Yeah, I started my game[0] in the summer of 2018. Wife and 3 kids. It is tough. Giving up would be the normal thing to do, but I guess I am not normal.
Finishing my first game while working full-time
81–90 of 198 posts
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#82I'm in this boat. I think it would be impossible to do with a proper family with kids, so I've got maybe 5 years to pull it off. I've spent several years working on game efforts in parallel and decided to dump them all. It's not the worst thing in the world to give up on a concept. It's a good hobby even if it doesn't pan out.
It's decidedly not a side hustle.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#83How did Chrome know that this article belonged to my gamedev bookmarks folder when I bookmarked the page?
The page you bookmarked before that also was in this folder?
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#84Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard. It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell. I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for…
You guys realize there’s software engineering jobs where you might only do 4 hours of real work a day?
And now with remote work being a norm, sometimes it feels like you barely work at all, and yet still accomplish the same amount of work as before.
Get paid for the value you bring, not the time you spend.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course you would have to live a tad more simply than your standard upper-middle class software guy. Actually, many software jobs are like that. All it requires is for you to not be ambitious to create. You can have very good salary in many companies while slacking a lot. Sometimes you might have to be in office for a lot of hours, meaning doing leisure, socialization and side project in the office.
It's worth mentioning the common advice here though: do not use company time or equipment to work on a side project, since that may give them a legal claim to ownership of the work if they ever find out. The specifics will vary greatly depending on your employment agreements and legal jurisdiction, so make your own decisions regarding your own situation (doing it on company time might be the lesser risk compared to n…
If you’re salaried, there’s no such thing as company time, so that’s not a meaningful distinction.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#86Not discussed in the article: You have to have the support of the people in your life this will impact. For example, the 7-9am timeslot for working, as listed in the article, will impact my family, as that is when I'm getting the kids up and off to school. OK, so I could move it to 5am to 7am, but that would mean I'd need to go to bed earlier, which eliminates important evening time with my wife. Similarly, I could d…
I totally agree with your perspective. It reminds of an essay pg wrote (http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html) about having kids, and I think the principles are similar to yours. You can be successful and "do it all", but you might have to modify "all" _a bit_ and you have to be very disciplined and honest about your trade-offs.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#87How do you spend more hours sitting at your desk after 8 hours of sitting at your desk?
I really would like to do more things at my PC, but whenever I finish with my work I'm drained
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#88It depends on your productivity after work as there will be a lot of factors that will come into play. It would help if you tried to maintain a work-life balance in which further delays your project. It's better to enjoy what we have right now and enjoy it at the same time.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#89Don’t forget the opportunity cost of taking on such a project. You could be hiking, exercising, working on relationships, family.
Personal agency requires a sober assessment of priorities. Everything has an opportunity cost. Certainly, a full-time job and a non-trivial side project takes from self-care and family. Certainly, self-care and family (and sleep!) can preclude side-hustles.
The important element is making the choice with clear eyes.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#90Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard. It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell. I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for…
Out of curiosity: which game are/were you working on, if you can share that? Thanks!
This is the game we made, The Shattering: https://store.steampowered.com/app/596000/The_Shattering/