How to deal with loneliness in solo development? Thread

Hello indiedb!
This is my first post here, and it's a bit of a deep one. I seem to regularly find myself facing the same metaphorical wall in development, and while it's a personal issue, it's one I need help with. I'm hoping that I'm not the only one who has had to face this issue, and that someone who is familiar with it can offer some suggestions.

I have spent the last 15 years neck deep in every aspect of game development I could get my hands on, from programming, to testing, to even advanced hacking. I have made dozens of small scripts, starter kits, resources, and the like, but my true passion is to move on to completing a game. I have the required vision, skills, and experience to do so- which brings me to the problem:

About halfway (or so) through creating a full game, and seemingly irrelevant as to which end of the project I start at, I hit a wall where it becomes a struggle to move forward. Dabbling in my own psychology, I've come to the conclusion that this wall is created from a sense of loneliness - that the project is not far along enough to show, or to recruit help for, but that if noone else even knows it exists, it becomes difficult for me to maintain the passion needed for me to continue.

I've tried my best, a few times now, to "tough it out", and the bottom line is that for whatever reason, I don't seem to be able. As I mentioned above, I have the neccessary abilities, and game development is my life - I *must* overcome this hurdle. And I am open and almost desperate for any suggestions, observations, or ideas that may help me do so.

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

By not being lonely? If that doesn't work for you and you find you'd enjoy some fan reactions or peer support you should publish some of your project and get some interaction going on. Or just show it to some IRL friends, doesn't have to be a game developer.

As you can see many people on the site rush to make a site for their project as soon as they get some idea before even starting work on it. While that's wrong, if you genuinely have something to show and could use some support what's the harm? You can acknowledge you haven't completed many projects and might not complete this one so that you're not making any promises that could burden you later.

Finishing a project to a stage where it can be released for other people to play in one form or another is a good goal to aim for always. If your motivation is dangling it brings you more motivation or a proper closure with the project. Putting many hours into something that's never seen by others is a terrible shame and does feel bad. That's why I always recommend if you feel like you can't complete something for any reason, first consider if you can still scale the project down to offer anything playable or release some playable part of it.

I suppose my main concern with showing my work is that the one thing I am (quite obviously) not is an artist. My creations often don't look good, and I have (misplaced?) expectations that showing it without decent art will hurt the longevity of the project. Which leaves me in an endless loop of self defeat; artists don't often want to sign onto a project that doesn't already look promising, and that promising "look" is the element that ends up taking me endless (and often as not fruitless) hours, until I finally lose momentum.

Clearly, my issue is either one of misinformed expectations (maybe help isn't as hard to find, or potential followers are not as critical as I expect them to be), or I am lacking the ability to communicate my projects effectively. Probably both. I appreciate the advice - I had read similar while scouring the internet on this topic, but perhaps it didn't sink in. I have a lovely project in progress at the moment - I am hesitant to show it because of all the "what if"s (you know, what if its too early, what if it doesn't represent my vision for the gameplay clearly enough, what if people get the wrong impression of 'x' feature, what if people complain that the visuals are not good enough). I am considering that these what ifs are likely holding me back far more than they should - and if that results in, well, a lack of results, then I have nothing to lose by trying.

So thanks for your response, shadowflar3, I'll see what I can do about becoming more social with my work - I do believe it will help.
If anyone else has something to share, please do. At the very least, it makes me feel more sane.

Hi avarisc,
Never be hesitant to show your project, finish or unfinished, to get feedback. As an indie dev, accepting constructive/objective criticism is also part of the soft skill set you need to learn.
I met the (ex)president of the IGDA in Montreal and one thing he said was that it's great to stay home and work on our dev skills to improve them but it's a very important part of the process of becoming a successful dev to get out where indie devs meet to show or talk about our projects and get feedback.
And good art is not what make a good, fun game.
One of my mentor use to tell me that all your hard work and brilliant ideas are worth nothing if the game is not shipped/released so don't give up your projects halfway or you just wasting your efforts.
As mentioned shadowflar3, scale down your project or even better, just build a proof of concept of your core mechanic so you can show case it and get feedback. IF everyone was waiting for perfection before releasing a game, there'd be no games on the shelves...

I think a component of the problem that you are describing is the perceived lack of reward for the time/effort you are expending. Once the initial excitement of seeing something materialise onto the screen where there was recently nothing before wears off -- which presumably happens fairly early in development -- you have to expend a commensurate amount of time to notice the same reward(a noticeable change in progress) which you previously got from much less time expended/work -- It is a powerful de-motivator. Remember that an artist can never appreciate his own work the same way that a critic can, so as others have said consider releasing your best looking art-y excerpts; That may provide you with reward.

brutaldeluxe - I'd say you've probably hit it right on the head, that definitely seems relevant. I was aware of the "honeymoon effect" with projects, but didn't quite realize it could get to the point of being "de-motivational". I'll think about alternative ways to see the value in my work, besides the "eventually unnoticeable" on-screen impact.

Hijikata-Toshiro - I was definitely at the point of realizing it all means nothing if I can't do something with it, which is what brought me to the point of reaching out here. I live in rural Alaska for the moment - we're not exactly chock full of game developers here. So I'll have to look towards being more social online until I can earn my way to a more constructive locale.

You all have my thanks, this community has proven already to be very constructive, and I look forward to sharing future developments with you all. (Hopefully, in the rather near future!) I will try my best to absorb some of the suggestions in this thread, its all very good material and I think I had missed connecting a couple of those dots.