How to start developing games if you can't program?

So you want to develop games, but you have no opportunities? Not true, the opportunity is always there!

The easiest and most logical answer: learn the language and develop . And with the development of the industry, there are a number of masters of the type gamemaker, which will greatly facilitate the work.

What to do if programming is not your thing? Well, for example, I did not work out, coding is not mine. Languages ​​taught, I know the basics of algorithmization, but the soul does not lie, it is not interesting.
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And this is my life principle - the work should be interesting!

What to do in this case. The answer, again, is very simple:

Look for someone to do it.

Well, everything seems to be logical:

Earn money, hire someone. And if it is logical - you have to do it!

Made. Spent a lot of money and time sharing my experience.

As the game developed, I met with such groups of people:

a) Incompetent freelancers . I gave the company to an outsourcing, I myself live in Ukraine, the company was from St. Petersburg. We wrote a detailed report on 50 sheets, with sketches, examples, and the best possible description. Signed a contract for the development, paid in advance. If you shorten this story, then you can simply say - incompetent performers, unwillingness to study TK initially, and the desire to just take the project, rewriting the code many times, a lot of bugs and the inability to communicate to the working draft. 1 year of development. Heavy completion of work, only part of the funds returned, in the hands of not working and no longer relevant project. To sue from different countries - long, expensive, not effective, and there was no desire.
I think at this moment, many have learned their history with freelancers in one form or another.

b) Competent freelancers . I gave it to another firm at the outsourcing. At this time, even more carefully chose the portfolio, location, previously met, the contract, TZ, breaking into stages, clarification of force majeure. In general, the conclusions. As a result, the delay began, the manager, as it should be, to pull out the deadlines, suggested cutting back on one or another in implementation. In fact, the output was a prolonged execution for 4 months and a version that was so stripped down that its completion would have gone to another third of the budget. At the same time, the conversation about the price increase began (after all, this is understandable, where we now go from the developer). There were attempts to find another artist, bring to the demo and check the opinions of users. In general, published, but "not bummed."

c) Office staff . The next attempt, based on my own finances, decided to hire 2 programmers to work - the minimum wage + an honest percentage of the project. It would seem that the scheme is quite good for our realities, but everything is simple - there was not enough financial pool, since the main source of funding ceased - my parallel work on the web.

All these 3 points need good amounts of money and the calculation that the project: most likely in time will stretch a half to two times; most likely, in terms of money, it will be 2-2.5 times more expensive than you originally planned.

All these solutions have one common problem - weak interest in projects.

But there is another option:

2. Assemble the team, try to give them what they cannot \ do not want to do themselves.

Let's call this another possibility:

Own team of developers. Actually, before that, everything went, and on the sly, I found a few like-minded people with whom I developed the latest projects. Working conditions: a percentage of the profits as invested, and received as much. It was with these guys that we made up the last project in the social network and decided to try ourselves in mobile. They made a conclusion for themselves - not to take up large projects, to work out something fairly simple, but for which it will not be a shame. Separately, I would like to note that for those projects that we did before, a number of conclusions were also made for users, which were described in the article.

The second item is the most slippery. The biggest mistake in this case - I have an idea, let's make it . But look at it from the other side: what do you have for the idea? What can you provide? What exactly are you doing?

In our case, I try to do everything that the game comes out:

Creative :
Along with all generate ideas.

Management :
I divide the project into stages, stages for tasks, give deadlines and support their implementation.
I try to customize and motivate, support the participants and smooth out the rough edges in communication, which necessarily arises in the working process.
I am looking for, agitating new people, trying to solve conflict situations and bring a person who wants to disconnect, with less losses for the project.

PR :
I lead the gaming community VKontakte, to maintain PR. I write articles (although the guys help me a lot). Forums, mails, sites, promo pages. When there are financial opportunities, I invest in advertising. I am engaged in self-education, advertising, and all work must be effective!

A separate item, motivation . It falls, especially before the launch of the project, when everyone is tired and wants to drop everything. In no case can this be done, bring things to the end! How to support it, decide in each case in its own way, but this is perhaps the most important point. One universal piece of advice - be with your team, oddly enough, a team. Be interested, support, ask.

It seems to me that it is necessary to remember here that it was you who gathered all these people, it is up to you to a greater extent that the project will come out or not. And you have to do more work than others, even if they don’t see it.

Is it a little or a lot? I do not know. I judge by the fact that the project is being released, people are doing what they like, I am doing what I’m dreaming about - making games, and doing it the way I can. Do not give up, do not give up your dream!

As a result: yesterday an application was published, an article was written for Habr , with all the rakes that young developers had to face. This is part of a separate post, as more about the manager than about the creation of games.