Thank you for posting this! There's a lot of good wisdom in here, wrought through the crucible of experience (such as, taking in account life changes, considering that good work isn't due to intrinsic skill but rather hard work and training, and using spare hours creatively rather than just passively consuming content). However, as someone who writes for my job, I feel there are two places you could improve your writing that would help you communicate your message more effectively to readers who might need to hear it. Please feel free to take or emend whatever I am saying as you feel would suit your style:
1. Your use of bold is more confusing than helpful. Sometimes you seem to bold major thematic points and other times its just stuff you want to say emphatically. Also, you go between bolding sentences and phrases, which is confusing if the reader is skimming. You also use it so gratuitously that it becomes overall distracting from what you're trying to say (To hijack the saying: "If everything is bold, then nothing is bold."). As such, the bold hurts moreso than helps your readability. If you're going to bold something, I'd recommend doing just one phrase per header that hits home your main points (like bullet points or a power point slide). That way, it helps readers quickly get an impression of what you are trying to say. If there are individual phrases you'd like to emphasize, I'd suggest separating these from the bold stylistically by instead using CAPITALIZATION or
italics (the latter is better, imo). This helps separate the function of these clearly to the reader. Although, I would also recommend you cut back on emphasizing as well.
2. Your style is long. Long can work if you're entertaining and you pace your jokes well. However, for what you're trying to do, I think the better solution is just to go shorter. In writing, shorter is almost always better. Take for instance, this section:
Scope
You will have likely heard about how important it is to make a smaller game when you first set out to develop something. This is in the vast majority of cases absolutely true. Making a game comes with all sorts of hurdles, time-demanding tasks, and attention-sucking menial work. That does not even include testing and figuring out what went wrong and where. But there is something other that big projects require – that is experience. Experience significantly cuts down on the time you need to spent on a project, or in order to achieve something. Imagine experience as a multiplier of time. If you don’t obtain said multiplier by making smaller projects with a clear objective, and learning, you will spend double, triple, or quadruple the time on a big project. And this time will most likely work against in psychological and other ways – for instance, a significant change in your life, harder school classes, a new job, a family matter.
The big type of project suits the 26-36 age demographic, whose jobs are more stable, and whose general free time can be more easily devoted to a single thing. Pensioners too, but it’s highly unlikely you are one, lol. If you are a college/uni student, you need to take into account said changes in your life – internships, part-time jobs, college struggles, having fun, doing new things, learning various topics, etc. It is true that at that time, you can work extremely fast and are very adaptive to learning new things, but you are also at your worse when it comes to motivation and being disciplined. If you are in high school, it’d be better for you to focus on being creative in your free time, as modern entertainment is extremely addicting and distracting, and you will do your brain much good spending your time outputting, than inputting. If you are younger and can make a game – congrats, but do your best to apply the feedback you get, and be humble, and you will be a great developer in the future.
Lastly, you don’t need to be a special person to make a big project. This is likely a demotivational understanding of your own capabilities. Big projects only need discipline, consistency, and experience. Which brings us to...
I've tried to create a more concise version of this:
Making a game comes with all sorts time-demanding tasks, such as making sprites, animations, sound effects, bug fixing, and much, much more. However, gaining experience significantly cuts down on the time needed to do all these tasks and will help you do more in less time. To this end, when you begin, try gaining experience by first making smaller projects with a clear objective. This will serve to drastically reduce the time you spend later on a big project. Finishing small projects first will also reinforce your confidence in finishing projects, whereas a large unfinished one will only discourage you. Also, if you're young, consider that you will go through many life changes (college, internship, new jobs, social life, leaning new skills, etc.) that inhibit completion of years-long tasks. It may instead be better to train your brain to output media creatively rather than becoming merely addicted to its consumption (i.e. social media).
Here, I think I've managed to succinctly say at least 80% of what you're going for but in less than half the space. While there are some information casualties, I think the punchiness of it helps make up for it because the reader is more likely to finish reading a single paragraph.
Also, another general writing note: I replaced "hurdles, time-demanding tasks, and attention-sucking menial work" with the more concrete "time-demanding tasks, such as making sprites, animations, sound effects, bug fixing, and much, much more." In these cases, I think it's better to be more specific and direct because it helps the reader better visualize what actually will actually consume their time, whereas the other statement is more vague. Aside from that, I also axed the signpost section at the end. While transitions are necessary for writing longer arguments and keeping the logic interconnected, for communicating punchy bits of disconnected information, the transition isn't needed.
Anyway, thank you for writing this! You have a lot of good information that beginners do need to hear. As someone who is ever trying to become a better writer, I hope this information comes off as helpful and supportive and might be adapted to help you help others with guides in the future. Thanks again for posting!
