How can you have 1000+ hours in a single game, work on a personal project for 10 months, spend 4 years writing a novel?
I think the secret is to not have ADHD
Take breaks.
A hobby is supposed to be fun, or relaxing. Step back for a bit when it stops. (This is why good hobbies frequently make bad jobs.)
ETA: it’s also not important that hobbies be perfect or even useful, take the stress of perfection out of it. enjoy the imperfection.
Have more than one interest/hobby! I can’t imagine doing the same for months on end with no alternative. I naturally gravitate to a monthly rotation (not consciously, just kinda happens) of high interest in something, and then there’s a few things I do whenever (read a book when I have a few minutes here or there, do some cross stitching while watching my husband play a game, etc).
The key is to actually not care about the time spent, but rather what you do with it. If you’re counting how long it’s been, it’s gonna be a grind, but if you’re really focused in your goals, time flies and you get what you wanted.
Also, as others have mentioned, having multiple interests to jump back and forth to goes a long way in preventing burnout.
I’ve been a co creator on a game that’s been in the works for about 10 years now, we finally started making real progress 3 years ago. It requires so much research, planning, and many many drafts let alone future fine tuning. I had to get better at drawing, developing designs, research many things about what and why characters look like.
It’s something that I do because I want to bring to life this project, and it’s an active part of my life.
It takes a lot of steps, so it naturally became time consuming. I am still passionate today as I was 10 years ago when the project was just a pipe dream. It was a place to escape to, something personal to grow. It was fun as it was difficult to create something, so I would say it naturally became something that takes many years to truly come to life.
I started working on my first game about 6 months ago and I am still far from done. Game Dev takes waaay longer than I expected. Just wondering what is the game that you’re working on? And any advice when it comes to marketing? I haven’t marketed shit yet and I procrastinate everyday.
It’s actually a different sort of game than usual, it’s more like a novel. It’s a kinetic visual novel, so it’s fairly simple and we’re using RenPy- issue being to create the plot itself as we are making a sort of episodic series.
Marketing, well I’ve been trying to grow interest in my art and through that, interest in the novel by sharing the concept visual works as we go along. That way when we have something more firm I can share it with those who had already been interested in my art.
We don’t really plan to make money off the game per se, but would just want the visual novel to be played and appreciated. I plan on making some merch for it as a way of support but since it’s just me and my partner doing the work, it’s our side passion project that we do secondary to our jobs
I think marketing wise, growing a community of interest is important, like whatever the type of game you’re making, going in those spaces and getting familiar with fans of that type of game to generate interest