What it takes to make a game by yourself

I've been working on my site: https://golfcourse.wiki for some time, and this is exactly how I feel all the time. Thank you for the encouragement.

I know this is a good idea. I know it will help people. I know I can either monetize it long term or even have it function as a non-profit. I also know it will take many years to slowly build to the functionality and content quality that I'm aiming for. Holding onto that long term view is extremely challenging.

Most days are just watching nothing happen, or slowly, slowly adding a single course (aggregated sites litter the golf internet, I want the opposite). One day I'll post on the golf subreddit and have 1000 users, get positive feedback, and the next two weeks just 5 users per day from google. And the kicker is, I'm genuinely embarrassed by some of the sub-optimal code and real lack of functionality I haven't addressed, even though I'm honestly very regularly working on it.

The best advice i got from a friend: only look at one-month or two-month increments as far as users. Day-to-day can get depressing, but on a bi-monthly basis, I've had slow-and-steady growth. At the same time, while I'm only up to 700 commits so far (vs 2000 in the article), I do have serious anxiety that I'm wasting years of my free time building something that won't amount to anything but a couple hundred upvotes on reddit, so I look at it as my unique hobby. I like mapping courses and making course books. It's my site and my hobby, and I'm fine if it's just me doing the work alone for the rest of my life. I believe that much in the project.

> The irony of video games is that they’re often associated (at least in America) with childishness.

That's because most games are about shooting other people. This is something only children (and perhaps some dictators) love to think about.

Just look at the guy that tried to make Yandere Simulator, and don't do that stuff.

This is timely. Since I’m on sabbatical, I decided to spend 6 months cramming Unreal Engine 5 and Blender to see if I could cobble together enough expertise and the bones of a project to work on together with my now five-year old son over the coming years. I always loved gaming growing up and I figured it would be a great way to get him interested in, and learning, a broad range of skills that might help him along the way in future.

To be honest, it’s been more of a commitment than I expected, but I don’t regret the time spent at all and I think it’s something my son will come to treasure. Sketching imaginary animals into a text book and seeing them come to life in-game a few days later is a magical experience for a kid.

I’d just repeat what a few others have said herein: for hobbyists, keep your expectations for what’s achievable nice and low, make sure you enjoy the journey, and perhaps think about it as something you put an hour into every day, rather than one-focusing on hitting concrete milestones, many of which may remain out of reach for months. Oh, and checklists: write loads of them and keep them handy!

I very much admire the dedication to stick with coding and designing SV, but I also understand at some level how it works. But creating the art and music may as well be wizardry. Eric being able to do that also is awe-inspiring.