I’m a gaming enthusiast and as such I spend much of my time online reading forums, Reddit, social media, and anything people can sprawl words onto online. Something I keep noticing is a small group of players who make radical demands of game developers, often requesting complete changes in their core games, or attempting to start movements against game developers who don’t give into their specific demands for the game’s development. Likewise, even more players have radical and often awesome ideas, but they're not the developers ideas, and more often than not are ignored for a variety of reasons (ranging from budget, talent, desire and everything inbetween).

Player interaction with game developers is usually a good thing, but it can lead to harassment and lots of hurt feelings when some players try to backseat drive a game. We witnessed this in WoW, when specific phases of the game were tailored to the elite raiders, which were a very vocal, but small portion of the playerbase. Likewise, these very vocal players demand someone take their own money and essentially make their game, and if they don’t then they’ll launch into a crusade to fix it.

While this doesn’t apply only to those folks, I do want to say I think that time should be put into developing and making games yourself. When anyone reaches the level of depth that some of these, fans I suppose, have reached then by all means, they should move from demanding their dream game be made in the form they demand it, and focus their efforts on building their dream game, the game they would want to play.

It’s actually not nearly as hard as one would think these days, with modern engines like Unreal and Unity being not only free, but very layman friendly. A massive hit like Undertale was made with GameMaker: Studio, which in its most expensive form is $899, but $99.99 gets you the actual engine and development tools for PC.

Education isn’t nearly as limiting as it used to be. Colleges, from community all the way to secondary, now offer degrees in video game design, programming, development, and everything involving making assets, 3D modeling, and much more. The Internet is brimming with tutorials on how to do anything and everything, and if you want an audience, there is legions wanting to consume every indie game that can cross their screen.

I speak from actual experience about the satisfying journey to take a game into your own hands. Back in the late 90s and early 00s I was an avid MUD player and, after finding that my favorite games could be better, I took to the books and learned rudimentary C which allowed to me to create my own MUD. While it never took off, I had more fun building and playing it, especially with my friends, than I did with anything else – because it was uniquely tailored to my tastes.

Really, all I’m simply arguing for is if you want change in the games industry, take that change into your own hands. Learn the skills needed to make a game, and in the process, not only could you be on the path to making the next critical success, but you can also learn many of the tender lessons involved in development. From the tricks and traps in the development process, too eventually (hopefully) people telling you how your own game should be made.

That’s just my two cents – I think the industry will only survive, grow, and innovate if fresh blood keeps entering development and challenging the establishment. Who knows, the next Call of Duty could honestly be made by you.

 


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Last Updated: Mar 14, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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