A question we get asked a lot is how to stay focused, motivated and productive while working on a project.
Would you folks be interested in a course that gives you a new set of skills, strategies and motivation for getting your creative projects completed?
Just vote above, and if we get to 100 votes then we’ll put out some initial content on YouTube!
If you guys have specific areas you would like us to dig into, let us know.
Are there specific aspects of your project which cause you to be blocked or lose motivation?
Level Design, This is a particular block of mine coming up with creative ideas for each level.
Some of us aren’t born level designers and how to go about creating variations enough in the levels to properly engage the player and hold that attention seamlessly through one level to the next.
I would like to see methods of maintaining game scope, aka avoiding feature creep, for singe member and small dev teams. For those teams with more experience, tackling the more detailed or complicated projects seem to have a longer production time frame and staying focused on the current project can get difficult.
This times 1000. My biggest roadblock and project killer is currently level design.
Hi Rick,
I can only speak from personal experience but I find myself losing motivation to finish a project/course at the point beyond which the core mechanics are completed. At that point I’m in the, “let’s get this thing done already” mode.
How about doing a completely different kind of course? How about structuring a course around preexisting assets (i.e. one’s from the Asset store)? There are plenty of excellent assets that are free that could be used to speed up development drastically. I’ve never been a fan of reinventing the wheel (I understand that it can, however, be instructive).
As far as I am aware there isn’t a Unity course that centres itself around using preexisting assets but I think that there is beginning to be a glut of courses that introduce Unity and C# (You and Ben have several excellent courses already fill that gap very nicely).
Regardless, please continue your excellent work. I really enjoy your courses.
@Marc_Carlyon @Rick_Schumaker Thanks for the level design comment guys. This sounds like a specific technical skill that has you blocked to which the answer is usually “who can I ask for help”. In the motivation course I wouldn’t cover level design techniques (although I’d love to!) but will cover methods for addressing gaps like the ones you have and how to systematically approach resolving them. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the good thoughts. I totally agree with your philosophy - I’m a huge fan of the unity asset store and think that its better to spend $30 and get amazing assets than taking a month to make them all yourself. We have on our radar a course which is focused on making games with plugins and assets - the challenge is to do so without requiring students to pay money for those assets in order to be able to follow the course.
I’m still on the fence with packaged assets… Very few of them are as plug-and-play as I’d like (oh that reminds me, add a pause button to latest game… the best asset I’ve found yet!) but aside from the real winners, I find I spend a lot of time dealing with old code, half broken code, 1001 flavors of documentation, etc… I know, I know… welcome to the real-world, right? Still, while I must admit the hours saved probably outweigh the hours I’d have otherwise spent doing it all myself, they can be rather frustrating hours, nevertheless. 
(i.e. it’s about time for me to tackle some of my imported assets… the colliders aren’t behaving as I’d expect, but I’ve been ignoring that over more pressing mechanics that need to be addressed.)
The things that help motivate me the most are: 1) being excited about what I’ve accomplished recently and: 2) being excited about what I might be able to do next.
I derive this motivation (being excited about what I’ve accomplished recently), and strive to ensure a steady supply of it, by never letting more than a day or two go by without spending some time working on a project. If three or more days go by, I begin to feel detached from the project, my direction, and my achievements as well as goals. Fortunately, there’s also number two…
While I have to admit there are many times where I find myself a bit lost or directionless, it’s probably more often that I have more ideas than I can keep in my head. Comments! Ain’t no better way to remember that idea for that thing you wanted to do in that game than… put-in a TODO remark.
I suppose it would be nice to have a friend to co-create something with… Of course there will be issues over what should or should-not be done, but it seems having a partner to inspire and be inspired-by could be very productive.
I look forward to seeing what the pros have to say!
A general start-to-finish of the game development system, outlining things from the initial scoping document, to refining scope, time management and how to effectively set tasks, milestones etc to keep on track and motivated.
You learn how to code, know what you want to make, then spend a few sloppy months implementing things you think sound cool, have no end goals in sight and the project just whimpers out.
I am not sure if this would be the course to do it in, but I often notice that people are using git or other forms of version control when creating the videos for the various courses you offer and I for one would love to learn more about how I can use git to manage my unity projects for myself and maybe for team projects down the line.
For me, its every aspect. Im learning C# and learning unity and then it’ll be on to using blender and so its the motivation to not stop because i hit creaitvity blocks or get frustrated over things like learning obstacles
Thanks for all the votes on this folks, we’re super excited to say this course is now live on Udemy 
This special coupon will get you in on the course with a big discount 
If you’d like to take your game to the next level and get advice from experts at finishing projects, then come join us and let us help you get it done 
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