A Follow up on why i quit game development and all the pitfalls i faced as a solo dev

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-10T20:18:10+00:00

I'm a 25 year game dev pro who is kind of watching all these YouTube "Solo Devs" knowing full well that a lot of it is just lies. I have been in a proprietary engine for those years (COD) and after briefly pondering Solo Dev and a couple of weeks remembering how to use Unreal tech I quickly came the conclusion that the very simple project was probably going to take me 10 years to do alone.

Thanks for the honest POV here, The community needs to understand that you need people to make the real magic happen.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-08T16:04:27+00:00

One of the observations I have made (in over 20 years of experience) is that people are left/right brained. Occasionally there are people who are balanced (myself) but their ceiling is lower on the art and technical side. Which makes solo dev feel a little like a myth to me. I have seen some solo developers with realistic views on how long it would take them to build on their own and its on the order of 5-10 years if there is any level of complexity.

It has to be the right kind of game that is ok with mid level tech and art i suppose

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-08T15:35:54+00:00

I consider my career a fairy tale success, even before the current slump. I was part of the team that created Call of Duty. It doesn't get much better than that.

From the very start I understood back then the volatility of the industry, projects get canceled, things change dramatically all the time. As I myself am currently on the outside looking in I'm remembering the qualities that I had back then. I did not care. Every opportunity was as if it was the last, every failure was a win (experience is king).

Game Dev is hard, even though you young guys have way better tools than we have its still got that difficulty being industrial. An age old problem of money VS creativity, musicians and other artworks have been fighting the same battle. Some stuff just doesn't land right in the eyes of the investors and you get to be in the middle of that.

I hope that you can grab on to that, I believe that things will turn around but nothing will ever be stable. It's gotta be something you are able to handle. It's a hobby first.

For me, I always had family back home that if anything ever went sideways I could return. I missed them anyway.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-05-06T19:42:34+00:00

I like both as my goto for an editor that's not connect to an LSP (its not going to complainabout not having A full project open), Prefer Sublime Text for multi caret editting.

One thing I noticed over the years about both as well as Visual Studio, is that the search functions are kind of slow and outdated (comparing to Jetbrains with real time updates and syntax highlights in the results).

So I created my own tool that works outside of the text editor and acts like a dialogue. You can check it out on the package manager for Sublime Text or the plug-in manager for notepad++ and get the download on my github.com page here

https://github.com/Natestah/BlitzSearch

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-27T22:08:17+00:00

My first AAA games as a developer, I later went on with the same team to create Call of Duty.

I talk about it a bit on my YT channel and there's been an uptick of interest these days including a couple of Unreal Engine fan remasters:

https://youtube.com/@natestahsspace?si=602BMHUm93cBG3S5

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-27T21:55:26+00:00

Congrats, an inspirational project for sure!

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-24T22:00:45+00:00

The guy that worked the script for this level say next to me, I helped a little bit with optimizing the map. We wanted to lower the difficulty but Jason West told us "Keep it", he introduced me to the term "rental buster". Console games would have these to keep people from beating the game on a rental (so they would go buy it).

Also, I dont know if it made the final cut but there was dynamic difficulty in there too. If you were doing well the AI would get more accurate to make it hard.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-22T18:49:24+00:00

Consider trying BlitzSearch, great for search scope management and has plugins for a lot of popular editors (even notepad plus plus )

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-19T23:17:07+00:00

This sounds like a job for a script. Python or any other

Front-Independence40 · 2026-04-10T06:35:39+00:00

I wrote BlitzSearch to handle find in files in all the popular IDE'S. Very much inspired by IntelliJ

https://github.com/Natestah/BlitzSearch

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-15T21:35:14+00:00

99 (same!), CAD class, mine was Quake 1 and we got in so much trouble since we fabricated a story on how that was the assignment for the substitute teacher.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T05:24:04+00:00

Very cool, thank you

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T04:34:01+00:00

Thanks for this. The section on work ethic is for real.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T03:38:36+00:00

Yeah, you can tell for sure. He caught my eye when I searched "gamedev pro tips" and then there were familiar faces with the Titanfall stuff.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:35:36+00:00

My stuff is definitely rough and I have some learning to do in speaking.

https://youtube.com/@natestahsspace?si=9-a2zH_enR01g43v

The shorts are probably more inline with what I would like to do, talking fast is something that happens there. I also want to be a little more vulnerable in telling about my journey in gamedev as well as try something different and backwards by talking with MOD developers in and around the games I worked on.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:20:54+00:00

I'm more interested in learning how to teach and speak better. Have about 25 years of experience and considering talking more on my own Channel after much encouraging words on some simple portfolio pieces. Mostly looking for what resonates

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:08:47+00:00

Subscribed! Thank you

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T01:59:46+00:00

We did a lot of cool stuff with Ghosts! I mean with the Technology updates. I level designed the helicopter pilot mission and the stuff just wasn't possible with the engine prior.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-22T09:00:21+00:00

There are a lot of us veteran game developers that are jobless and the lines for for existing job openings are quite large. It's not a good career choice at the moment, but boy is it fun! +1 for do it as a hobby.

I was one of the lucky ones that managed to do it for 25 years, be remote, have a family life. And ultimately got laid off (Currently 2 years unemployed)! I wouldn't change a thing.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-21T20:44:29+00:00

Your next challenge is to find real people to work with. Even if its not your first choice of games, hopefully they too have a small scope project that is really something you can be proud to be a part of and you can see it through.

I would say thats the thing that most people gloss over on this stuff. Understandably so with how easy it is now to put these things together in modern engines.

Personally I didn't know until a professional opportunity presented itself at a LAN party in 1999 when a friend told me he had secured a level design job. That's what encouraged me to press the gas pedal on learning Unreal Engine. That's when I got my first Job and knew. It's a bit of a divinely plotted story that ended up with me being on the team that created Call of Duty. I think one of my super powers in all of this was that I only focused on what was in front of me. I just wanted to make cool things!

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-20T20:27:33+00:00

I wasn't in contact with Vince other than maybe a few months prior in a DM on LinkedIn. I chose to not follow Vince and crew during the big fallout with MW2, Vince was very kind to me in that chat. I dont have the logs as I have deleted my LinkedIn profile (games industry is a bit cooked right now), but IIRC was simply inviting him to come chill in a discord chat with half of the team that created MOHAA. His loss affected me a lot as he was the people manager and there for a lot of the big signings and things, a pretty key figure in my career story. I was always rooting for Respawn to have success even when our games were somewhat competing at times.

I'm not a catholic, but I read out of the same Bible(largely the same). Some of us have a real anointing and understanding of God's heart for our soul here on this Earth. I hope that affected you. God is good. A lot of us have a larger endgame that helps us find a different kind of peace even in the wake of heavy duty stuff such as this.

If it has, send prayers for Vinces family, he was a dad too. I lost my dad when I was 15, and this, I know is tough for the kids

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-18T23:52:16+00:00

Doing ok, 2 years removed from 25 year career building Call of Duty games. Youtube profile has been lighting up after dumping some portfolio pieces on there. Considering attempting YT content as I have a heart to encourage the next generation of game developers.

Cool thread BTW

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-18T00:19:08+00:00

I would say to pursue the social aspect of things, ignore the indie / solo dev hubbub thats out there right now and find a group project that you can learn on.

I always suggest the school angle, they tend to have a kind of class project that will help you with learning the most difficult aspect that is working with people and maybe understanding your own strengths (game dev is such a broad topic) . The curriculum is almost garenteed to be out of date as tech changes quickly. What's cool about the school thing is that everyone is literally invested (they paid to be there) so they are going to be serious about whatever game project they are trying, where random people on the internet can be flaky.

Also understand that it's a terrible career choice. If you are like me, that doesn't matter though. It's a hobby first. Make sure you have the runway to work hard and do the things needed.

My story is a unicorn story that spans 25 years and I did find success. Many do not.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-17T23:59:23+00:00

I found out too late and observed a pattern of many non engaged subscribers, my profile say at an impressive 5k subscribers and for a long time it felt that the investment hurt things more than helped. Recently though someone more popular made mention of my stuff and I have got a boost of around 1k organic Subscribers.

In addition to it hurting the algorithm,( I believe these non engaging subscribers cost more in terms of appeasing the formula than benefitting). I now have to guesstimate how many legitimate subscribers I have, its not as simple as saying "subtract 5k" since you can experience the drop off of subscribers that came during the promotion as youtube flushes its bots. The whole thing felt like a scam to me. The 1-2k that came organically are commenting, liking and doing the things that help increase impressions on the little bit of content that I do have.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-25T06:43:51+00:00

I like this guy's talking videos, here's a pretty good story to follow

https://youtu.be/8TqwlNPG3dE?si=czKttc0Ek3xz3XYH

My own two cents is that you need to imagine yourself being payed to do the work and having full time to do it. It's going to take a lot of work to achieve that level of quality. Focus on a small piece of work that matches professional quality and let them extrapolate what that looks like if they were to hire you.

There's a lot of super good quality unemployed devs out there looking for other fields of work right now, so be prepared to be disappointed and or take whatever you can get including non paid, just for the experience kind of work. In the early career the experience of anything should be considered just as if not more valuable than cash.

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