How do I stop needing external validation to feel motivated?

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Hello! :slightly_smiling_face:

I feel like I’m creating games into a void. Barely anyone plays them and almost never give feedback.

I just want to create free games, without having this tightness in my chest telling me its futile to make them.

How do I change my mindset, so I can work on something, even knowing that it will never be played by someone else?

For context I’ve been making games for 20+ years

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I highly recommend the books Ten Days to Self-Esteem by Dr. David D. Burns, and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

The first book will teach you how to be happy with yourself without outside influence. The second will teach you how to enjoy art for art’s sake. Both of them together had a HUGE impact on my ability to get artistic things done - including game programming.

Then I suggest you join some game jams. They are a great way to feel part of a community, and feel good about what you’ve accomplished, as well as learn more about what you need to work on. If you want to get engagement from others, you can also do devlogs (example) or postmortems (example) on your projects. That’s a good way to not feel alone in the process.

Finally, I recommend you join a Godot Community. There’s the boards here, there’s Discord, Reddit, etc, and there’s a whole list of local communities around the world you can join.

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Well so i also face same problem with mine first project I got good downloads in Total 16 and I specially asked for feedback but no one did . Well i can understand little much… as you said you have experience of 20+ years of game development.. that’s great.. try to share some games among community there you get many players.

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Instead of waiting for other to come to you, instead, you go to them.

I’m serious. Head over to Discord, Reddit, even this forum, and ask people to play your games. Directly.

Links:

For the external validation part, I recommend just enjoying the process of game development. Because while many challenges arise, it’s fun to get through them. At least for me.

If you’ve been making games for 20+ years, there’s a good chance it’s your bread and butter. Meaning, it should be a dedicated part of your lifestyle, whether anybody is watching or not.

I myself have been game designing for 7+ years, but I haven’t started talking about it until last year.

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