This is why you can't finish making a video game

I've been working on the same project for over 4 years now, and I think the biggest thing for me was realizing it was fine to step away and do other things for awhile. Because no, I have not been working on it consistently for those 4 years. I've gone months without touching the project before. But, each time I came back and rebooted it, things always turned out way better. It's not about "finishing" the project, at least not when it's a hobby, it's just about having fun with it and improving your skills. If you are achieving both of those things, eventually it will reach a state where you can say it's finished. Otherwise, take a step back and do something else for a bit until your inspiration comes back. That's been my philosophy anyways.

personally, game design documents are an amazing way to mitigate burnout, since it gives you a progress bar of sorts!

Juniper upload 🎉

I've been making blender projects for a while now and I've experienced burnout so many times that I have the motivation for a different project. Recently I've been trying to make a 2D game in unity and I have a ton of motivation for that but I don't get burnt out so easily with this. I found out that the reason I got burnt out so easily, is because I would lose motivation for the project that Im working on knowing it would probably be sitting on my computer not being used. I really liked how you talked about the difference between lack of motivation and burnout because that just really close to home for me.

My secret to staying on track has been to 1: Make a project map. 2: Make a short chronological to do list each day. 3. Do workouts throughout the day (pushups, hollow hold, and squats) so my muscles get stimulated and I don't feel icky and sad for seemingly no reason.

6:17 this part can also be especially satisfying depending on the ganre of the game you make. It's fun seeing crazy ways testers tackle puzzle games, often revealing cooler solutions then the ones you planned in the first place. Or seeing how a tester reads a platformer level. Or if you're like me and you're making a semi-psychological horror sit and survive game that fucks with your players brain, seeing testers play is basically a glorified moment of pulling the most convoluted prank you could ever think of. And it's fun every time.

Motivation is an emotion. It comes and goes. For a game dev, having discipline and focus is more important. If you only work when you're feeling motivated, you won't get much done. If you are disciplined and focused, you'll work even when you don't feel like it, and as a result, you'll be more productive and get more work done. In short, motivation = an emotion or a mood. Discipline and focus = a state of being

Great advice! It's super easy to fall into any of these traps even if you're a 'pro'. Sometimes you burn out regardless of which discipline you're currently doing. You just need to figure out how you can best mitigate it to stay motivated. If you need to take a break, take one! You know yourself best, so listen and you'll back to it in no time.

liking and commenting so it helps with the algorithm, thank you so much for the help and information! i thought i was the only one feeling all that

another banger vid. Keep up the good work juni.

Fr sleeping when done well is like a superpower. And I don't mean just one night, I mean keeping it up as much as possible and you'll see the improvements! This was one of the reasons I moved out of the city to a more quiet place.

As someone who's worked on a lot of small scope projects for jams, organizing games for a club of 30+ people, and recently released my first steam game with a small group that had a development time of a year and 8 months (shout-out to my game Infernal Elements if you're interested, I did art!), I agree with a lot of points in the video, especially about reaching out to others for help. Whether that be development or play-testing, you can get so much valuable feedback from people interacting with what you've made and from learning how others approach development. Getting others involved with the games I make has helped push me through to the finish line where I am not sure I could've solely self motivated. I definitely recommend trying to look for people who mesh well with you while making smaller scope projects, and building on top of it each game. Also don't know how this happened but this is your fifth video I saw and I assumed I was subscribed and I wasn't? So that's been changed lol, keep up the good work!

Let's goo!! We needed this so much.

I get no greater joy in life than watching someone playtest my game and seeing them genuinely enjoy it

I'm constantly obsessed with design filling up documents of ideas, but what I love is how diverse making games is. What i find hard i that it is really hard to go from making music to graphics in the same day. I just go on binges of drawing or animating or making music or coding, but it's so hard to spread a bit of each daily.

This is so inspiring! All this advice is so helpful! Thanks so much for this! Edit: That egg analogy is pretty good ngl😂

That was an awesome start with burnout vs lack of motivation with Minecraft example! (literal burnout) Also I feel like sometimes burn out [in one project] can lead to lack of motivation for a new project.

I agree, it's incredibly rewarding to work on various tasks like design, art, coding, and music, but it can also be overwhelming. From my experience, even small games require significant effort, especially if you handle every aspect yourself. I've learned it's often better to focus on your strengths and collaborate with others who excel in areas you're less skilled at, such as in my case music and art. While I admire indie developers who are passionate about every detail, the reality is that striving for full control can be costly and I do not recommend it. Instead, try to maximize the time doing something you actually enjoy doing :)

I feel that often, besides being exhausting, the process of creating a game is the most difficult form of artistic expression, and that it is not necessary to have your game complete or oversold, but just to pass on your expression in the form of fun to others.

and there was me making a 30 hour long parody game as a joke (like seriously i never have any placeholders, i always do crap and delete it all if something else suits, and the weird bit is i never got burned im physically incapable, im a not even workalochic, like i would do so much work in a day and never touch the project and procrastinate for all week, im all over the place lol :D)