Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Thank you for the thoughtful, honest, introspective essay[0]. I have a 15-year old son who -- like a lot of kids -- is interested in making games for a living. I've shared other pieces with him about "what it's really like to write software in the computer gaming world" and after clicking the link, quickly sent him this one. I just assumed it'd be something along those lines so I sent it before I read it.

These "real life in the world of game development" pieces are usually the kind that serve only to discourage a kid from wanting to write games (and really any other software for that matter) which is not really what I'm aiming for. I simply want him to have a more realistic view of what game development really is and I suspect he'd be interested in a lot of other corners of software development.

You basically nailed it, here[1]. In fact, as I read it, I imagined my son writing something like this in the future -- albiet with some details changed. He's an incredibly intelligent 15-year old kid who has pretty serious ADHD and struggles due to family circumstances. He had similar issues with friends -- mostly related to being homeschooled until last year[2].

[0] Looks like submitter is the author assuming the HN profile is accurate.

[1] As a fellow Christian who was praying about his son this morning, I suspect this was something He sent my way ;).

[2] He's got friends and makes friends easily but the school he was put in was a small (unfortunately awful) Christian school with kids who had attended since Kindergarten ... it was hard to break into.

As someone with ADHD, game dev has been a great hobby for me, but not something I could do full time (at least independently). There's so much breadth and depth in game development, you can hyperfocus on "the new shiny" almost indefinitely: 2D and 3D graphics, shaders, networking, AI, procedural generation, animation, physics, etc. And then there's worldbuilding research, sounds, music, pixel art, vector art, 3D modeling, etc.

All of these things led me down rabbit holes that gave a wealth of knowledge and experience, many of which I apply to my day job (or let me be in a position to move up). In 20+ years, I've made hundreds of prototypes, engines, and demos. I've only fully released a handful of games, and for the most part they were a slog to complete.

For the longest time I thought it was something wrong with me, just "too lazy" to complete something or I needed to "try harder." I've since come to learn more about ADHD and see it's an expected result as dopamine levels change throughout the project. So I've changed my expectations from "I'm going to run my own indie studio someday" to "I'm going to work on whatever moves me right now and use it as a fun learning experience."

I've had much the same experience in my life (though less with game development and more with other forms of hobby development).

Gotta say, though, like the name :)

hacker dips unite!

Thanks for sharing, hope it can be helpful to your son! I think something about Christian schools, groups, even churches makes them tend to be super clique-ish, at least in my experience in the US. I struggled way more in those groups than in others, which is pretty sad and backwards.

I haven’t had that experience in the Netherlands. At least the church (related) groups I went to were always happy to include anyone new (religious or not). Probably partially because they were always at the brink of starving from lack of members, but…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com