Why do you do what you do?

Since Evak decided to post an article on the subject, in a sense, I figured I'd ask this.

Why do you do what you do? Why make games? Why compete, directly or indirectly, with other developers?

Is it for profit? Fun? Experience? Personal pleasure? You're just altruistic and want to help others? What makes your time worth it?

I imagine Tim's (Indiepath) response will be something akin to fun and a paycheck, which is probably what most people look forward to in this field.

As for me, I, rather ironically, want to help people. There's a reason why I don't charge for any of my code, and that's because when I'm the only person benefiting from my work it's not worth it. Monetary reward isn't good enough for me, which is rather selfish. If my work was worthless to everyone, there would be no point in me doing it. In short, if I haven't made someone happier, made their job easier, etc. with my work then I'm not happy.

Keep in mind that my work does not expand to discussions, conversations, debates, etc. You're still all subject to my wrath as far as that is concerned. ¬_¬

Anyhow, like Aristotle said, "the good is that at which all things aim." So what is your good?

fun

Its strictly a hobby for me, so I aim to have fun while coding, but if I manage to make something useful, I don't mind getting a little money back so that I can buy more fun stuff to play with. But the fun factor is most important.

hmm its funny when i was younger I was a wildlife artist and my main motivation was to do nice looking work that would make people happier.
Unfortunately real life got in the way and now I just do it for the money.
I still enjoy my spare time work, but anything to do with the commerical side just makes me miserable.
In a ideal world I would just do it for fun, but bills have to be paid.

I think your goals might change as you get older Noel. Everyone tends to have a certain idealism when young which gets dragged out of you as you have to come to terms with surviving in a greedy world

unfortunately Ruz is right.

If everyone was like Noel, we'd all be happier... but a few greedy people will cause chaos in a system like that...

It is really sad, the the collective unhappiness of the world is really caused by everyone's greed... but if you aren't a little greedy, you can't be happy. So it is self perpetuating.

Ironicly, we have enough in the world for everyone to work some and live some, but before 1% of the people have 99% of the wealth, some people do nothing, while most everyone else is worked to death.

Then I guess I'll have to try harder to be above those people.

If this line of work makes you miserable, leave it, do something like construction work or something with your hands. Not enough people appreciate working with their hands.

People respect things they think they can't do more then things they think they can do.

Regardless of wether they could do either or not.

Freedom

I can come down in the morning, drink coffee, read the paper and enter my office 5 meters away. The when the sun is shining, like this week, I take a good games programming book and go sit in the sun reading during my "worktime". I don't have to ask for free days, i don't have to sit in endless meetings, i can choose my own tools. I am fully responsible for my own actions. Ask Mark and you get the same answer.

Fun
I can't stop laughing at the industry I am in. We rolled over the floor laughing while makeing Lovechess, and we are having much fun now with our new project. After 20 years i still like to program and tinker. I like the rat race we are running with our sites.

Fortune
Yup, that also. It's there, we know how to get it.

Coolness.
Game makers are cool, I am cool, period.

way to make money


Make MMO that is mediocre

Let people play for free

Use flashy graphics and lingo to convice a company that knows nothing about games that putting their ads on the billboards in your game will attract customers.

Offer to make thier item 'purchessable' in game as a game item, further infusing their products into the game and makeing their sales go up up up.

Collect Phat Lewt Ad money.

Rinse, Repeat.


don't think it'll work? Imagine how many billboards you could have, then think of how much you could sell them for, and how many companies without millions to blow of ads would want to get a piece of that.

Pay 1000$ to have a billboard? pay 10,000 to have your product as a usefull game item that everyone who plays the game will want or need to have?

- The experience of total control. Being the master of a slave-system.

- App-related: being able to create tools that unleash new art, or new methods to creating art. In a way each artist should in fact do his/her own tools, as each artist is different. As an artist being able to do your own art-tools raises things like productivity, quality and uniqueness.

started for fun. Realised to make even a half decent game "for fun" takes hours and hours which was eating into my working day and thus I thought, "hmm if I want to carry on doing this, I need to do it properly so I can get some sort of return to pay for my lost "day job" income".

I like to tinker

fun and money :) (in equal measures)

Actually I kinda echo what Knotz says, Freedom, Fun and Fortune. I enjoy the challenges of running my own business, the diversity, the creativity, the commerical aspects and the MONEY! Oh and being able to have a beer at 3pm on a Friday!

Well its something I've wanted to do since I was little. I remember playing on our atari, and c64. And when I finally got my nes, I was just a little addict by then.

I used to always think how I could improve or fix the games I played, or I would just design my own games and characters..

And then my older brother had an amiga, and he was working on game projects back then. So its a deep rooted thing for me I guess.

Much later on in life I realized it was either join the industry, or try to make money making them on my own.( Still workin on that part. ) But I guess you could say I want it all. I want to make a living doing something I love.



Well said. I wish I could just make games and have no worries. For that matter there's a number of things I would like to do freely... race cars, start a band, I'm sure everyone could think of nice ways to spend their life.

Unfortunately, thats not how the world works. You need to eat, you need a place to live. You need any number of random things( electricty, clothes, toothpaste, medicine...and so on and so on. ) Things require money. And thats before you get into all the "non essential" stuff people do. For instance, buying videogames :)

I had no value for money until I was like 19ish and working a shitty job, and paying for stuff myself. And dealing with everything that comes with it.

Don't listen to anyone who tries to drag the idealism out of you. Personally, nothing makes me happier than to see someone smile or laugh while having fun playing a game ... especially one that I made. So far I've been involved with this game development business for a while and have made very little money but for every dollar I made someone's probably cracked a smile and had some fun. So ... I figure if I keep going eventually the number of smiles will go up and if it goes up high enough then I'll be making enough people happy that it'll sustain me. It's making the world more fun and I don't think it gets much more idealistic than that.

A lot of the other reasons people posted don't have much to do with games. My flooring business is just as much fun if not more so from my standpoint. I have some good workers and we have fun doing what we do. I could drink a beer whenever I want and basically have any other freedom with that business I want ... and in fact the work I do there also makes people smile. However, I can't affect nearly as many people with that work and it's hazzardous. I also like the mental challenge of making a good game on a personal note. I think it's a good lifelong career to make games ... if you can get to the point where it's enough money.

I used to write games for fun. Now its mainly for money - if I don't think a game will make money, then I won't bother writing it. My snooker game got canned because of exactly this.

I like doing it for fun and achievement. I like visiting these boards and helping people out in the forums. Makes me feel good about myself, that i can help people. When i first started using Blitz3D, i was a bit clueless, but i took a good amount of time to read the manual, try out the examples, and use my past experience of C64 Basic to get my through.

But i did ask for help around here and i usually got it. So, i hate to see people who are trying, struggle and maybe give up. Because once you get past a certain point, it's not about wondering if a command exists to do something. Because you know all the commands inside out and you feel a sense of freedom to do preety much what you want :o)

So, i do this mainly for fun, to help others see how fun it is to program in blitz3d/2d, and to achieve something at the end of it. To watch someone playing a game i made, as Jeremy says, and see them get involved in it. Love it :D

For me it was always for fun, learning new things, excetera...

Back in 1992/93 or so when I made my first proper platformer on the BBC computer, I saw a game better than most.

When you're 9 though, you don't realise that the system you're developing for is a dying breed, so I never managed to get it well known. I kept my BBC up till I was perhaps 18/19 before my parent's threw it out thinking it was broken (In reality, i had a handful of BBC's and this was the only working one!)

So, since then, I've always just enjoyed myself. Was always great fun watching my sisters play my South-Park platformer a few years back :)

I found an old BBC computer when I moved into my house in December 03 - the previous tenants had left it. It was complete with monitor, and a floppy disk drive the size of Belgium.

Don't know if it worked or not... pretty sure it didn't after I launched it out of an upstairs window into the garden, though...

That's what happens when you run outta beer :P

I do it for the glamour and the women

I like to create...

I like the idea of starting with a blank screen, and then with a few lines of code creating something that people will enjoy. I wouldn't be against selling something I'd made, and I have in the past, but I'd never really push it. I'm more of an artist than a business man.

I do it coz I have nothing else in life to do - other than wandering the streets at night with 'Slugger' (me baseball bat - that is the official name of it too, but I call it 'slug' for short). I sometimes go out in the day - but mainly at night.

Game programming combines fun , sophisticated technology and you can even (dream) to make money
No other hobby can offer the same mix

Rocket science?

Fun through being creative and learning about stuff that I can cackle at others for not knowing (I bet YOU can't launch the command prompt with a custom window title!!!)... and helping others :)
I take pleasure in releasing something that I've been working on for 2 years (argh...) and seeing lots of people use it. Not that it's happened yet... I have, maybe, 2 people using things I've made for more than a day. Thanks to both of you!

Of course, I'm always hunting for something that I can justify selling :P

Actually I forgot Rocket science

AI
Robotics
Cybernetics
Teledildonics
Cold Fusion
Laser Fusion

ok... you really can't do the last 2 as a hobby...

but all the others you can.

For me this is a medium that I use as an artist. I want to express myself, tell a story. This need is as old as mankind. Cavemen painted hunting scenes on the walls of their caves. Today cavemen use digital mice to become immortal in the worlds memory.

I think I'm gonna save a copy of my work on a memorystick, enclose it in amber and throw it into the ocean, so they gonna find it in a few million years.

Being a self employed programmer I just love the challenge and the fact I earn money all on my own.

When a customer calls me and says "Can you do some software that will do XYZ" - I say yes and then work out how to do it, thats the challenge.

When a customer calls later and says "The software is fantasic and saves me loads of time", thats part of the reward.

When I earn £200 for an hours work, it brings a huge smile to my face. Granted thats not often but it happens.

I couldn't sit in an office 9 to 5 doing similar work each day, it'd drive me crazy with boredom.

Luckily the variety of software I get to do is very wide and I'm learning new skills all the time, so I couldn't ask for more.

So, I do what I do for the challenge, the reward and the money.

*EDIT*

I am tempted to try my hand at puzzle games this year. That'll be something I've never done and if I get a few months of quiet time I'll certainly give it a go.

Noel is just doing it because he can't get laid and I'm doing it to get some break from having sex with all these hot women... I'm so tired...

I do it for fun, a challenge, and because I'd really hate to have to get a real job.

Of course, it has to pay enough to prevent me from getting a real job, so I have to compromise on the fun to some degree until my income is steady enough ( and long term enough, more importantly ) to sustain me doing whatever the hell I want.

But beyond that, I've found that my doing it really seems to really annoy some people, and that's reason enough for continuing to do it.

Purely as a hobby, but I usually aim to create something for myself, and if it helps anyone else, then that's even better.

Fun.

Because i'm the best *yawn*... ;)

No argument here.

For recognition.

I have yet to release a game/application for money. The 2 main large projects i have completed, delidash and pes4online have been largely successfull.

Tv / magazine coveraGE, 100,000's of users, good feedback.

This sort of things makes you feel you have achieved something. When you know somone has enjoyed your work, it makes you feel good inside.

That being said, I am not so idealistic that I dont want to try and make money from something if I think what I had made was worth a small fee.

Delidash (http://delidash.acsv.net) is the type of game you find with a $10 - $25 pricetag. It was worth giving it away free as a learning experience.

Frustration.

Pure hobby and personal achievement.
Programming games and tools is a vehicle that allows me to fufill all my creative needs.

I also love the way people say -"You programmed that ? - you must be a genius !"

Little do they know ;)

Retired, busted a gut and other parts of my anatomy in the past, so now I just develop games and utils for personal use.

I create games for my own children and maybe a couple of special games for the village children for holidays such as christmas, hallow'een etc.

I have just finished updating an old COBOL project that I was asked to do as a special (Read as: yoo may be retired boy but yoor ours till yoo die) :)

Now I am teaching my children how to code :)

Cheers

Garion

Actually I hate programming. I hate it. For me, programming is just one of many creative outlets that I use to explore ideas for interactive storytelling, because my main interests are English literature, creative writing, technology and linguistics, and the ways in which they can be combined together.

its a tick like tourette syndrome

playing about with blitz and graphics stuff helps to calm that creative tick its just Unfortunate that this tick gets squashed by normal life as well


interesting question

Creating stuff, and seeing other people having fun with your creation.

completely disagree, any greediness has a negative affect on happiness.

I do it for fun, hoping to make a few quid, but no biggy.

I also write, and my time is given over to one or the other depending on how well things are going with the other.:D

The Fame and the Wimmin!

i dont expect much or any money to come from my coding, i like the sense of accomplishment(or something close to it) that keeps me going. If i do get any money that would be great

im doing this for fun and if i can make enough money to keep doing it thats great!

im an artist really, but i love film and the telling of a great story. i would love to make the perfect blend of a movie and a game, where you can shape the story, like a open ended metal gear. Not just a few different endings, but lots of changes.

my programming is holding me back, but im learning every day from good programmers like noel, smiff and matt

Pete

Game design definitely is cool and I always thought it was cool back in the Amiga days when small software companies would do features on their games and how they make them, in the games magazines. That was always inspiring. Like others have said I don't think there is many other hobbies where you really can go wild with creativity and have so much say in how the outcome will be. With programming there are so many possibilities that it's more or less down to the imagination to come up with something new. I've tried web design and found it just doesn't have the same dynamic exciting feel as making real software. Time and again I keep coming back to this hobby because it's just the most satisfying to my creative nature.

Plus it has the great bonus of actually having the potential to be a money maker. While the money would be great, eventually, I definitely do sincerely like to just offer what I know, to teach, to guide, to share ideas with people and allow my truth to flow to others in that way. Since we are all one, when you teach someone else something you are really teaching yourself, and that's what gives it the amazing healing and enlightening potential. That's where the real joy is created - serving others with the side-effect of it serving your highest good.

I think Blitz is great and I haven't found anything else that in all these years that offers as much creative freedom as creating computer software. I do it to awaken the people, I do it to awaken myself, I do it to bring a vision, I do it to inspire, I do it to give freedom, I do it for the art and the state of the art.

Enjoy programming. Blitz3d/Blitzplus have to be the two most used programs on my PC for the last few years. Enjoy making simple games (don't have the patience to play most commercial titles, nor do they interest me as much) . Also enjoy learning new methods and techniques/algorithms for doing things. Blitz is purely a hobby for me, no financial rewards needed.

Days like today make it all worth it.

common, elaborate...

Well today could go one of two ways, either 1) I get to pay off my mortgage or 2) I still have to pay my mortgage.

Hello.

I do it because it makes women flock towards me, with lust and appreciation in their eyes. There's nothing quite like a well coded algorithm to make women want you.

Goodbye.

Indiepath: Lol, nice gamble, wonder what the odds are?

SoggyP: Yeah, it really turns Helen on when I say, "hang on I can't come to bed yet, let me show you this cool scaling, rotating, blending thing I've got going on here".

@Grey, well they are calling me at 15:00 GMT!

In answer to the question: because I thought it would be fun and because there are some types of games that I really like that nobody makes anymore. Or at least not the way I would like to play them.

I suppose it rather grew out of some of the games that I really enjoyed and I started modding for them. Then I rather outgrew what was possible in modding so rolling my own was the only option.

Unfortunatly I found that even putting together some games that where quite simple was a hell of a lot of work and making it look really good was even harder. I found a lot of the tools I needed wern't there or where too restrictive and building them myself took too long and was too hard.

I spent a long time building a scene convertor from 3DSMAX to Blitz because I hoped to use Max as a world builder / modellor but work was tortuously slow and eventually Pudding's exporter made my work redundant. Having got a Max Exporter I found that I still needed a lot more tools and there was still mountains of work to get a project complete. Also being really honest worked hard all day for my day job then sweating away in the evening to work on a game just wasn't much fun.

So in the end I gave up and am now content to just play games rather than make them.

That's my story.

Darkheart