@Genome75 Yeah it sucks not being able to talk about you passions with others that don't care/understand. I've been in the same situation for a good while now and one of the things that has helped me is being in game dev focused discords. Also if ya want, i got a discord if ya wanna talk (gamechfo#1135). Some of those discords i was talking about:

The discord for this website - https://discord.gg/tgEGVNy​

r/solodevelopment discord - https://discord.gg/H3Xh4dj6P8​

Some things that helped me get motivated again:

Listening to your favorite game soundtracks - Ex: Halo wars 1

Scruffy, a youtuber that talks about music in games - https://www.youtube.com/c/ScruffyMusic​

GMTK, a youtuber that talks about the making of games - https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkBrownGMT​

Replaying old games and seeing what you like about them and why - Ex: I played thru Halo 3 ODST and took a ton of notes

Imagine how you would change games you've played - Ex: I would add technology and electricity into Minecraft for complexity(Personal preference lol)

Make rly small projects that help you learn new skills to use in your bigger games - Ex: I learned how to use scripts in GMS2 to make state machines

I wish you luck on finding motivation again o7

Motivation is a tricky thing, there are countless variables.

At it's base level look at intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

The 1st is interior to yourself and the other comes from outside yourself.

Ask yourself why?

1. why do you want to make games?
2. Why do you want to code or do art?
3. Why do you want to make the specific game I assume you have imagined in your mind?
4. Why have you not yet found likeminded people? (is it in your approach? is it in your communication style? is it in your geographic location? )

Everyone is motivated by different things.

If you just want a community to hang out and support you, just google game dev discords.

If you want to look for a team, or a job go here:

https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/711945-places-to-look-for-game-dev-jobs-and-resources/​

best advise I have is to find a team and project that you can sink yourself into.

working alone is challenging.

Good luck!

OR MAYBE ITS JUST UNDER THE BED!

It pains me how much I relate to this. I've been coding for years, am fairly good at modeling, and know my way around a bunch of other things, but I can never bring anything I start to a close. It can get really demoralizing to constantly get excited about things that pop into your head, work on them for a little bit and feeling like you're onto something, and then having it fizzle out quietly. It's definitely worse for me if I've got nobody to work with full time because I'll just go full rabbit hole on something like a feature, content, concept etc., and then ultimately get bored.

Genome75 said:

looking for motivation

I am an aspiring game designer who has been unmotivated to complete a single game. My main problem is that I work alone I talk with friends and family but no one I've met shares my passion for the ideas I want to create. I prefer working on the coding scripts, but can other things like graphics a bit, plus I've been working in Unity. Any teams that I've joined in the past fell apart and did not stay focused. Essentially looking for people to chat with to boost my motivation.

You're not looking for a motivation boost. You describe two completely different problems:

1. You're not a finisher. You start things and then don't finish them. But not finishing them is not a motivation problem, but rather:
2. You can't get and keep a team long enough to have them finish a project with you.

Those are completely different problems, and number 1 is totally due to number 2. Not a motivation problem, but rather, you need others because you can't do it all all by yourself. It's a rare person who CAN do it all by himself. Take some solace from that, and look for solutions to your actual problem - don't call it a self-motivation problem.

taby said:
My son is my inspiration. I am trying to get as good as I can get at graphics programming, so that when it comes time for my son to learn coding, I'll be ready to guide him along the way. Do you not have a little one in your family or friends? It's pretty much guaranteed that they'll be interested in game development – everyone plays video games, even if just once in a while.

Although that is a noble goal, it sounds like your pigeonholing your son's career goals. It's a well known parenting pit fall that some parents try to live through their children, be careful with that. If your too heavy handed they might end up resenting you.

You sound new to game dev, enjoying the end product of a game is very different from wanting to become a developer. Most don't use the same logic when it comes to books to movies' to music.

Tom Sloper said:
You're not looking for a motivation boost. You describe two completely different problems: You're not a finisher. You start things and then don't finish them. But not finishing them is not a motivation problem, but rather: You can't get and keep a team long enough to have them finish a project with you. Those are completely different problems, and number 1 is totally due to number 2. Not a motivation problem, but rather, you need others because you can't do it all all by yourself. It's a rare person who CAN do it all by himself. Take some solace from that, and look for solutions to your actual problem - don't call it a self-motivation problem.

Finishing is tough, even for experienced people.

How do you know when it's done? Feature creep is very common.

In the past big AAA devs would package and sell in physical stores, thus they had to “finish”.

Now patches and DLCs can go on forever.

As for indie devs it's still difficult too know when to call it.

A rule of thumb is you'll never have all the time and resources to get everything you want into the game, knowing what to cut is a nuanced and valuable skill.

it takes discipline.

Where if this was a standard day job where we were getting paid, it would be super easy barely an inconvenience to stop, and just shoot it out the door. We are fueling our games with passion, thus giving up or not finishing in any regard takes a different perspective.

Anyways,

It's relatively easy to start something, it's the maintaining it over time that is hard.

It' seems easy for us experienced game dev veterans to judge the new people and diagnose their issues, but I suspect there is more going on here than simple fact of “not being a closer” .

I have a LOT of unfinished personal projects. If I'm not motivated to finish something, I do something else. I can always go back to that thing anytime I feel motivated to do so.

Right,

Some have many disparate unrelated projects, I however usually have a huge project that most or all of my other projects feed into.

FYI:

Grit:

https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en​

The book:

https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth/dp/1501111108​