Welcome back to this week’s lesson from Solo Gamedev School!
Today we’re going to talk about the namesake of this newsletter: why you should go into game development solo rather than with a team.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying "solo" means locking yourself in your room and never asking for help or never talking to anybody.
In fact, what I'm saying is the exact opposite.
Being alone is not good for your mental health — you need to be social and find a community of like-minded individuals with similar goals and values.
What I’m saying is that "solo" means freedom.
I’ve been making games solo for over 15 years, so I know what it’s like and want to share my knowledge and experiences to help other game developers in their journeys.
Most developers starting out actually don’t have much of a choice in the matter.
You might be the only person among your family or friends with an interest in game development, and so the only way to break into the industry is to just start making things on your own.
Just getting started is the best way to learn, even if you’re alone.
Now, most solo developers will probably tell you that the reason they go it alone is so that they can make the game of their dreams.
You might be in a similar situation — you have an idea for a game you really want to make, so you just start creating it all by yourself.
As you work on the game, you suddenly realize that your ambitious project is too much to handle by yourself, so you feel compelled to seek out others who can help you.
But if you team up with another person, or make a deal with a publisher, you might have to compromise your creative vision.
Chances are, if you’re making a game, you’re doing it because you want to exercise your creative muscles.
So giving away that freedom doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
One counter-argument is that making games is by necessity a social hobby — there are so many great people you can get to know by working with them.
However, not everyone wants to turn game development into a lifestyle.
Personally, I think too many people get caught up playing these “social games” to a point where they enjoy the process of making the game more than finishing it.
Socializing with other developers might feel fun, but you can quickly lose sight of the forest for the trees this way.
You’ll also get stuck in pointless meetings, heated arguments, and possibly lose friends and passion for your projects as a result (I know I have).
Would you rather be a solo developer who shipped a game in 3 months, or on a team of developers working on a game that hasn’t shipped in 3 years?
If you are wanting to make game development a career, the only way to get anywhere is to sell a product — and to do that, you must first finish one.
And the best way to get anything done is to keep things as simple as possible.
“Solo” is independence, you don't need a big team of people, you don't need to spend a ton of money hiring out employees or even contractors.
If you're trying to make a living out of this, you're trying to make sure that the revenue your game makes is going to exceed the costs that you incur to create it.
So as you hire more people and spend more money, your odds of success go down.
Recent developments in AI like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT have made it easier than ever for solo developers to quickly create assets for their games.
You don’t need to hire individual people anymore if you can’t afford it.
Think of how you apply this same logic to using a game engine — rather than hire a bunch of programmers to build your game engine from scratch, you just go with something like Unity or Unreal for free.
If you have a website, you also likely didn’t hire out a web developer — you went with something free like WordPress, Wix, or Carrd.
Similarly, you can use AI services to create art, text, code, music, voices, and who knows what else all for free or at minimum cost.
I’ve seen a lot of pushback from game developers who refuse to use AI to their advantage, and while I understand where they are coming from, I simply disagree.
2023 and beyond will prove to be a new era for solo game developers, where a single person can make a game with a quality that rivals the games of AAA companies.
For example, the sprites and backgrounds for my latest visual novel were created with assistance from Stable Diffusion, and whenever I get stuck on writing or coding, I can ask ChatGPT for help.
Despite not being a professional artist myself, I was able to create full-body sprites for over 20 characters within 48 hours.
Consider not only the money it would cost to hire, but also the time it would take to have someone make all the artwork, going back and forth over the edits, and so on.
I was able to save at least $30,000 and likely six months of time using AI.
The idea that solo developers take longer than a team is simply not true.
This technology will only continue to improve, and so I predict that solo developers will continue to increase in number as time goes on.
So it’s obvious to me that the benefits far exceed the costs of being a solo gamedev.
My goal with this newsletter is to help other solo developers realize their dream games by teaching them the methods I use to make mine.
If you find these articles useful, please consider sharing them with other solo developers you know.
That’s all for now, and until next time, thanks for reading!