How many times have you wanted to quit?

[Milennin]

I never want to actually quit anything I've started on. I just take breaks from my projects because I can't work on the same thing for months on end (that goes for every hobby I got). To some, I returned to in time, while some other projects I never got back to again because I felt I didn't have enough ideas to keep going, or because I felt my time was better spent working on something new/different instead, or some other reason. Even if I quit a project, I tend to take stuff from those abandoned projects and insert them in newer projects if I can find a place for it, so my work doesn't just go to waste.

 

[SigmaSuccour]

I can't even fathom the idea of quitting.
Perhaps because game making is so fun and meaningful to me.

So you want to ask yourself, what exactly is game making to you?
Is it a hobby? If it's not relaxing you and starting to cause stress, then yeah... you would want to quit.

Is it something you want to make into a business?
Yeah if you're not bringing in money, you would want to quit.

For me, I use game making as a tool to... put myself into an anime-like world.
I put myself, as a character in fictional situations, with colorful characters. I talk and interact with them, be myself, and have an adventure of a time!

I get to be a protagonist of a story. I get to tackle my fears and doubts and weaknesses and learn and grow from experiencing all sorts of pain.
For the 4 stories I've written for my 4 games, (as of writing this) each of them have brought me so much value and experience and growth.

I used to watch anime, and play games, for this exact thing. To experience colorful fictional worlds, meet and interact with amazing characters, and then learn something from the whole experience.

I have realized now that making a game, gives me that 10 times more.
At this point in time, I have quit watching movies and anime, reading manga, and playing games.
All I do now, is make games.
Or rather, I experience for myself, what I used to watch other, fictional characters, experience.

 

[akoniti]

One reason I love game development is that it encompasses so many creative disciplines.

Art, music, writing, coding, problem solving. It helps keep me engaged as I can bounce between them as I wish, and each area contributes to the greater project. I also get a lot of energy from feedback on my games; be it positive or negative, I find interacting with players who take the time to play highly motivating. And, I enjoy playing other indie games and getting to know the creators.

So far I've had no urge to quit, though my productivity varies wildly from week to week. If I hit a real wall I'll re-read Steven Pressfield's 'Do the Work' to kick me into gear

 

[Marquise*]

Too often but the lure of doing something playable gets me back ^^

 

[Shikamon]

I guess I'm kind of the same as @SigmaSuccour, RM game is only just for fun.
Even I don't have a properly completed game, I had always enjoyed the process.
of course, there will break sometimes but it's not gonna make me quit entirely.

 

[PixeLockeT]

None. I breathe and live game dev as it's a passion of mine. I do get discouraged when anyone on the team gets bored of a current project we work on, because I never do and then I feel hecking lonely. lol

 

[rux]

I've just started and I know there are very boring moments. For example, you already know the plot so writing it is not exciting as playing it and have such surprise.

Anyway, that's a normal "depressive" cycle.
There's a moment you'll get hyped again. Mostly midway.
That's why is better to start with something small to begin with, so such depressive stall last less, you'll end something, you'll get feedbacks and you're "stronger" the next time.

It's great to know that other developers are feeling the exact same thing everyone is feeling, making a game is hard and stressful, and knowing if it is going to be noticed or not can make you more stressed and less likely to continue to make the game.

 

[BURNING_JUSTICE_Games]

I've never wanted to outright quit but there are definitely times where I've had to take a break and do something else. Working on projects is hard, especially if you go a long time without making any major progression towards completion, so I think it's a good idea to step back for a bit and come back to it when you're a bit more refreshed

If I could offer a suggestion for when you take a break though, I'd say try to reach some kind of solid milestone before doing so. I know it's tempting to step away when you're in the middle of monotonous battle testing or mapping or database entries, but I think it's a lot more difficult to get back into the project if that's exactly what you're coming back to. Try to save your break for after you finishing mapping x town or completing y cutscene or when you're done with skills 1-50 or something like that. That way when you return, you don't have to remember where you left off and what workflow you were doing, and you can immediately jump into something new and more exciting. I've made that mistake a few times, and it makes it harder to return to productivity

 

[bgillisp]

More times than I can count, and I teach math.

In all seriousness, usually when I felt like that I took a 2 week vacation from it. By the end of the 2 weeks I was ready to get going again with it.

 

[kaukusaki]

I hadn't quit yet, despite being sickly and gremlins like destroying my computers. (I may have been down for the count for a while, but i'm a tenacious fighter...)
Now that i'm homeless and unable to find steady (paying!) work due to the rona, I have been plugging away at game dev despite the constant haters saying i'll never make it - though i spent my whole life learning all there is about game dev. (I wear all the hats - from coding to art to music etc ...)
I wanted to prove RPG Maker is just an RDK (rapid development kit) and can be used to make professional titles with enough time and care. It's *how* you use the tools you have. (You know butter knives aren't just for slicing butter lol)
I have until january when the sheltering program ends - I'm hoping once i release my game i'll make enough change for a dinky 3k house in the country. It's not a hobby for me, it's basically my reason to live.

 

[akoniti]

Now that i'm homeless and unable to find steady (paying!) work due to the rona, I have been plugging away at game dev despite the constant haters saying i'll never make it - though i spent my whole life learning all there is about game dev. (I wear all the hats - from coding to art to music etc ...)
I wanted to prove RPG Maker is just an RDK (rapid development kit) and can be used to make professional titles with enough time and care. It's *how* you use the tools you have. (You know butter knives aren't just for slicing butter lol)

Whoa! Though circumstances sound dire, you can take heart in the fact that your life right now is basically the intro of a cyberpunk RPG

 

[??????]

Wanting to quit? At least once a week.

 

[dollyt]

I started my most recent game and wanted to quit after about two days. The initial idea that I planned out was overly simplistic, and as a story writer I lost interest. Besides, I like art and can´t draw or create graphics, so I was feeling pretty bored. Making maps seemed like a miserable chore with just the RTP, especially because I believed most people would dislike it anyway. What really got me excited was the number of extra resources given by the RMMV community, especially Avery, HiddenOne and Whtdragon, that are simply beautiful. I can use those to create some truly beautiful scenes and maps that are still very similar to the RTP in style. Add to that I finally got some inspiration for a more interesting and ´mysterious´ story! Since then, I haven´t really wanted to quit, although I can´t guarantee that I won´t again. But then again, I´m not looking at doing this for a career. I think I would be way more pressured if I was, and I might have a harder time.

 

[SoftCloud]

I've quit a few times over the years. I would begin projects and either they would be too big for me to handle, or I'd opt in for a smaller project but lose interest due to it not being what I wanted to make. I've recently come back into making games after eight or so years of no game design-work. I did novel writing and artwork instead. But this time I set a goal to make this a demo of my full-book. It's a complete story arc but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
However, I've debating quitting this one too here and there due to it feeling it's still too much work. I'm parallax mapping, doing custom character art, sprites, cut-scenes and so on. I honestly want to do it this way. It's a passion project. The game mechanics have been so hard to do that I've sometimes wanted to quit because I couldn't get my weapon system to match my book's weapons. But, I continued to come back to it, revising and inventing work-arounds. Although the work-load is still hefty, as I need to draw out each of this cut-scene 'slideshow' cinematics, and drawing out various sprite and character arts and so on is a lot, I know I always keep coming to back.
Maybe it's because I'm making a game-adaptation of my book so there's a lot of heart in it, every time I get frustrated with my game I stop working on it thinking "I'm done-- this is too much. I'm an idiot for doing this." in a few days or so, I'm back at it.

 

[Turnkey]

I hadn't quit yet, despite being sickly and gremlins like destroying my computers. (I may have been down for the count for a while, but i'm a tenacious fighter...)
Now that i'm homeless and unable to find steady (paying!) work due to the rona, I have been plugging away at game dev despite the constant haters saying i'll never make it - though i spent my whole life learning all there is about game dev. (I wear all the hats - from coding to art to music etc ...)
I wanted to prove RPG Maker is just an RDK (rapid development kit) and can be used to make professional titles with enough time and care. It's *how* you use the tools you have. (You know butter knives aren't just for slicing butter lol)
I have until january when the sheltering program ends - I'm hoping once i release my game i'll make enough change for a dinky 3k house in the country. It's not a hobby for me, it's basically my reason to live.

Hope you get there, I’ll check out your game when it comes out. I think you can make it

 

[Lornsteyn]

I have many death projects, so I would say I quitted often.
But parts of the older projects always live forth in the new one.

 

[Suikogen]

Plenty of times...more than I can count. What keeps me going is the day when it will finally be realized.

 

[Celestrium]

...There are different types of developers but we are all artists. Myself, I truly want to express myself by enveloping my players in a world of my imagination or experiences. I get overwhelmed, or realize my skills aren't enough yet...it's difficult. I suffer from perfectionism, and get discouraged when things aren't the way I envision (often starting over). This isn't a hobby for me, but a way to express myself. My suggestion, be organized and take breaks, and have support people. 420 characters is never enough .

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

I've wanted to quit so long with my current project, each time something doesn't go right.

Then I'm convinced by someone to keep going, but I really hate working on it by myself. I've never been good at working on things alone to be honest.

 

[Suikogen]

I think working on any project (doesn't have to be game related of course) alone is a challenge especially if you don't have a team behind it who can support you, encourage you, motivate you or whatever it may be to continue on with it. I'm glad we have these forums and discord among other mediums to communicate with others about our projects and their's as well.

I started working on a game since last year and have yet to be happy with it because I want to see it for what it can truly be and what I'm capable of doing to realize that. I know it won't ever be a AAA title or push any groundbreaking ideas but that's not what I'm going for at the end of the day. At the end of the day, I would like to know that I made what progress that I could on it even if it's just a little. Games like Stardew Valley and Iconoclasts are true testaments to what one person with an idea and willpower can do so that thousands if not millions of people can sit back and enjoy what they, the sole developers, wanted to share with the world. Anyway, I could go on and on about this topic but I've got a passion project to work on.