I’ve worked in the indie scene and AAA scene for over a decade and there are a few truisms that cross both scenes:
- Game Development is HARD. Like, REALLY hard. Even shipping the smallest game is a monumental task, especially for one person. Scope accordingly.
- Communication is key (especially inter-discipline communication - e.g. Art/Design/Programming must all have open channels with each other and talk frequently. Yes, Programming may tell you “No” on a feature, they don’t hate you - they just want to actually ship the game).
- If you’re a coder, learn C++ and basic CompSci. C++ is THE industry standard. You will need to edit it and at the very least be able to read it so you can understand what your various 3rd party tools are doing. You can complain about how easy it is to blow your foot off with C++ till the cows come home, but as long as it’s the industry standard you MUST learn it.
- Most of all, be patient and willing to learn. As mentioned before, Game development is not easy. You need to understand you’ll run into bugs or issues that you think are the end of the world and unsolvable - use the forums, or other online resources to POLITELY ask for help and 99.9% of the time you’ll find someone who has either solved that problem before, or can offer you an alternate approach to avoid the problem all together.