“If art isn’t your forte, you can look at hiring your own artist" You will learn a ton, even if you don’t get it 100% for a long time.” Following tutorials is a great way to ease your way in and applies to any other discipline within game development. “Watch the GDC talks, YouTube videos, read 80.lv (opens in new tab), Gamasutra (opens in new tab) articles. “There are so many amazing people taking the time to teach others for free,” says The Last Night developer Tim Soret. But thankfully there’s a solution for that, too. However, it does require you to learn coding. Unity is the most popular among indie devs as it works well with both 2D and 3D games.
Each allow you to do different things and all have free versions so you can play around with them and see which one best suits the game you’re trying to make. There are plenty to choose from, such as Gamemaker Studio 2 (opens in new tab), Unreal engine (opens in new tab) or Unity (opens in new tab) to name but a few. With that clearly in mind, the next thing you need to do is take your idea and decide on which game engine you’ll use. I’d still personally prefer to make indie games, but people shouldn’t be under false impressions when they jump in.” “An office job is a typically easier, safer, and higher-paying career path. “Making indie games isn’t lucrative for everyone, and it’s quite a bit more stressful than many other occupations,” says Ooblets (opens in new tab) developer Ben Wasser. If you’re thinking of doing it for the money, you’re going to be hugely disappointed. You also need to be doing it for the right reasons. Once you know that you don’t know these things, you’ll realise that your scope and time scale plans are wrong and you’ll be more realistic with what you can do.” You don’t really know how interrelated art, programming and design are, and how time and money limitations on one will cause compromise on the other two. “You don’t know how much things are really going to cost, you don’t know how long things are really going to take to develop. “You need to know just how much you don’t know,” explains Cuphead (opens in new tab) art director Chad Moldenhauer. Subscribe to Official Xbox Magazine (opens in new tab) in print or digital for more in-depth features, reviews and previews about Xbox One, Xbox One X and the future of Microsoft's console.