I need this question to be answered by official game developers, who carry years worth of experience

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Id like to start out by saying, Hello to anyone who is reading this question,but…but i need it to only be answered by professional game devs who actually work for mid-big games on virtual shelf.
Me and 3 of my friends are starting a game company, keep in mind that this is just a hobby for us, not the main job we will eventually be employed into.We have decided to make a big game, and have its announcements and trailers and such… all viewed and released as an IGN video, so we basically would like if IGN helped increasing the fame of our game by posting our trailers in their channel…Whoa.“Hold on there for a second, 4 PEOPLE ISN’T ENOUGH FOR A BIG GAME TO BE CREATED AND SECONDLY BUNCH OF 15 YEAR OLDS WONT MAKE A GOOD GAME OR EVEN A MIDSTREAM GAME " as i assume you are saying right now”, but please understand me… i hate the idea of being too optimistic or even a bit optimistic on doing something as big as this, but the problem lies within our generation’s thinking block(brain), we as humans, are technically capable of doing absolutely everything we can imagine, i mean look at the technology we are using and prototyping, every second at any given time , a new project is in the works, some people just don’t realize how capable are they to fulfill their ambitions even the wild ones.Per say, a person just had the thought of constructing a hovering house with a roof covered with solar panels that powers the home day and night with visible power shortages, and the absurd part is the fact that the persons age is 17…((WHAT!!! HE DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THE REQUIRED INFORMATION OF PHYSICS AND MATH, THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE HA CANT BUILD SUCH A HOUSE))…and that’s why ladies and gentlemen…we mostly fail to achieve the peaks.He can build it…he can learn these information about physics and math along his journey to success…he can reach the peak of his ambition by ease, that’s if he and he himself do not underestimate the power he has a hold of well in all the facts concerning power, we humans, we the future of our planet, wield the strongest power found on our planet,just imagine all the stuff we can do, all the progress we can have without underestimation . Concluding all this, our game project group, is really looking forward to this game development, and thank God that none of us is underestimating our capabilities…Just some additional information before the question. Yes, we are 4 teenagers, but 2 of us are really really good in physics and good in math,(note how i said good in math not very good) those 2 teens get Every time A+ in physics and between A and A+ in math, so yeah we have a good grasp over physics and math (((BTW we are in grade 10))), we do not memorize but we understand and that’s why we are really good in physics, that’s one point. Second point is that, we are deciding to make a platforming game… like mirror edge but deciding to make it even better than mirrors edge so we went for unreal engine 4 as a main engine and blender as a source for assets production and substance both painter and designer. we purchase ue4 before it becomes completely free by a couple of months and started off by dividing our group of 4 people into 2 parts one is that 2 will work in ue4 and secondly is that 2 will work in blender and then 3rd we will all use substance painter and designer, so we drove the learning car and started off by learning ue4 from DIGITAL TUTORS( they are a great source of learning) we then had a good grasp over ue4 but not fully maybe like 25% or so, but then our car stopped due to a tragedy we coudnt pay enough for our soft-wares and tutors and all and so we decided to make a crowd founding project from the 2nd best crowd founding source named, indiegogo. And now i am here, behind the computer screen typing this. In the end please do not underestimate your binomial family, or at least us the Blue torches as that is our company’s name. In the end, we have a good knowledge of what are we going to face in our long road of success and since we are against underestimation we would like to face it off directly and yes we would need help from one game dev to another asking for simple questions.

  Question is: What do you think about our choice of soft-wares for our project{ UE4 BLENDER SUBSTANCE Painter substance designer} which is a game about park-our and stuff, we will add multiplayer  which will be our main focus and a story line and in the end it will be a pc only game (STEAM) and it will be modifiable with community created mods? And can we develop the game without any codding ( c++ for example) and use blueprints in unreal engine ?

             Note that this is and will be just a hobby for us and yes we are going to do what it takes.
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This post is REALLY hard to read. Paragraphs and less run on sentences would make it so much easier to read and understand.

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In the immortal words of, “English, mother *****, do you speak it?”

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The software is fine, but understand that it’s going to take years of learning to get a good quality result.
Even for experienced people, it can take a lot of work, so consider truly what you think you would be capable of—look at other games, find out information about how many people worked on them and how long, what they’re skills are like. Don’t believe that you’ll somehow be the exception when all the information tells you otherwise. You can still do something awesome, just understand what your limitations are.

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Ok, so you are saying that with the use of unreal and blender and all substances we can make the game we want( without coding)

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really sorry that i made u read through all this

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Sorry I can’t read your original post, but I’ll take some context clues from above and say that Unreal and Blender have already been used to make amazing AAA games that sold millions of copies and made their respective developers millions upon millions of dollars. The software is top notch and will never be what holds you back.

You can make a game without coding (look at Blueprints, they’re very powerful), check out some of the Work in Progress threads or Completed Projects, people are doing amazing things. If you’re interested in game design and making a big nice game, I’d suggest you read through Tom Sloper’s articles on it - starting with the first one Sloperama Productions - Lesson #1 (I’m not suggesting you’re not capable or it’s not possible, you should just have a better idea of what to expect and what you’re getting into.)

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No, even with the most expensive software it doesn’t matter unless you have the skills and experience. It takes a long time to get to a point where you can do anything at all. Even if all 4 of you were professionals it would take you many years to do a project like you want.

Experienced people could certainly make great stuff without buying expensive software, but that’s because they already have the skills.

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Ok thx for that statement, but im kinda lost right now, where do u think we should learn ue4 to its fullest cause now in the digital tutors site, the teacher did not realse all courses for learning ue4 but it realsed good enough for a baisic idea, but the question is how should i start learning ue4

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Best way to learn is by doing, so plan a small project, and then whenever you come up against something you don’t know how to do then do a search, there’s a ton of stuff that’s already been gone over in the forums so many questions are already answered. There’s also lots of free tutorials on Youtube.

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The reason why people question the ability of teenagers to produce a “big game” isn’t that they think they lack the technical skills (Ken Silverman wrote the Build engine by himself when he was 19 for example). With middleware like UE4, much of the complexity of rendering, physics and networking has been taken away as well.

The problem comes in naivety and lack of experience. Even with UE4 and the toolset available, making games is a HUGE amount of work. Most AAA studios have 30+ people working on their titles, people with years of experience in making and releasing games, and even then it still takes at least a couple of years. The gameplay stuff is just a small part of it, in UDK I was able to block out playable games in just weeks but wrapping it into a complete package would have taken years of polish and back end development.

The question is, are you guys so motivated that you’re happy to spend 5 years working on the same title and achieve with 4 people new to game development what it normally takes an experienced team of 30? That’s where people raise doubts, not whether you’re physically capable of it or not.

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Wow…didnt know until now that game development takes alot of time …alot of time…so i am maybe going to decide (help me decide) to continue watching and learning digital tutors ( pls i would like you to go to their site, www.digitaltutors.com and find unreal engine 4 and check it
out by yourself and see if it is a good source of learning) the question is, should i learn from digital tutors or not

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lol… ya I skimmed your post…Way too much information…and abit insulting…“i need it to only be answered by professional game devs who actually work for mid-big games on virtual shelf”. WTF… ok I will over look that.

First I don’t think you realize how much work goes into a full production game and creating a “Big Game” right off the bat with a small crew is insane. By big game i mean GTA5 or Dead Sspace.

My advice to you guys is treat UE4 as a game. With each level you will get better and better. Your purpose should be to learn and then eventually create something big.

Just remember that the bigger the expectations the harder you will fall.

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(Seems the only person having an issue with you age is you, just ask your questions in a succinct respectful manner with a modicum of grammar, no need to mention your age and then defend a perceived position on it) :smiley:

Keep in mind, you don’t have to create an “AAA” title to be a successful developer.

There are hundreds of young game developers making a living with android or apple games, some of which can be knocked out in a few months.
You could make and sell assets, meshes, even audio or music effects.
If you like mapping, you could make custom maps for people,
Architecture - how about selling your services to people who install high end kitchens, etc
Video, Look at the kite demo, you could do similar for advertising, or marketing.
Thousands of windows games too, no point in committing to a lengthy professional development, when you can knock out a game, for free, or that covers you cost in time, while teaching you the entire process from initial concept to release and feedback.

You can sit and watch videos all day, but it may be more useful to do something.
Anything, just get into the engine and play with the demos, move stuff around, get used to the terminology, play with the blueprints, break them, and then fix what you did.
Move assets into different projects, build a little map, just have fun, and each time you can’t do something specific, google it, ask if its possible here.
After 6 months learning and releasing small exe’s of little concepts, you and/or your team will have the resources and experience to make a larger more complex project.

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Ok really appreciate all the answers but, can i ask one last favour tho. We are focusing on a platforming game such as mirrors edge, so what smaller version of that game u guys say to start developing first? (((i really didnt mean to carry out bad manners but the vice versa i wanted to say it in the most pleasent way i can so i am really sorry for my bad manners)))))

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about the grammer part, i never took a single english lesson in about 6 years or something like that, so i am self taught (english only)

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Your choice of software is fine. (Especially your choice of using Unreal :slight_smile: ) The main thing to think about is how to get to where you want to be (I.e. having released a game).

Try something this: The developer Adriel Wallick made a game a week for a year. The quality wasn’t as important as getting the game out there, learn from it, use that knowledge for the next project. (I don’t mean you have to do this for a year. :slight_smile: ). The games do not have to be release quality, just get them done, get used to using the tools. Do a really simple game like a pac-man remake. You won’t release them, but you will see what you need to know to improve, and what areas you need a team for.

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It can take you by surprise. Actually getting something playable is the easy (and fun) part. What takes most of the development time, and is the boring part, is turning that into a well polished product.

My advice is to start working on something small. A simple game to give you an idea of timescales and the skills needed to not just make a playable prototype but actually turn it into a complete packaged game. Maybe a top-down shooter or something. I know it’s not what you want to create, but that will come once you’ve got to grips with game development and UE4.

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The digital tutors stuff is OK (I’m a Pluralsight subscriber, so I get all of Digital Tutors content for no additional cost). They’re usually slightly behind on their versions (the most recent stuff is 4.6 I believe). Some of their instructors are good, some are… OK. Some of the instructors come from a creative background, and approach the lessons from that perspective (i.e. they’d rather bust out Photoshop and hand draw what they’re looking for rather than wire up a bunch of nodes to get a specific effect), and there’s one instructor who comes from a dev background and does things very code-like. Being a programmer in my day job I prefer the second way, but others may like the previous perspective more. And the lessons they have beyond the one beginners series are for very specific items. For a more over-arching “Here-are-some-of-the-things-you-can-do-with-this-engine” perspective, I prefer the Unreal Engine channel on youtube.

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Thank you all, for all your time spent just to answer me in particular.You guys truely helped me( FYI i am not so flawless in english as i baiscally never took a lesson for a very long time so i started teaching my self a bit of english, thats why i thank u for time spent trying to understand me and thank you for time spent helping me…truely a blessing to meet you people.