A thing that's been bothering me a bit that I decided to make a thread about.
-
The other day a friend of mine brought up the fact that he was apparently in the process of creating a videogame, and another friend of mine wanted to get in on it.
They're pretty clever, and sane guys, so I was a little taken aback when they announced that their game would have the best graphics on the market, would feature hundreds of levels, dozens of enemies and would have it's own engine. It'd be published by Valve and released on Steam.
They're 15, they have absolutely no knowledge of any kind of software development and they reckon they can make the best game in the world.
They don't even know what kind of game it is yet.
They just have no idea how much resources it would take, and seem to think the only thing they need to make a fully fledged game is time (five years they guess) and a very basic understanding of C++, which they don't have. Not cutting edge software, and hardware, and concept artists, and animators, level designers, sound designers, modellers and floors of people working on other stuff about 10 hours a day, along with the backing of a publisher and millions of dollars.
They've been talking about making an entire engine so they can have 'more control over it', and at school the other day they were looking up photos of people like Amy Lee from Evanescense and Felicia Day from The Guild to apparently use as face textures for the protagonist of a first person game which features no cutscenes. And they just didn't seem to get how dumb what they were doing was and how weird it looked to everyone in the room. Then they started finding pictures of mannequins and weird, dark, 'cool' stuff like that to use as images for the planned website for the game, which would apparently feature above all things, a donations page.
It bothers me. Primarily because they might actually be able to get something cool done if they weren't so thick and reaching for the stars without so much as a toy rocket, and because they like to go on about how great they think their ideas are and their arrogance is becoming astounding. Every now and then they'll come up to me and say "Dude I just thought of the coolest way to do the engine ever!" and I'll just mentally facepalm and hear the word 'mod' go through my head over and over again. Also, like everyone else I suppose, I've had quite a few game ideas of my own but aren't even trying to make actual progress on them aside from the development of settings and background and what not, because I know they just won't happen. They on the other hand come in saying they'll make 'the new Minecraft' and earn shitloads of money while I've been quitely developing my own idea's whilst fully understanding they won't be anything more than a couple hundred pages on Onenote, but I think they might be able to get something done if they really tried (there's apparently 3 or 4 other guys 'working' on the game with them but they're in another part of the country and they most likely have no idea what they're doing either) instead of trying to make the 'best game ever' from scratch and tried a mod or something, rather than waste five years in the pursuit of nothing. One of my friends said he won't study (he wants a career in game development) and won't get a part time job so he can work on it, but he doesn't even know how to or even what it is.
It wouldn't worry me so much they weren't so damn serious and ignorant when they talk about it. Like, the other day at school they made a sketch of some shadowy monster thing in an exercise book which was apparently supposed to be concept art, then went on and on about how they'd feature them in the game for over an hour in class. Just the way they were talking was quite frankly disturbing. One of my friends has been too busy fiddling with photoshop and making graphics (black shapes with certain bits cut out of them) for the website every lesson to get any of his schoolwork done, and now he has two or three major assignments which are about three weeks overdue. Whenever I look at what he's doing in any class he's doing something to do the website or the game rather than what he's supposed to be doing. All the time.
What really kills me is that they are great friends and smart guys, but never before have I seen them come off as so ignorant, narcissistic and just stupid, and they really seem perfectly happy with wasting five years of their lives in pursuit of nothing. It's actually kind of scary and sad.
I should probably tell them to pull their heads out their asses and tell them to wake the fuck up, but they're seriously so into this thing they'll probably hate me for it and carry on with...I'm not sure what exactly.
Anyway, is this as ridiculous sounding to anyone else or am I overreacting and is it just me?
-
The other day a friend of mine brought up the fact that he was apparently in the process of creating a videogame, and another friend of mine wanted to get in on it.
They're pretty clever, and sane guys, so I was a little taken aback when they announced that their game would have the best graphics on the market, would feature hundreds of levels, dozens of enemies and would have it's own engine. It'd be published by Valve and released on Steam.
They're 15, they have absolutely no knowledge of any kind of software development and they reckon they can make the best game in the world.
They don't even know what kind of game it is yet.
They just have no idea how much resources it would take, and seem to think the only thing they need to make a fully fledged game is time (five years they guess) and a very basic understanding of C++, which they don't have. Not cutting edge software, and hardware, and concept artists, and animators, level designers, sound designers, modellers and floors of people working on other stuff about 10 hours a day, along with the backing of a publisher and millions of dollars.
They've been talking about making an entire engine so they can have 'more control over it', and at school the other day they were looking up photos of people like Amy Lee from Evanescense and Felicia Day from The Guild to apparently use as face textures for the protagonist of a first person game which features no cutscenes. And they just didn't seem to get how dumb what they were doing was and how weird it looked to everyone in the room. Then they started finding pictures of mannequins and weird, dark, 'cool' stuff like that to use as images for the planned website for the game, which would apparently feature above all things, a donations page.
It bothers me. Primarily because they might actually be able to get something cool done if they weren't so thick and reaching for the stars without so much as a toy rocket, and because they like to go on about how great they think their ideas are and their arrogance is becoming astounding. Every now and then they'll come up to me and say "Dude I just thought of the coolest way to do the engine ever!" and I'll just mentally facepalm and hear the word 'mod' go through my head over and over again. Also, like everyone else I suppose, I've had quite a few game ideas of my own but aren't even trying to make actual progress on them aside from the development of settings and background and what not, because I know they just won't happen. They on the other hand come in saying they'll make 'the new Minecraft' and earn shitloads of money while I've been quitely developing my own idea's whilst fully understanding they won't be anything more than a couple hundred pages on Onenote, but I think they might be able to get something done if they really tried (there's apparently 3 or 4 other guys 'working' on the game with them but they're in another part of the country and they most likely have no idea what they're doing either) instead of trying to make the 'best game ever' from scratch and tried a mod or something, rather than waste five years in the pursuit of nothing. One of my friends said he won't study (he wants a career in game development) and won't get a part time job so he can work on it, but he doesn't even know how to or even what it is.
It wouldn't worry me so much they weren't so damn serious and ignorant when they talk about it. Like, the other day at school they made a sketch of some shadowy monster thing in an exercise book which was apparently supposed to be concept art, then went on and on about how they'd feature them in the game for over an hour in class. Just the way they were talking was quite frankly disturbing. One of my friends has been too busy fiddling with photoshop and making graphics (black shapes with certain bits cut out of them) for the website every lesson to get any of his schoolwork done, and now he has two or three major assignments which are about three weeks overdue. Whenever I look at what he's doing in any class he's doing something to do the website or the game rather than what he's supposed to be doing. All the time.
What really kills me is that they are great friends and smart guys, but never before have I seen them come off as so ignorant, narcissistic and just stupid, and they really seem perfectly happy with wasting five years of their lives in pursuit of nothing. It's actually kind of scary and sad.
I should probably tell them to pull their heads out their asses and tell them to wake the fuck up, but they're seriously so into this thing they'll probably hate me for it and carry on with...I'm not sure what exactly.
Anyway, is this as ridiculous sounding to anyone else or am I overreacting and is it just me?
