Devs, why do you make games?
Devs, why do you make games?
To be more precise, what do you seek to accomplish when you develop a game and release it for the world to see? What is the effect you desire your games to have on their players, and what do you hope to gain from these games?
That’s it. I don’t have any relevant backstory to tell you here.
I like feeling productive, the sense of accomplishment when it's done, and seeing people enjoy a creation of mine. I think most people also just enjoy feeling creative, knowing that they can bring things into this world from nothing.
I started developing incredibly young. My first game was when I was 10 or so - a text adventure in Java. But I really wanted graphics and didn't know how to do that in Java so I switched to RPG maker XP (I've actually bought most RPG maker versions since then, even though I don't use them very often - very cool that they use JavaScript instead of ruby now!). Eventually I switched to flash to make other kinds of games, which is the first time I learned what classes and instances were! (Lowkey kinda embarrassing to have been programming for a couple years without knowing - the dangers of being self taught!). From there I went back to Java (using lwjgl this time), then to unity in college where I made many game developer friends including my wife, made my own engine called vecs, and now I mainly do web games, typically in profectus. Here and there I've also dabbled with pygame, Godot, and other engines.
Suffice to say, game development has been a primary hobby of mine for my entire life. I think I got started with it because I really enjoyed playing games, sort of looking up to developers, and thus wanted to become one myself. Over time I learned about the industry and decided I did not want to become a professional game developer (although after college I did apply to Id and a few other studios local to DFW), but continued developing on a hobby level. It's just fun I suppose, and it's a creative outlet I think I'm halfway decent at.