The reason half of Games Development students drop out is because they think "me like play game, me make game"

Instead of actually being interested in the development.

It depends. At the game dev school I've been at we had to do an intake with both a difficult math test and make a small C++ game (using graphics not terminals).

Most of the people who stopped with that school went to another which was less stressful, I couldn't do it mentally but I was the best student in the class.

There is so much to games. There's level design, making game play fun ... and on top of that you need to incredibly complex coding skills.

The Indie Game Movie is a great documentary on independent devlopers who have all of that, and it still shows just how much of a fuck ton of work the entire process is.

Months/years of work for a 30 second simulation hit. I talked to a guy that was testing number of tries to win vs attention span. He found that if someone won once every 7 (not sure if this was the actual number, A/B testing should be done to find the correct number) tries they would play indefinitely/more. If they won too often they get bored. If they didn't win enough they get frustrated. So there is a lot of psychology in a game as well. Another person I read about said you look for 30 seconds of fun. Once you find that in your game you repeat it. It is like a drug.

Hm, well, getting excited over learning how to make games is no surprise compared to interest in creating and maintaining software. But I figured out how much latter makes sense to me with its continuous nature 😋

The more intelligent ones among these students may also realise that game devs have to work insane hours and are paid like shit.

@Fast-Nop if you can do what you like, it really is worth it though.

@Codex404 That's what the bosses of the studios tell their devs, too.

@Jilano after frustrating you it offers to stop tickling you, if you give **it** money

@Fast-Nop I would never want to work for a triple A company. But I've worked at a few smaller indies with at max 25 people and they are not saying that at all.

@Codex404 No, they are just paying badly and filtering away candidates who have even a faint idea of their market worth.

@Fast-Nop I know I am worth more but I prefer doing work that I love then doing work I find meh.

Unpopular opinion

Game dev should be a degree to start with.

@Nanos my bad, I meant it shouldn’t

@eziotobi @Nanos game dev is great a game dev degree not as much

there's so much math into it ..and heck dont get me started about physics too.

It's because 'good' game dev courses in school are hard to come by. Many teachers I've seen are like what you describe, most have never even published a game... I ended up teaching myself for the most part, and succeeded in making a small game albeit with free models/textures.

I miss it tbh, but I don't have the time to invest in another anymore. That's life for ya.

Basically the difference between being a chef and liking good meals.

@lkjhgf253 really? I went to a game dev school where every teacher had at least 10 years of experience in the triple A games.
Developers from Ubisoft, people who worked on Tomb Raider, GTA etc.

@Codex404 I won't ask where you went, but it's nothing like that around here

@Codex404 if you don’t mind obviously, may I ask which one?

@eziotobi NHTV in Breda, the Netherlands.

once you stop looking at design as mechanics and start looking at it as "interesting problems" or "problems that are fun to solve", design becomea much simpler.

A lot of mechanics rely on the fun of making trade offs and weighing the options of one decision over another. And you should always be asking, when designing an interaction or system, "at any given time, when a player is interacting with this, what 1. problem are they trying to solve, 2. what means methods or solutions am I providing them, 3. what are the pros/cons pf each approach available to the player 4. what are their constraints (time limits, resources etc), 5. what feedback am I providing the player to help them learn these other four things 6. how can I limit some feedback and solutions while providing others in order to encourage certain playstyles and behaviors? 7. what *should* the player experience at this moment or interaction in the game? focus, tension, simple joy, a feeling of power, or skill? etc"

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