m building a roguelike in Vanilla JS and the lack of libraries in the game so far keeps me self-reliant. (I do see Electron JS in my future though…) I’ll have to think about how to wire the game to peripherals though, that’s a good point. Really enjoy your vids.
i also think the ability to break down things into smaller parts it an extremely useful skill for game dev. so many times i see people posting "how do i made a _____ game" and they often never find the answer because the question is too vague. rather you could break it down into smaller steps, "making a topdown character" "making room generation". The smaller your questions the easier it will be to find out the answers yourself
I appreciate what you're saying. I do find it hard to know how to google what I'm looking for but that takes time. I do realize that gamedev will always require a certain level of help from others or paying them. I hate when I get to a point I really have no clue what to do & have to ask for help. Thank you.
Yeah 😂😂😂😂 and most of us feel bad about it. There is a pressure, specially from inside to be that keeper of occult knowledge. That's why I started to threat programming more as an "criminal investigation". You have your case, and have to search for clues, connect the dots, talk to people. It's changed the world for me...
Experienced programmers know what's the best tool for every problem. Google is one of the tools but it doesn't do your work. The whole process is called engineering.
Only one thing I think was missed and that is PASSION. Passion for what you do and create shows, it can truly radiate from some people and it can help enormously with anything you do. You really must have a passion for what you do - otherwise its just 'a job' and Its not something you are going to be overly enthusiastic about, nor use your passion to overcome the pebbles/boulders or slings and arrows of adversity that may come your way. When you do - it will drive you on to actually want to overcome obstacles, and want to use google search properly, and want to check the answers you get! That is a key component lacking in many corporate driven AAA games that are released - there really is a lack of true passion about yet another - first person shooter (for example) - they may have spectacle and fancy graphics, but they are soul-less, and Im sure some people who work on them rather wish they were making something they were actually passionate about. Rather than have someone else (usually a head marketing person or CEO) say "this is a passion project for the team" - when that person is only passionate about one thing - sales, and not the actual game itself.
There was this time when I wanted to add water to my platformer, I was still a beginner at the time so my first thought was that I could look up a tutorial on TH-cam. I just continued working on my game, leaving the water system for later. A week had passed and I was lost in thought while taking out the trash. I started thinking about how water works in games, what sold the concept. Then it hit me, water is like air but with more buoyancy. I instantly started thinking of ways to achieve this buoyancy. I ran back into my house and programmed for the better half of the day and in the end, I had a simple water/swimming system. I was ecstatic, nothing beats engineering solutions to problems on your own, your new understanding stays with you forever. So...yeah, self-reliance is very important.
Genius
Sry I’m so late here but I love these epiphanies. Sounds like a solid solution and congrats. Did you release your game?
@@ionmedicaldesigns8122 Thanks a lot! I didn't end up releasing it but it ended up being a fun passion project.
Here's my 10 cents:
Throughout my game dev journey, the hardest thing that I had to UNLEARN, which corresponds with the arguments brought up here, was the systematic spoon feeding that was a huge part of my schooling. For 14 years our lives are planned out on a roster, nothing we have to plan out on our own. When I attended college I was left completely on my own. That's how the world works. It makes me wish they gave us more responsibility in school. It was just tests, and in high school it was really boring. And I never really studied, because everything was always covered during class.
Everything I've done up until now, was all me. I had to find my own solutions, find my own material, secure my own time and manage myself. The first week I was so burned out that I ate, slept, showered and brushed my teeth in nothing but game dev. This was mainly because of a fear of failure. In school I was on top, and all of a sudden, I was a worm again, studying something I had absolutely no prior knowledge off.
Totally agreed with you. World wide school systems are completely outdated (Most of them at least). They just give you things to learn: Math, Language, Science, History, Art. But they NEVER teach you HOW to learn things. I saw (and suffer) this issue you point out in my days, and I'm watching the same pattern with my kids now.
Learn TO LEARN should be the most important skill they should teach kids. Cause when you finish high-school and realize you don't have it, things got really hard for most young people.
since i always hated the slow learning systems, unlearning that was something i never had to do
i have the opposite problem, asking for help. i used to feel a pit in my stomach, feeling like i was the dumbest, "why couldn't i figure even THAT out on my own"
That's so true. The government life pipeline doesn't introduce responsibility or self management. I think I was fooled by it that I don't need to work as hard.
you mean adulting ? , been doing that shit since I was 16
i didn't get a dime..
I fully agree with you. My tip is, never stop on the first link that appear on Google search. Sometimes the answer is on the 10th page of the search, you need to be patient.
I created a heuristic that I follow. First I search for the question I have using my own words. Then if I don't find the objective answer, I start looking every single link and take note of the keywords that repeat most of the time. Then I reformulate my search introducing the new keyword.
For example. I search: "game programming eliminate tearing". The most common word in the results is "v-sync". Then I search "game implement v-sync". This could lead me to the keywords "double buffer". So, I repeat the search "game implement double buffer".
Well, you get the idea. The goal is to start with a more generic search term and then go all the way down to a more specific search term
I work in IT and there's a guy in our office that has this dead eyed stare while you explain a problem to him. The first thing he asks is "did you Google it?" if you don't explain what you tried to solve it. The idea of talking to that guy motivates me to make sure I tried everything before talking to him. He's grumpy as hell, but I'm a better tech because of it
There needs to be a balance when it comes to self-reliance or self-accountability. There are people who blame others on their problems, expect everything to be handed to them and they don't try to do anything on their own. But then you have people who are afraid to ask for help, or refuse to ask for help because they think it's more virtuous to do it on their own, or whatever reason they just refuse to get help or a mentor or anything. Success requires both, to be self-accountable as well as willing to accept help from others.
@MustafaGameDev I can relate to your comment. I started my GameDev jurney 8 months ago. Never before coded a single line. I first started with course 3D Unity and I was really confused by the end. I learned few bits but the majority I just didnt understand. Then I changed and started lerning pure C# for well over 3 months. Lerned all the basic stuff and some advance stuff. Then I started with my solo projects. Until now I have created 2 games. On first game I used structure from a youtube tutorial and solo added stuff I thought it would make the game better. During this period I chalenged myself to search online for answers and tried stuff myself. I really pushed myself to do it solo. I only have one person to ask for help anyway (do not have many programers as friends). But this is the part where I relate to your post. Sometimes I was really stuck and didnt know how to move forward. Wanted to ask for live help, coz I couldnt find anything online. But instead I kept trying myself. I conviced myself not to ask anyone and to do it solo, otherwise I will fail as a programer and start relying on others. I want to learn to be independent and rely on my own skills to search what I want and need. Now my 2nd game I fully created solo. I stated to make mobile game which I never learned how to do it. But month have passed now I do stuff all on my own. Of course I ask ChatGPT stuff coz I am still learning, but I really try my best to limit myself from making things easy. I want to understand the logic and how stuff operate and that is the thing that drives me to become even better. BTW @LostRelicGames great video. Thank you for all your thoughts and videos.
My favorite meme: WHAT I SAY: I'm a software developer
WHAT PEOPLE HEAR: I can repair your computer, fix your internet, configure your printer, revive your phone, set up your email and hack into any system. All for free.
WHAT I MEAN: I can google better than the average bear.
^ shouldn't that be pig ?
lol true
I love your down to earth approach to both game development and the way you address people's questions in a complete manner.
Some people mentioned school here, I think that's the main issue we have. Children don't have a good space to make mistakes and not being judged harshly for them. That's essentially what grades do to you. It doesn't help that some parents also obsess over that, and other people judge you too. On top of social media showing you how much you really suck compared to the best of the best, making mistakes will look unappealing to most people, except psychopaths or something.
I think it has also something to do with... ignoring mistakes. If you score 75% on a test, you did get 25% of it wrong, but it's good enough and you move on, you'll never improve on those 25%. But that's not how life work, if you fail 25% of what you do, you're kind of doing a shitty job. It's ok to make mistakes, but you need to learn from them and that's not how school work.
@@randomrandom450 The problem is that school spoonfeeds you much information that is unimportant. I make games since a ful year, taught C# (and oop in general) by myself and I now have a strong expertice when working with C#. We started covering oop and C# in school around 2 months ago and following to you I should get 100 % in the tests since I already good at that, what is not the case. I can write really good code, but my tests results are around 70-80 % because the tests ask for unimportant knowledge that you are going to forget instantly anyway.
@@bluefake_or_smt You missed my point. You should not get 100%, but you should learn from the things you got wrong. Grades are pointless, exams are pointless, those are not goals, those are not achievements, they are measurements.
Irl, it's ok to make mistakes, you learn from them, then you do better next time. In school, you make a mistake, then you move on to something else and you never learn from that mistake. Irl, you build on your knowledge, so fixing those mistakes give you a stronger foundation to build on, so you can try new things, make new mistakes, learn again and get that foundation stronger and stronger.
@@randomrandom450 It's not comparable though because schools and universities use a very artificial means of testing what people know. In the real world you'd have access to books and people. At school they say solve this all on your own within this time limit. In the real world they say work on this, but research and collaborate as needed.
@@bluefake_or_smt Knowledge is a good in itself. Therefore whether schools teach something for which someone might have a practical application is not particularly relevant. Also what is relevant in coding is going to depend on what you do. No school can teach you only whatever the niche you're targeting or current code requires.
Being 51 and starting my programming/game dev journey way back in 1981 i couldn't agree with you more. Im old school and really enjoy doing every thing from the ground up, that way i understand every line of code and gain complete control.
that sounds amazing. My coder side wants to do that, but it will consume me too much time. Still, an amazing path to follow.
I'm a little older than you, and remember worrying that I was perhaps losing my problem-solving edge once "just google it" became a debugging technique. That's one reason why, if you're a professional, it's good to have side projects you work on in your own time. That way, you can choose to exercise those self-reliance muscles, without being forced by time pressure to take the lazy way out.
@@SheeplessNW6 yeah, I remember hearing a joke about how development is just copying and changing code from code stack. Once you understand how it all works together, and you're caught in that flow state where you just type and get something that works exactly how you expect it to... That's the greatest feeling in the world
Deep understanding of a subject/language/library is something very very few people invest in in the software field nowadays. Most devs sadly have an amazingly superficial understanding of everything - which is fine most of the time. The most successful ones ride the waves of tech jargon and trends. But, it's because very few build anything from the ground up without a step by step tutorial or a 2 week course.
I've seen projects change core dependencies breaking tons of code instead of starring for half an hour at the debugger for a bug.
True. Without sarcasm, even creating your own RDMS to work and continue to work EXACTLY the way you want it to without surprises is becoming increasingly tempting to me.
Regarding the "reliancy trap", which I sometimes call the inability to synthesize knowledge or sometimes "learned helplessness":
I am confident that it is more of a matter of upbringing than laziness: To a degree it makes sense when you tell you 1.5 year old child that he is not allowed to cut his meal with a knife, or handle expensive electronics, other dangerous situations, but after a degree, after a certain age it becomes damaging, and the vast majority of people grow up to be forever incapable of making certain decisions on their own and figure things out on their own.
Then there is also a fear of failure. Rather than try and fail most people just avoid challenges altogether.
And SCHOOL. School DRILLS THIS reliancy trap into minds to a colossal degree! The whole system is set up that way. The curriculum is set up that way. Teachers are that way, and so on. School is a curse on the 21st century.
There are other factors as well, but I believe that many of them play a much bigger role than laziness.
My second time watching one of your vids. Good stuff.
As you say, having the initiative and drive to improve yourself through independent research & concrete experience w/o relying on others as a crutch is essential to being an effective person (in any discipline, I would imagine). Furthermore, it's important to recognize one's own limits as well: "You don't know what you don't know". After due diligence, asking questions is okay and even encouraged.
As for stories, I have 2, one heard second-hand at my workplace and one of my own.
First:
Small team of devs (~5) maintaining ~20 small/medium web apps. Each person manages a subset with 0-1 backups (big oof already, but don't truly have time/bandwidth to keep everyone up-to-speed). Per usual, work needs doing for a new app and 1 dev is assigned to it. When asked for regular status updates, the dev gives positive updates of making progress as they toil away in isolation. It was only after an extended period, upon a direct inspection of their work, that the team discovered the developer had been struggling alone, made little relative progress given the timeline, and never asked for help when they had clearly needed it. What were their stated reasons for doing so? How did this happen? They said...
a) they didn't want to interrupt others' work and slow down others,
b) they wished to develop their own skills and so just did all of the work by themselves (like what you are encouraging - again, not necessarily a bad thing),
c) they didn't want to appear weak/inferior/ineffective/inefficient to their coworkers/boss when it came time for performance reviews, and
d) they were already naturally introverted and preferred working alone rather than having a lot of interaction with other people.
These anxieties, interests/goals, and biases combined to actually cause all of the exact issues they wanted to avoid:
a) the project suffered a severe slowdown since critical parts weren't ready that affected everyone's work,
b) they ultimately never devised adequate solutions because they did not couple their individual work with regular, guided feedback,
c) their performance review tanked as their more severe soft skill deficiencies came to light (namely, the willingness and eagerness to communicate and collaborate), and
d) due to the lack of reliability, they now had more in-person oversight than they ever would have had before (until they learned to fix the aforementioned soft skills).
In my opinion though, I believe the true culprit in this instance was poor management. If the "status updates" had involved clearly defined, intermediate deliverables and internal code reviews, then all manner of problems would've been caught far earlier regardless of the individual person's anxieties or biases (this has long since been fixed at my workplace).
Second:
With regard to mentorships, I went straight from a fundamentals-focused CS degree (C/C++/Java, OOP/algorithm analysis/SWE/Networking/OS/build & ship a complete app) straight into webdev with almost NO experience in HTML/CSS/JS/browsers, PHP/C#/servers, SQL/databases. Naturally, due to my lack of experience, I was assigned a mentor who would review my work and guide my growth. They were the best mentor I could have asked for, so I'll explain what they did in case it proves helpful for others:
1. Tasks: occasional pair programming sessions on his own projects (I code, he guides). Independent small assignments with code reviews every 1 or 2 weeks.
2. Nature: generally took a socratic approach that focused more on prompting my thinking, questioning my assumptions, and, where applicable, breaking out of that to provide context on any institutional/industry knowledge/history/background that I wouldn't be able to simply look up on my own. Rather than telling me what to do/write, he would ask me to share my own theories on what the ideal approach would be, how I might do that in webdev or the language specifically, and how I could go about implementing it. If at any point my thought process was lacking anything, he would fill in the blanks. Examples: "did you consider what happens if X assumption is invalid? How would you address that?", "that would be ideal, but unfortunately we can't because X. Given that, what's our next best option?", "(knowing) yeah, doesn't seem to work. What do you think the problem is? Have you verified that? How so? Is that the correct way to verify it?", etc.
3. Research: in the above workflows, we would both look things up as needed, and if ever he found a solution long before me, we would go over the differences in HOW we had conducted our search (which resources did we use, what terms or phrase did we look for, why did we prioritize one answer vs. disregarding/ignoring another, etc.).
4. Experimentation: whenever I had an idea about how I felt I could improve software design or an algorithm - even when it was something he himself did not believe was the best option - he would very purposefully give me the freedom to do so nonetheless while warning me about the potential issues I would need to watch out for. And while I would inevitably succumb to the exact issues he described in my quest to "improve" things, it was important that he gave me the time and opportunity to fail on my own, so that I would internalize the experience and understand intimately WHY the thought process was faulty rather than simply knowing it was supposed to be faulty at a high level w/o actually experiencing it. The strength of this freedom would then bear fruit on occasion when my creativity and novel approaches resulted in surprisingly effective/inspired solutions that the team had never previously considered.
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Given the topics that you covered in the video (sticking to fields of study you are good at, acknowledging and working with one's lack of knowledge/experience), I'm not so sure that "self-reliance" is the best term to encourage since, as mentioned in my first story and in your video, it can be perverted into a problematic, isolationist attitude. Putting the emphasis on the "self" precludes any understanding that incorporates the team while "reliability" likewise precludes an acknowledment of one's limitations. Despite that, we still want to convey the idea that...
1. one should keep their focus on the development of their skills ("teach a man to fish").
2. one should go through the hard work of consistent, independent education by trial and error to rapidly internalize lessons (fail fast).
3. one should take the initiative to do all this of their own accord rather than waiting on others (no lazy questions, develop confidence in your own decisions by MAKING decisions).
Perhaps a more appropriate phrase would be "proactive discipline"? Morph the term into one that places emphasis on what one should actually do, and how, in a manner that produces the desired end-state as a side-effect:
A. "proactive" directly covers point 3 while still conveying an implicit "self" component by means of directing one to take action.
B. "discipline" in this context has two-fold meaning: both as a field of study (point 1) and as dedicated, consistent pursuit of the aforementioned field of study (point 2). This places the emphasis not on the person's ability to solve a problem themselves, but rather on their ability to apply themselves towards a discipline WITH a disciplined approach. This principle instills a focus on the core, essential lessons that themselves prompt action and *naturally* lead one to develop productive self-reliance as a by-product without leeway for negative interpretations. It also segways clearly into critical realizations of how one's disciplines may be many, varied, and require unification into an interdisciplinary team that collaborates to achieve its goals.
"give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime"
That's why you should never fix any printing problems for nobody. Ever.
I think it is pretty cool that you talked about how reading Unity documentation is a skill. When I first started game dev years ago, I didn't understand most of the Unity Doc pages. It was almost gibberish to me. It took me some time to understand how documentation is supposed to be used.
Also, I was trained to program by a senior dev. Basically, I would do something, he would tell me something I could have done better as far as having clean, re-usable code. Then he would mention a new programming trick I hadn't learned yet, and would tell me to study it, and implement it into my code. If it was something complicated, he would show me the advantages of it without teaching me fully how to do it. Now, 3 years later, I am a very skilled programmer/engineer for a designer. So I now work as a rapid prototyper at my company.
Great video! :)
Maybe the Unity documentation is actually good. In my experience most programming documentation is poorly written though.
I’ve been watching lots of indie dev videos for the past few months, and each has all sorts of wisdom nuggets here and there. None have been more useful, and more convicting, than this one. Thanks for sharing!
My experience is somewhat opposite. What he’s saying makes sense for his journey. I am hesitant to ask for help- so much so I needlessly struggled. I’m trying to teach myself to ask for help. Like anything it is balance. I’ve not found many people asking stupid questions- a non sassy helpful hand is a good approach- if only a link to a good TH-cam video that covers the problem.
Great advice, I realized this on my own after my last frustration break. The main point is that YOU CAN figure it out IF you really want to.
You're 100% right I jumped into my first Unity project where I'm trying to make an open-world survival game and it was so difficult, after taking a step back and doing some beginner Unity courses on Udemy, then doing some small game jams it really helps working on smaller things, and as time goes on your project will become too specific to jump into random youtube tutorials to really fix anything.
For many software/game dev skills, the early friction is painful and frustrating. But then you start to see the high-level patterns and things become exponentially easier. But one thing I must stress is how important it is to learn the fundamentals. I’ve been programming for years, but it was when I learned C that I felt finally confident in programming with Unreal, Unity, or any engine I desire.
An old video BUT.. Still very relevant! Thanx for sharing this ;)
I think one of the things you need to ask yourself when doing GameDev is "Can I do this myself? Can I learn this skill fast, understand it, and use it in a short period of time?" If the answer is Yes, then just do it. Don't be afraid to dive into new things if you like it. I'm a game designer, programmer, 3d artist (model and animation) and musician. Of course I still had a lot to learn on each of those skills, but I'm confident I can do it.
As a dayjob I work as IT. And absolutely agreed with you about the stupid questions. People just ask things because it's easy to ask, than take 10 seconds of their lives, stop, think, google, and if can't found the solution, then ask the question. I realize when people came to me and ask me after doings some research, I'm totally willing to help them. On the other hand, when they came and say "Doesn't work, I don't know, I don't understand anything of this, and I don't care. Not my thing". That inevitably leads to a "not so happy" answer.
Thank you so much for telling us your own experiences in the path.
Yep , had the same realization as a 3d artist, rigger, animator. Realized I shouldn't try to learn coding if I want my game to release in the next 2 years. So I looking for programmers. Nowi have help and I can do what I'm good at and he works his magic
Brother, this was gold. Hard words that we all need to hear. Coding is really hard for me and I only recently broke through. I can say to anyone else who is struggling that I feel your pain. It's ok to ask for help but try to always sweat before you do. When you figure something out for yourself, the feeling of satisfaction is incomparable.
Hey bud! I am very inspired by your videos, unfortunately I found you after 1 year of starting developping my first Indie game at age 34. I can feel every single word you said in your video that has already been happening through the whole year! I appeciate your passion and friendly approach to keep us motivated knowing that you are feeling the same as us! Keep it bro!
Hey man nice to hear from you, glad you could take something from the video. Wishing you the best with your game!
thanks man@@LostRelicGames
I wish you Good luck for your game too! Already Wishlisted@@LostRelicGames
this hit me hard. one of my biggest insecurities is learning C# and C++ for game engines FOR ABOUT 3 YEARS NOW, and not knowing how to use them outside of it. I even look at how games were made for the SNES and such, but it all looks so complicated! That aside, im glad youre still very active, Lost Relic Games!
I really like this video. There is also another aspect to Google searching some people miss....I always google search my issues before trying to post on any forum (and I understand that MANY people use forums AS their search without actually using Google), but sometimes I found that my google searches failed because I was using incorrect terminology or phrased them incorrectly or TOO specifically... and when I post the question to a forum I get met with the "Perhaps you should Google it" answer (Not very often tho) which ends up pissing me off. So, understanding the issue you are having should be, I think, your first stop in google. Search for the information that defines what you are trying to accomplish FIRST, then, once you have a better understanding of what you are using (what the main-stream conventional name is or whatever) then Google your specific issue (sometimes researching the topic as a whole ends up answering my question indirectly) and then move on from there.
"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
Wait. Your desk Yoshi "usually" doesn't respond when you ask it a question? What happened the other time!?
This is so true! There weren't any helpfull tutorials and assets available earlier. Also, If Unity was available earlier to me I would be a game developer earlier :) We do live in a time where we have all the tools we need...we just need patience and trust ourselves more to solve problems (challenges) :) Love your Vlogs, can't wait for your game ! :D
Thank you, I think every beginning game dev falls into this trap early on especially, wanting the answers served up for them rather than finding it themselves. It's a real crutch and a constant struggle.
I'll start posting this video as a response to anyone who asks others to do the work for them. Thank you.
this is the vid i needed 10 years ago haha - learning the hard way though has its benefits... really hammers this lesson into your head. When im at a total loss and i go to the communities that have been helpful, just writing out the question as clearly as possible really helps the answer manifest itself. So much so that I rarely post the question these days
I’ll be honest I didn’t expect this to be so spot on. Great video. I share your same observations
Brilliant! Thank you.
Also Indie devs have another advantage. If stuck somewhere can continue to work in another area and return to the problem area later. Everything become easier to understand after some time and brain produces ideas by itself without effort, just needs time and work on something else.
I really thought he was gonna say something discouraging but wow the ability to derive answers from one's own self and remain autonomous can really drive you to complete a personal project, one as tumultuous as game development. thanks for the insight
My kids are learning independence and self reliance but they keep seeing me posing the question back “what have you tried?” And the blank stare back tells me I need to help them help themselves.
This is absolutely true. I started doing game development (taking it seriously at least) over 15 years ago and when I got started I was living in a rural area with satellite internet that was too slow to watch a video and could barely browse the web, and it also wasn't reliable. I had to sometimes drive to a public library to download a new DirectX SDK and documentation. There weren't tutorials for everything and you had to literally figure out how to initialize your application window, get a loop going with variable and fixed time-step, create a D3DDevice interface and make your own renderer. People don't realize how easy we've got it nowadays with Unity and Unreal. Back in the day, engines were for corporations and rich people, lol, you'd better learn DirectX or OpenGL, or later on we were blessed with XNA. If you can't solve your own problems with research, if you don't read lots of books and pursue knowledge and if you don't love code and solving technical challenges you won't make it in the game industry.
Honestly, this is one of the best videos on this subject that I ever seen. I've found this video really motivating and very helpful.
I watch a ton of "mentor" videos (hard to avoid them, they're half of TH-cam by now), but your delivery, expression and wise words are unmatched.
I just sent your video to my team of 200 developers. Thanks, very good summary!
In my previous job, I used to give my co-workers vouchers for questions. They had 3 vouchers a day, and they had to give away one voucher by question asked. Very efficient to reduce interruption.
I started writing games back when the sole bit of info was a book that literally had the chipset specification from the chipset manufacturer (6502). So many times we've been faced with exactly that, just a book with the registers of the chip and some technical specifications. Hell there wasn't even a triangle rasterizer for the PS2 when we first got that. Point being, that there's a tendency to not have any robust response to challenge, especially as information becomes more freely available. Imagine someone who can't even google the simple coding statement usage taking on a brand new platform without any libraries? I guess maybe this is an issue for the Unity/Unreal Engine usage crowd too.
100% agree. I think it's important to not over-rely on google as well, though. I overcame reliance on others, but now find myself requiring validation from a google search on a working solution of mine, which is usually a waste of time and can even turn into procrastination. I try to send people to documentation or general resources when it overlaps with a lazy question of theirs.
Self-reliance is something that I had to kind of help teach the first semester CS students at my university when I worked as a TA. I loved the first class. Programming was so interesting to me when it was all about learning what you could do. The TA system basically worked so that students were basically being taught self-sufficiency in practice by having a list of resources to check before ever even asking a TA for help. Not all students followed it and overly depended on us, but I often would just point them to the resources (here's your textbook, here's some helpful ways to get help with your question on Google by breaking down the problem, etc.). I 100% agree that learning how to solve problems by understanding what the problem(s) are is simply a necessary skill for programming and engineering in general. Persistence, knowing your resources, figuring out how find out what your resources are if you don't know what is available, asking good questions, exhausting your search paths, etc.
A very good video. A very good message. Goes WAAAAY beyond game development. Thanks!
As someone very new to game dev, this advice will go a long way, thank you for this!
Self reliance is the most essential skill in life and it's great that it can be discussed and explored in game dev. Excellent.
Totally agree. Been a hobbyist all my life, freelancer now, hoping to get my first title on Steam next year, already published on apple and android. Anyway, yes... self reliance is absolutely vital. Anyone who is skilled will most likely be asked or involved in helping others, this is fine - all work is practice and it can be beneficial to push your own envelope outside of your influence. Like helping someone add a feature that you don't have experience with, but would be able to help figure it out - it provides that first draft of a method that is ready for when you need it. The more you practice the better you get, do not be precious about your code, rewrite, refactor, and you will improve - the previous draft is always made redundant as code and methods improve through repetition. Be prepared to learn what you need, to spend the time you need, and understand that the absolute best way to learn is through necessity... the more you need it, the better and faster you will learn it - use that!. Do not be afraid of any language - a language is just syntax, and usually libraries that have been written by people who know exactly what they need to know - you do not have to understand everything, the main thing to know is program flow and logic - and that tends to be the same no matter what language you use. If you can get to understanding C, then you already know the syntax and enough to learn most other languages. Really, these days they write entire games in scripts, why worry too much about things like languages - learn the techniques, learn to learn, and use the right tool for the job. When it comes to choosing an engine, remember that there are great languages that have engine style features, like terrains, skyboxes, collision, music, sound etc etc - like AppGameKit for example - but don't come burdoned with all the stuff that Unity and Unreal come with... sometimes you make your game engine so you can make it fast and efficient, it only needs to do what you need it to do - so why bloat or burdon something if you can help it. Look at all the development options out there, try as many as you can, and go back to them after a week or so as well - you will find something that clicks, then you have a foundation to build upon. Sorry to ramble, if you read all that I salute you sir!
You were saying verbalize your problem. For me this is huge, I created a discord server it has 2 friends of mine on it that follow my project but rarely comment. The whole chat is basically me explaining my decisions and typing out my issues (and eventual solutions) the perspective shift is real!
Once I type it out I can usually see what wrong turn I've taken and at very worst am able to aticulate clearly what I need to plug into Google or make a pointed question to other developers
Great video thanks for sharing your knowledge 👍
There have been multiple instances where I've created a worse version of an existing feature due to my lack of experience, but were greatly improved after watching videos and seeing what other people have done better.
For beginners it's okay to be reliant because you're still learning. Ofc at some point you should be able to apply all the tools you've learned for new mechanics and projects.
Fantastic video and I couldn't agree more! Learning how to learn is just the most valuable life skill, both in and outside of gamedev. Thanks for making this 🙏
I have noticed that over the years I have developed this sort of... technical intuition. When there is a major problem, I can, most of the time, figure it all out in my head. I have this feeling where you need to dig to find your answers and can fill in the solution with some research on the web. After a few years I would classify this skill as my prime success factor that has allowed me to get as far as I did. The skill to have a few dozen roads ahead of you to solve a problem and somehow knowing which one to pick.
You speak a hard truth. I am trying to solo game dev and have to do everything myself but I thankfully enjoy the work I am doing. I don't have anything to show off yet but having personal drive is a BIG step towards moving forward. I find that scanning TH-cam helps me solve most, if not, ALL my questions and I am better for it. Only times I have posted questions is on certain videos where I am looking for an opinion versus direct direction. One of the best bits of advice I heard in a video is that it is better to learn how to code via studying others instead of just copying all your code. That way eventually you'll be able to code on your own. A lot to learn, thank you again for your video.
I'm old enough to have experienced that age of early internet and books. When I was in college and even earlier, I learned to look for the knowledge I needed to do my stuff myself first. I always tried search for my own answers first. Sure we all need a base to do something new. For this, I did an ungodly number of visits to the local library to gather knowledge and them apply. The books never gave me a ready to use recipe, but were the catalyst for my own creations. I'm in an odd position in respect to game development. Now I'm a senior software developer trying to do my own games. I'm pretty good with the development part, but I know for a fact I need to learn about game design, narrative, art etc. Self-reliance those topics too and for me is a skill I learned and that is paying off very well now. It is hard, but in the long term is invaluable. No matter what skill you need to hone, self-reliance is an important ingredient to game dev and personal growth.
I'm in the same boat. I didn't realise self reliance is a skill until I stumbled upon this video. I thought it was just a mix of experience and personality traits, but after listening to this video it has become clear to me that it's something I have learned like any other skill and that I can teach it to anyone rather than just accept that some people will never have it.
I'm so glad you mentioned the neuroplasticty, this immidiately clicked with my recent experience, and I wasn't sure if it was good I worked on "boring" nuances lately or did I waste my time and should just copy/paste the code I needed, once you mentioned it, it became so obvious, that that was the proper action I took, that led me to better Understanding, and Mastery. So obvious now. Never doubt diving into the nuances from now on!
I joined game design at my school and had a friend that started to mentor me in game design. It happened mainly because I needed help with this one programming class in C# that was incredibly brutal which I had no time for. He was willing to help me, and he did; but it started exactly what you described. A loop of me asking him for advice. It also left me feeling like I couldn’t come up with any good ideas of my own, as he would judge everything I would do. At the same time, if really seems like he was slightly socially Incompetent, because otherwise he was a really nice, inclusive, and kind person. Just recently he asked if he wanted to (literally used the words) mentor me while I make a game.
I have always been independent and self reliant; I guess just from the second I started game dev he was there to help me, so I didn’t know anything else. Strange
After watching this video, I’m not going to take him up on that offer 🤙🏼
Haha, pretty much knew what you were going to be talking about before the video even really got going. Once again, your words resound much further than just as it relates to game dev and programming. So many things in life require us to be self-reliant and have the ability to seek out answers for ourselves. If a problem comes up in life, you can't just sit by and expect someone to come through and fix it for you. Thanks for this video. Always love hearing your very grounded advice.
I was coding a mini program with Python today. and it began to work. after a few tests i realized it was still buggy. so i checked stack overflow and found something similar that works. i went back to my code and really appreciated its imperfections, i liked the fact that i made something that will eventually solve the problem i intended it to solve. i liked the fact that i put effort, tried to do it my way, and kept on iterating. and then i stumbled upon your video. Thanks man.
my advice to beginners is to put in some work, try at least and fail. i remember telling someone how i couldn't get my code to work for 3 days and he was glad to help. i had done the work, i had evidence to show where i was stuck.
Anyway my problem rite now is how to have a portfolio of mini 2d projects in unity. i don't wanna be stuck in tutorial hell lol.
Don't get mad at the question heheheh
Thanks/
Tonight I solved a problem I had been dealing with for about a week
I asked many people for help but no one could help me.
I'm very happy.
I 100% agree with this.
I had some projects, in game modding and devving my own games later, that I needed some help from my friends who had said they'll help me learn some things.
If I had waited for my friends to help with my projects, I'd still be waiting.
At some point I decided to just research how to do those things myself, and probably ended up learning a lot more.
I feel sitting around waiting for something is the worst thing to do, it's better to just continue on.
I think the reason why I thought I needed help to get started on something obscure and scary that I didn't understand, was that I thought my friends had more knowledge and experience, which turned out wasn't so true.
Ive got no game dev freinds, and I'm too shy to even post questions on forums lol. I've just always learned to stop, think about it, google, think some more and try to understand what I am solving. Excericsing thought is the best way to learn. It also teaches you to teach yourself. You have just got to keep practicing it and you get better at learning to read information online.
In regards to spoon feeding information. When I did my Degree, there was a massive difference between teachers who, just get up, do a lecture and thats it, just a block of inforamtion that was super hard to absorb and make me fall asleep which made me feel dumb. Compared to, teachers who actively engaged with their students, propose an issue, then try to get the answer out of the students and stimulate their trains of thought.
Very underrated video
I personally think this is the most real answer you can give to someone but it’s the answer that people don’t want to hear.
Recently found your channel and I love your videos bro 😎
New boss started at work on our unit 2 years ago, he didn't have any experience on what we were doing. I asked very basic questions from him every day to train him how and where to get answers if anyone has a real question that needs fast answer from bigger boss or client to keep things going.
I’m trying to be self reliant. I’m at the point where I don’t consider myself a beginner, I can problem solve through some issues I come across on my own.
I like your advice “you need fire to forge steel, don’t be afraid of the fire” that’s great advice. I feel like our generation has it easy and lots of instant gratification makes learning independence hard for us. I try to push myself and not stay stuck in my comfort zone.
I think you’re great John, you’re my idol : )
This the most helpful video on game dev ever for me because i used to think like if i want to implement something new or create a new feature in my game then i google it or watch a TH-cam video about that perticular feature without even given it a try to do that thing by myself
This video totally chaged my thinking about how should i approach a problem, now if i want to implement a feature in my game then i would try to do that by myself without goggling it, thanks for making this video helped me a lot to be a good programmer and problem solver.
Facts!!! I just started coding and after 3 days, I called my buddy who has been coding for years. I said holy crap, is this what you do? He said "yep, just google it". Which I have been, but now I have a insight to his career that I never had. Coming from a blue collar workers background luckily I have learned to try everything then ask. Pretty much if I'm asking, I have spent hours trying to figure it out. Only way to learn. I train new people the same way. I'll make you run a round a bit to find the answer, it really helps since while you are looking for that answer you will learn other things that you won't have to ask about later. Thanks so much for your videos and encouragement. A week ago I had never coded before, now I put my kids hand drawn characters into the game and they love it. My 8 year old daughter even told me when we had a problem that it was probably the boxCollider2d. I was very impressed and happy. She told me that she learned it from me. Thanks so much.
I asked my Mandalorian on my desk why my game doesn't work and he said "This is the way".
I won't be asking him again.
Yeah I'm doing everything myself, even music, and it can be pretty soul crushing at times. I often run into that issue which I think you've mentioned of where your dreams/ideas are way up there but your skills are way down here. So I have to adapt what I'm doing to fit my skills. I've had an issue with growing skills though where over the years I'd be working on something and get quite a ways with it but then think, Hang on, now my skills have grown doing this game, I could make that game I couldn't before! Genius! Lets drop this perfectly reasonable prototype or game and move onto this more complex game! But then half a year later... Hang on... now my skills have grown... AAAARRRGGHHH!
i am a successful modder who created a very well rounded modding team etc, I am now trying to transition into making a quality professional game from scratch and watching this has made me aware of how reliant i have been on my mod development team, I was already aware of it, but I was not aware that it was necessarily a bad thing to be, so thank you for making this video, it has opened my eyes and made me realize I need to stop being lazy and start putting more effort into learning everything i possibly can to ensure I am growing in the direction needed to succeed later on. 😘
15:01 This is due to having an experience of being undeservingly punished just for failing or making mistakes, mostly in their childhood, either from parent, teacher, or literally anyone.
Please remember that. It's a major root cause of fear of failure and fear of making mistakes. It's the stupid punishment that they thought would work but it only did the opposite of the intended.
Your words get back game development's lost relics and values of being reliance and confidence. Thanks for helping
Thank you so much as a student this helps me so much 🙏❤️
I usually don't comment on videos here on TH-cam but this is so spot on. It is so obvious, after your thoughts on the matter, that this is something that alot of people suffer from. I see it on a daily basis in the "general" software development industry but haven't been aware of it to the point that I am now. I believe that it extends to being too reliant on Google as well, to some degree you need to develop your skillset so that you don't have to rely on Google to solve simple problems. One example that came to mind where this is so apparent is when you are undergoing a technical interview, for most people this is a situation where you have to perform when you don't feel as comfortable googling how to solve simple problems. There is such a big difference during these situations between a software developer that doesn't feel comfortable working with simple data structures, algorithms, inheritance and so on compared to someone that is more self reliant. Anyways, sorry for the long response. Love your content, keep up the good work! Sincerely, an aspiring game dev.
Honestly almost the only place I ever need 99% of what comes up in a technical interview is technical interviews.
Excellent video 👍.
I'm self educating in game design, for fun at the moment, to see where i get. I choose to code in 32bit ARM assembly language using only integer instructions. Being self reliant has taught me so much. I have learnt how to implement COS & SIN in an integer framework and the process has lead me to being able to implement an ATAN2 function. Sprite drawing i have pushed back my boundaries by simply saying it's not good enough, clipping i had to use my skills and come up with novel ways as the target machines can only draw word aligned ( every 4 pixels in 8 bit colour ) and i wanted pixel alignement, collision detection i wanted to do pixel detection rather than AABB detection because of the nature of my sprites and this lead to googling a plenty until i found a formula that i converted to assembly.
I absolutely agree with what you say and to sum up what you've said, i believe it simply comes down to the old saying, its the journey to the solution that is important and not the solution so much. The journey gives far more knowledge than the result.
Thank you for essentially giving me confidence that im on the right path
Very good and useful tip for beginners like myself.
I'm basically 6 months in. And at first I fully relied on tutorials and Google.
But as times passed, I found out that often times I spent hours trying to find a solution online or on discord servers that was simple and easy to implement if I thought about it a bit more and understood what steps ware needed to be done to achieve this.
My last thing was cuphead and contra like 8-way shooting - I searched for days on how to implement this with no results... But after I just thought about it and understood what needed to be done and then I did it in 2h. Now I understand Unity animation system, animation layers ect. much clearer and It will help me implement a lot of things in the future much easier.
So for some things I still rely on tutorials and ask around on discord... But mostly I try to figure things out myself and this makes me remember everything much better and clearer and be able to reuse these skills in the future.
Ive been a programmer for many many years and hes 100% right about the technology gap.
there was a time i used to have to write my own drivers in the game/app for the most common video devices... audio devices, mice types... it was crazy times.
The door handle analogy had me laughing out loud. It’s such simple common sense sometimes! Very well said 👏
What you’re saying is so true!! Honestly there were also other habits I had to eliminate while starting to code an AR music app in unity. I quickly learned that you have to solve things yourself and squeeze as much juice as you can out of the answers that people give. It’s pretty addictive to get a mad idea and implement it into your game/app. Especially when you solve it mostly by your mind and not being spoon fed. I remember fearing the mistakes though. Some mistakes from 9 months ago came back to haunt me later 😂. Soon to be done thankfully
Very toughtful and authentic. I love your channel! keep up the good work :)
It’s so easy to fall into that trap of instant knowledge rather than trying just a bit longer for that eureka moment.
Everyone’s been on both sides and the latter is definitely the most rewarding.
You are spot-on, this is so vital. This helped me soo much in my first job in the industry. The problem with this though is sometimes I might spend too long on a task trying to solve the problem.
I've worked as a web developer for 7 years now and started my first (and current) job more or less as a green programmer. And what you say in the video is very true and resonates with me. It makes me feel ashamed. I've gotten stuck in the loop of asking lazy questions and feel like I never really "gotten it" and I often feel imposter syndrome. I of course knew this before watching the video but it's good to be reminded. Some of my collegues that has started after me has run past me in skill and I never really felt like a coder or that I cared as much as them about getting good. But I really love programming when I solve problems myself, and can help others.
Now I'm about to start working for a new company and I really want a fresh start and grow as an independant programmer and step up my game.
Man you are so down to hearth, I thank you for being that voice in the future to guide Unity enthusiasts like me, I really feel like you are an older version of me (not calling you old just older than me) thanks again for such good content.
What a fantastic video! One of the best things to ever happen to me was when I was 6 months into a part time IT job with zero prior experience, all of the other IT Techs (which was two) left within a month of each other, I was literally IT for this organisation (100 users or so at the time). It was not fun, I had many stress filled days, BUT I learned a hell of a lot because there was no one else to rely on. 9 years later, the IT team has grown as well as the organisation (200 or so now) we have a relatively new team member who basically can't do anything without a document or whatever to follow, drives me nuts.
A boomer in the making.
/s
100% with you on this. Tutorials can get kickstart your journey..but to really understand and improve you have got to make the mistakes yourself.
this is good insight. i developed the nucleus of a new game during covid, working in my basement alone for a year. it worked out - it's been picked up by a major publisher and I am now a member of a team that is working on it. but to your point here, my self reliance skills were poor at the start, and pretty good at the end. it was a necessity for sure. but the pitfall for me was the lack of other perspectives. adding other people was a huge boon in creativity and on the technical side, even though i managed on my own.
Great talk which has really inspired me as a junior software developer.
I just want to say that these talks you give to us are very valueable. It's not just about gamedev, it's about life. I am realising that gamedevelopment is hard now, but you know, life is hard too.
I just really want to do this, so I will be willing to try and fail. Get back up again and work my way up. I believe it is worth it!
Great talk! loved this one, very much.
Stay amazing LRG
With anything for my job and programming, it's pretty obvious when I'm working with something relatively new to me and have a question that I am not the only person in the world to have ever had this issue. A little Google nearly always finds someone asking the exact same basic question. When you get more advanced into a topic and have a question, you're less likely to find the answer with Google, but I usually have developed the skills by then to figure it out by myself, and 99% I do.
So happy to be subscribed to your channel. Your content is so rich.
This is very relevant to all walks of life. Thank you for your insights!
I think what a lot of Unity game developers need to learn is basic C#. I see so many people who learned coding just for Unity and as a result don't understand the answers to their problems, even when they are told what to do.
Half of beginner developers don't know basic C#.
I don't have any programming friends, so I have no choice but to figure things out myself. An experience I've had recently was trying to develop an inventory system for my game. I worked through several tutorials, but could not find the specific solution I was seeking. Finally, in a fit of frustration, I decided to "push the easy button" and buy an asset off the Unity Asset Store (specifically, the Opsive Ultimate Inventory System). The problem with that, is that it was so complex and over complicated that it would have taken me nearly a year to figure out how to use it properly. In the end, I went back to one of the tutorials I had worked through and made that work.
Fairly late to the party but I'll put my chip in;
I'm primarily more of an artist than a programmer, but I have enough experience with both to say with confidence that they both require the same amount of troubleshooting and problem solving, and initially when I was learning to draw people or environments I had to rely on tutorials for every little thing. I couldn't ever come up with my own methods to do things. The result was that my art was inconsistent, stiff, and could never really look unique or like I had any sense of identity.
The day when I finally broke free of that was when I had to paint a galaxy in my OC's hand. No matter where I looked, I couldn't find a tutorial that taught how to do that, so instead I had to pull up some Hubble images of galaxies that looked like what I wanted and piece out exactly how to do it.
I've been doing art for 8 years now, and I pretty much never look for specific mentorship or tutorials anymore. Still though, I've met tons of artists trapped in that phase where they can't do anything without guidance and never have the ability to improvise or decide their own path. It's a sad state to be in, mostly because you're so restricted in what you can do.
It's interesting your final thoughts on mentorship. I think it depends on your mentor. A good mentor and student relationship will actually encourage the student to think for themselves. The best teachers teach you how to think and problem solve yourself.
Absolutely. I think the self help market has really corrupted the word and concept of mentorship. I've likely had many mentors in my life, but it was never 'official' - rather people who organically passed through each others lives and offered guidance. I do this for others - but I cringe when I hear people talk about mentorship in most cases.
I love this!!! I get asked things all the time that could just as easily have been googled and they probably would even have the answers faster!!!
John's material is pure mindset gold. Keep up the excellent work mate 👍🏻
Totally agree. I’m building a roguelike in Vanilla JS and the lack of libraries in the game so far keeps me self-reliant. (I do see Electron JS in my future though…)
I’ll have to think about how to wire the game to peripherals though, that’s a good point. Really enjoy your vids.
Really enjoyed this John. Thanks as always for these videos.
You are very welcome mate
excellent piece of wisdom! thank you for sharing this!
i also think the ability to break down things into smaller parts it an extremely useful skill for game dev. so many times i see people posting "how do i made a _____ game" and they often never find the answer because the question is too vague. rather you could break it down into smaller steps, "making a topdown character" "making room generation". The smaller your questions the easier it will be to find out the answers yourself
I appreciate what you're saying. I do find it hard to know how to google what I'm looking for but that takes time. I do realize that gamedev will always require a certain level of help from others or paying them. I hate when I get to a point I really have no clue what to do & have to ask for help. Thank you.
I used to think programmers were keepers of vast amounts of occult knowledge. Over time, I've learned they just know how to Google.
Yeah 😂😂😂😂 and most of us feel bad about it. There is a pressure, specially from inside to be that keeper of occult knowledge. That's why I started to threat programming more as an "criminal investigation". You have your case, and have to search for clues, connect the dots, talk to people. It's changed the world for me...
Experienced programmers know what's the best tool for every problem. Google is one of the tools but it doesn't do your work.
The whole process is called engineering.
Only one thing I think was missed and that is PASSION. Passion for what you do and create shows, it can truly radiate from some people and it can help enormously with anything you do. You really must have a passion for what you do - otherwise its just 'a job' and Its not something you are going to be overly enthusiastic about, nor use your passion to overcome the pebbles/boulders or slings and arrows of adversity that may come your way. When you do - it will drive you on to actually want to overcome obstacles, and want to use google search properly, and want to check the answers you get! That is a key component lacking in many corporate driven AAA games that are released - there really is a lack of true passion about yet another - first person shooter (for example) - they may have spectacle and fancy graphics, but they are soul-less, and Im sure some people who work on them rather wish they were making something they were actually passionate about. Rather than have someone else (usually a head marketing person or CEO) say "this is a passion project for the team" - when that person is only passionate about one thing - sales, and not the actual game itself.