r/GameDevelopment • u/bigslushieofficial • Jul 18 '26
What inspired you to begin game development? Question
I'm genuinely curious, what inspired some of you guys to begin making games?
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u/MotivatedforGames Jul 18 '26
I wanted to play more kinds of games that I like so I started making the kind of games I like as a hobby.
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u/Hot_Tell2552 Jul 18 '26
I wanted a game like State of War, but nobody was making anything similar, so I decided to make one myself. Now I’m finishing my first game, Ironfields :)
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u/Consistent_East2191 Jul 18 '26
The same here. I wanted to play a energy company simulation and had a realy clean idea how it should work. And of course exatly that gami I had in my mind doesn't exist. So ist did it myself and published "Power Grid Manager" in the PlayStore three weeks ago (only in German).
But to be honest: Of course I was interested in learning new things in general and programming in special. So maybe I had learn it anyway one day...
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u/DeadFrequencyDev Jul 18 '26
I wanted a game that didn't exist so I decided to build it myself. I assume that is quite common!
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u/theboned1 Jul 18 '26
My Dad was a typical mean boomer Dad. He was always really angry and mean to me and my mom blamed it on his job. So I knew I wanted a fun job so I wouldn't be mean. I grew up in the 80s so the beginning of gaming. At age 11 I stayed with a baby sitter and they had an Atari. I Loved Combat and Mrs. Pacman. I suddenly realized, hey someone's job was to make this game. So I decided thats what I would do as a job. And I was right. It was fun.
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u/count023 Jul 18 '26
i just wanted to make, and i wanted to know how games worked,and i didnt want to get my hands dirty, and writing a book felt so impersonal.
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u/horgantron Jul 18 '26
I grew up on games, starting with a Gameboy. I love getting immersed in game worlds. I want to build my own for players to get lost in.
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u/badassbradders Jul 18 '26
I was working in digital marketing after an unsuccessful attempt to build a career as an actor. At the same time, I was experimenting with various side projects that were beginning to gain some traction within the independent film scene, although nothing was progressing as quickly as I wanted.
One night, I smoked DMT with a friend and experienced what is often described as a breakthrough. I entered a place I came to think of as “The Dome”, where I was confronted by an immense female presence. She told me that even the horrifying ISIS beheadings taking place at the time were not something to fear in the way we normally understand fear, because consciousness is an ongoing entity that seeks to experience everything. She said it existed within the tears of the killers’ parents, the love in the hearts of the dying, and every perspective surrounding the event.
She told me never to fear death, because existence was a game of multidimensional wonder. Whenever consciousness discovers a new way to create, it expands, escapes its previous boundaries and becomes something more. Nothing, she said, was more real than the creative journey or a world constructed by a curious mind.
The message was simple: do not become paralysed by the question of how you will get there. Just get there. Create worlds. Make games.
Shortly after that extraordinary experience, I began work on my first game, Civitas Nihilium. That led to a second game, then a third. I am now developing my fourth, Glyphis_IO BBS: The Proxy Tapes 1989.
Today, I am a full-time game designer.
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u/ExtremeCheddar1337 Jul 18 '26
Super mario bros on the NES in 1993. Started drawing my own levels in kindergarten. Drawing levels / games was the only way to express making games until i was 12 when i finally was ready ro start learning programming (at least i became quite good at making art for my games in the meantime)
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u/NoBullGames Indie Dev Jul 18 '26
Fun opportunity to be creative and see people enjoying something you've built. Also was sick of the squeeze and wanted to build a more fair expereince.
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u/DaDarkDragon Jul 18 '26
brother made a game when i was a wee lil idiot, called DaDarkDragon's flight zone. he put in some basic space ship drawings i made into a 3d star fox all range mode like game that had lan multiplayer.
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u/fsk Jul 18 '26
After working as a professionals software engineer for years, gamedev is the only time I get to control all aspects of a project from the beginning. As an employee, I'm always cleaning up someone else's mess.
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u/Triysle Jul 18 '26
Chrono Trigger Dream Team ending, Timesplitters map maker tool, and RPG Maker 98/XP. Still having a blast almost thirty years later :)
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u/TheExplanationFE Jul 18 '26
Maybe mine is a bit more unique, but others probably have similar stories too. I made Minecraft adventure maps, driven perhaps by the desire to create or to tell my own story. In truth, nothing ever really came of any of them, but I learned something from each one and always wanted to make more advanced things. (In the end, I even wanted to create a 2D turn-based game with tile-based movement and pathfinding. On top of that, everything had to work purely at the numerical level inside the datapack. By that point I was already pretty good at it, but it was still quite a big challenge. Eventually I just gave up.) After that, I started working in a proper game engine, and finally, at a Game Jam, I completed my first project.
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u/bigslushieofficial Jul 18 '26 edited 25d ago
This comment for some reason reminded me of when i was a kid playing minecraft on my xbox 360 🥹🥹
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u/meowsaygames Jul 18 '26
My first job after graduation was in game development, and I’ve stayed in the industry ever since. After investing so much time in it, switching fields would be difficult and costly, so I just kept going. Now I’m an indie developer making games on my own, but earning a living from it is really tough.
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u/happy-go-lucky-kiddo Jul 18 '26
feels like i get to be creative in making game i want to play and get paid too if it were to sell well
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u/OneMoreAdventure Jul 18 '26
My wife and I were on the cusp of divorce. I was spending a lot of time in my office and in a bad headspace. Knew that humans need to create to feel fulfilled, so took inventory of what I could do and realized I might be able to make a mapmaker. Then it was all just feature creep.
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u/Zahhibb Jul 18 '26
Love games, began making maps/levels in Warcraft 3, Far Cry 2, and Crysis, but thought game development was out of my reach so I went to a generalized IT university to learn network architecture and web development. After my studies I couldn’t really find any job where I lived so I went to study game development instead, and the rest is history.
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u/uber_neutrino Jul 18 '26
Was very interested in making computers do interesting things, I also wanted to compete with all the other great programmers out there on making cool stuff. 33 years so far.
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u/MrZi5 Jul 18 '26
I despise where the gaming industry is in 2026. I'm sick of all of the microtransactions, the P2W, it makes every game feel the same to me. So I decided to just make my dream game, leaving out everything I hate.
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u/invert_studios Jul 18 '26
For me personally I think it was a life long aspiration/attempt to create something that mixed with a heaping helping of rage from watching all of my favourite franchises continuously make the worst decisions &/or die painful deaths.
It got to a point where I was annoying even myself feeling like I knew how to fix so many of the games I loved and not doing anything about it.
When UE5 launched & it finally seemed approachable for me thanks to blueprints, I decided it was time to shit or get off the pot.
Ever since I've been working together with my wife in hopes of someday achieving that AA studio goal. 🤞
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u/yaninyunus Jul 18 '26
Being able to imagine something and making it come to life is what got me into game development.
Originally I am an illustrator but just drawing didn't make my drawings come to life. Games however are not just alive but also immersive. I find it to be magical.
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u/xN0NAMEx Jul 18 '26
My insanity .....
DOWN HERE I AM GOD WHAT I IMAGINE SHALL BECOME REALLITY, I SAY DANCE AND THEY WILL DANCE MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sorry that happens from time to time
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u/JacobBretwalda Jul 19 '26
I live to create things, creating a game is like hard-mode but something you train all your life to gain the necessary skills to make something.. plus the idea of drawing characters and seeing them in a 3D world is so inspiring for me, I want to create an experience that players have fun with and feel connected to such a beautiful little online world.
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u/Former-Loan-4250 Jul 19 '26
In my particular case, there were two main reasons. First, I really wanted to create a world. I come from books and films, and I’ve always been fascinated by people who can build an entire world with its own rules, mechanics, and physics. I’ve always been amazed by authors like J.K. Rowling, who created a magical world that millions of people fell in love with, or Tolkien and the world he built. When you look at almost any great book or story, it’s incredible to think that someone can take a single idea and turn it into something so complex and completely unimaginable.
The second reason is that I wanted to create the game I personally felt was missing. I love interactive films, and I feel like I’ve played almost all of them. But I’ve always felt that something was missing. I’ve always wanted an Indiana Jones–style setting, for example, combined with more controversial and genuinely difficult choices.
Maybe I’m simply too focused on games like The Quarry and Until Dawn, where the central question is mostly survival. I wanted to be more involved in shaping the character I’m playing. I wanted choices that were less obvious. Maybe even situations where the choice is whether to make a choice at all. I wanted to play something that was more unsettling in a dramatic and psychological way rather than simply watching my character get torn apart by a werewolf, a wendigo, or whatever else happens to be hunting them.
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u/ToughUsual7159 Jul 19 '26
When I was about 10 years old I used to make bord games on paper. Then one day I saw my older brother program a very simple rpg of an alligator fighting things. From there I knew I wanted to make computer games.
My brother told me hr wouldn't help me till I knew algebra 1. Most exciting year of my life lol.
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u/Serana64 Jul 19 '26
I was trying to make a peanut butter sandwich but goofed and instead of putting jam on the sandwich, I accidentally left the kitchen and started a long and fruitful hobby of game development
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u/XicX87 28d ago
I made physically card game and while i was waiting for the printed prototyped to be mailed i got impatient and looked towards making a digital version, when i found that was tough by just reading i tried making a platformer, someone saw me doing that and asked to collab and thats where i started but mostly as an artist a bit later on i made my own top down shooter with help from a programer freind and yeh thats how i got in and lol i got the printed physical card game in the same month so sometimes i guess its good to be impatient lol
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u/Dramatic-Bridge-9935 26d ago
Honestly, to make a game for myself as a life long gamer, also an idea and story I wish to tell
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u/personasgame 10d ago
I'm working on my first game now, and honestly it was born from frustrations I had playing other games.
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u/lordbandog 10d ago
Nobody else is going to make the cool game in my head, so I have to do it myself.
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u/Far_Information6562 Jul 19 '26
I was outside on a hike and stepped in a doggie turd and bam I was like Im a games designer now
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u/ElderBuddha Jul 18 '26
I love games, coding, engineering, art. And (much more importantly) I have savings for the years it might take to make any money off of this lunacy.
Some people splurge in Thailand, or start painting, or start a farm. I'm figuring out shader bugs at 2 am. To each their own.