Why haven’t you made a game yet?

GameMaker Studio recently came out with all sorts of flashy fancy new features. It’s awesome. The program has come such a long way over the past few years and by breaking on to Steam(!) is going to finally reach a much bigger audience.

Cool kids like me have been using this software for years though. With very good reason. I’ve always been of the opinion that to market myself as a game designer, the least effective thing I can do is write a document on my great game idea. I’m certainly not yet a marketing wizard and my strongest skills right now lie in making fun games not in selling ideas. The most effective thing that an aspiring game developer can possibly do to showcase their talent is to simply become a game developer. Make games. When free(!) tools of this kind of calibre exist there’s absolutely no reason to not be able to show something playable to a potential employer. It shows drive, commitment and (especially for designers) is by far the easiest way to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing.

Previously this was something obviously beneficial to do that was actually done by next to nobody. Giving anyone who DID have finished games to show off an unspeakably huge advantage over the next graduate applicant. With GameMaker on Steam and free tools like Spriter coming more and more into the public eye, the secret is becoming much less secret.

There’s simply no excuse any more. You really want to make games? Why haven’t you done it already?