(Disclaimer: this post isn’t meant to come off as a personal attack. At best I’m hoping it comes off as motivational, at worst as a grumpy old man moaning about the good old days.)
When I first started lurking on JGO, it was full of titans like Notch and Kev Glass and the Puppy Games guys. It was educational just to sit back and read their conversations as they talked about stuff they were working on, technical problems they were having, and the general cutting edge of Java game development. Sure, they also talked about other stuff, but the main focus was game development.
Some titans still hang out, and there are still some interesting posts here. But now it seems that kind of conversation is being drowned out by posts like this:
- I’m thinking of making a Mario clone. What color shoes should he have? Post your favorite game shoes here!
- I have no idea what to code. What should I code?
- Wouldn’t this type of game be so cool? I’m definitely going to make it!
None of that is about actual development. At best it’s procrastination, but at worst it’s actively keeping you from accomplishing your goals. GET TO WORK.
“Well we all need to blow off some steam sometimes!” I get that. I really do. Sometimes you just want to talk about programming, and many of us don’t have IRL people who care about it like we do. You might want to just talk to somebody who gets as excited about programming as you do, but you don’t have anything much more specific than that in mind.
Get something more specific to talk about. Start working on that project you keep talking about. Post here when you accomplish something particularly interesting, or when you get stuck. Start participating in One Game a Month. Make posts about your actual progress, not just what you think you might want to do. Check out CompoHub for ongoing jams, and post your entries, not just a list of a hundred games that you haven’t started yet. Try out Processing. Experiment with Google Glass, or Spine, or something outside of game development, like digital art or data visualization. Do something interesting and post about it instead of making a post asking about how mechanics should work in a game you haven’t started yet.
What do you want to accomplish this summer? Get to work.
(okay now to start following my own advice)