Challenges

What do you need to get out of the couch? I could bet a good challenge would do it.

In my opinion they are the best way to learn and if it works for me, it probably works for anyone. I will state this as a biographical note but it's only an example. If you understand this you'll probably ignore the biographical part. If you understood the first sentence you'll probably won't need to read the whole post.

First challenge: Learn Art, Make art

The second or third time I got interested in game development was the time I decided to register myself in a portuguese game development forum, GameDev-PT. Quickly I came to the conclusion I had to contribute to the community. In short, how could I be seen as an artist if I had almost no pieces to show?

Second Challenge: Be useful to a team

When I started reading posts I found a guy recruiting every kind of game developer to be on his team to make a groudbreaking massive online game (for gamers, MMORPG with a FPS interface). I contacted him and quickly I was on the team. Now I only had to make a difference there. Initially I was the only one so it wasn't much of a challenge. Despite that, I created a schedule for me. One A4 page filled with concept sketches a day. I had classes at the same time so it seemed reasonable.

The project eventually crumbled but I learned a few things and I mastered new tools. I met people related to that area and I came one step further to achieving my dream.

Third challenge: Figuring out what to do next

After that I had no team and no project, so I created my own. With that I kept learning by myself until I was in a team again and after that I got back to my projects, learning so that I can be even more useful next time.


In a nutshell, I dare you to learn and to make something you're proud of.