We here at HeyYouVideoGame LOVE video games. We love them so much that we started a podcast all about them. But we know that some of you love gaming so much that you hope to create one of your own. If this is you, have you ever wondered what it would take to develop your own video game? We talked with 15 video game developers asking them to respond to, “What I wish I’d Known Before Starting as a Game Developer.” We gathered all types of advice from those who are newer to game development to those who have published games under their belt. We hope this advice helps you!

On Why Am I Doing This?



“I think this is an important question because I’ve personally witnessed many unhappy game developers and have myself been unhappy with the process at various times. There’s a lot of soul searching that goes into making games. What are we doing? What is fun? How important is our work? Why are we going crazy over inane details?

Maybe the thing I’d like to have understood before starting is that making a game is like a game itself. Games are fun because of the challenges they present, the difficulties we overcome, the little details and unexpected surprises, the humor, the highs, the lows, and the knowledge that we’re always safe in real life outside of the game. Making a game is the same way. Expect some challenges and uncertainty. And keep your sense of humor! After all, it’s just a game.”

Benoît Freslon Developer of EnigmBox “Make games for players not only for you.”

On Self Care

“That it’s okay to take vacations. There will always be fires to put out & if you don’t take personal time when you need it, you never will.”

On Expectations



“When you look at the press and stories about successful developers, you can see how some of them really made it big. However, for every one of those, there are hundreds of developers who failed. In 2009 or so there weren’t many game engines and developing games was hard and expensive. That’s why it was much easier to succeed than today. When you see some postmortem or success story that’s dated before 2015, you should take it with a grain of salt. It’s hard and almost impossible to replicate that. You should never start making a game thinking that you will become the next Notch or Edmund MacMillan. Be prepared to fail and earn nothing and it will be much easier for you.”

Fulby Developer of Starfighter Arduxim



“Don’t waste time on multiplayer if you’re a new indie developer, it’s incredibly unlikely that enough people will buy the game to sustain it. Pour that time into polishing the single player so your game stands out.”

Saluk Developer of GravPool

“Your question is interesting, but somewhat hard to answer. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, mostly with attempting to make games far beyond the skill level of me or anyone who was working with me. But I don’t know that that is something I could have been told before I started – even when I have tried to make what I thought were small enough games, they turned into a big unfinishable albatross. I finally in the last year put all of my effort into finding a game that intrigued me well enough but was also the smallest it could be to allow me to actually finish. Small to develop and small in sales”

On Starting Now

Heisengerm Developer of ReBeat



“The thing I wish I had known before starting is that really anyone can be a developer. I had this sort of preconceived notion in my head that you had to be a great coder and artist, and that I wasn’t good enough at either of those to make a game. While I’m still not great at either, I found that there is a near infinite amount of resources available online to help you learn anything you need to develop a game. It only takes patience and motivation. I regret not starting earlier in my life when I had more free time! Now I have to wait until I get home to work on my game, and sometimes I just don’t have the energy.”



“I wish that I wouldn’t have fallen for the “you must learn c++ and make your own engine” trap wjen I started. There’s a big difference between being a game developer and game engine developer. If you care more about the creative side of things rather than reinventing the wheel on the technical side of things, using a pre existing engine like Unity or GameMaker is much easier and faster. After all, the gamer cares about the overall game experience, not which engine or programming language you use.

On Marketing

“I wish I’d known how hard it’d be to make a dent in the market. I always knew that steam had become a crowded place, and I sort of figured launching on Oculus Home with a bit of reddit awareness would make for some good sales, but I’ve been sorely mistaken. It’s incredibly hard to make noise in the game dev world, and having people actually spend money on your game requires is much easier when their friends are the ones to do the marketing. That social factor, is precisely the reason it is so difficult to market and sell single player games. Social experiences friends can engage in together make for a much easier sell, and it should absolutely be a priority to build new titles around this concept of social experiences, if only because it makes word of mouth marketing seem like a favor to the receiving person. Without a community of players, marketing is a real challenge because you’re always fighting to get the name of your game out there. Reddit also frowns upon personal promotion, so it’s using a flair and being a part of communities is a good way to go, but its far from direct.