This is a lot like what a YouTuber by the name of Randy has been doing: he decided to create his own game engine instead of using something like Godot/Unity/Unreal and it's been quite the adventure.
Of course, he still has nothing close to an actual game and the progress he's made in a year is visually similar to what i threw together in a month in Unity for a freelance client once. Though admittedly, he's probably learnt a bit more about how game engines work by creating his own and it's been quite the educational experience, as well as something that actually has gained him a nice following of people who support him towards more videos.
But that's still not very conductive to shipping finished games. It's very much the same as people whose games tend to balloon in scope, another thing that's as damaging to finishing a product in a reasonable amount of time as writing your own engine is.
I do suspect that not everyone has the utilitarian approach to game development that i or other people like me have: who just pick Godot/Unity/Unreal for every single project of theirs without ever caring much about the inner workings of everything. Then again, i'm the kind of person for whom, for example, adding graphical effects to their game consists of utilizing pre-made shaders instead of learning to use the shader language properly and all that.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but those are wildly different mindsets.
In case you missed it, some further context, his website now reads:
I’ve decided to shelve Arcane (a video game I’ve been “working on” for 7 years) so I can practice shipping smaller games first
I’ve been sending out a personal changelog every Sunday
I’ve started using Unity so I can hone my design & prototyping abilities
I scrapped my old custom website with this WordPress one
I’ve transitioned to having writing (this site) be my main communication medium since I’m not the biggest fan of chasing the YouTube algorithm
Yep, that is actually the eventual outcome for many of these grandiose projects.
Nonetheless, i hope that his further pursuits are more successful or at least fulfilling for himself!
Who knows, maybe he'll be able to create interesting content about Unity some time in the future, like Sebastian Lague and others make: https://www.youtube.com/c/SebastianLague/videos (if he ever feels like doing more YouTube content)
> as well as something that actually has gained him a nice following of people who support him towards more videos.
A following which has recently turned against him after they funded 6k a month on his patreon, and he flatout told them that he would stop communicating, doing YouTube videos and he would also stop working on the game they were giving funding for.
If he was making that much money for a while, lives somewhere affordable, and saved a lot of that, he’s got a decent runway to start making money by actually making games instead of getting lost in his own engine.
I did the same thing 10 years ago. I probably spent about 9 months full time building a game on a custom OpenGL engine, but at that point I realized how many systems I was still missing (for example animation, more advanced effects and shaders, etc).
But as of recently I'm now doing game development again, but this time using Unity. I've learned that game development is really hard, geometrically more so than a random business application or tool, and you have to use all/any tools that are available to you.
His main YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos
His secondary YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandytheSequel/videos
Of course, he still has nothing close to an actual game and the progress he's made in a year is visually similar to what i threw together in a month in Unity for a freelance client once. Though admittedly, he's probably learnt a bit more about how game engines work by creating his own and it's been quite the educational experience, as well as something that actually has gained him a nice following of people who support him towards more videos.
But that's still not very conductive to shipping finished games. It's very much the same as people whose games tend to balloon in scope, another thing that's as damaging to finishing a product in a reasonable amount of time as writing your own engine is.
I do suspect that not everyone has the utilitarian approach to game development that i or other people like me have: who just pick Godot/Unity/Unreal for every single project of theirs without ever caring much about the inner workings of everything. Then again, i'm the kind of person for whom, for example, adding graphical effects to their game consists of utilizing pre-made shaders instead of learning to use the shader language properly and all that.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but those are wildly different mindsets.