Learning Game Development: The Eight P's for Success

Learning efficiently in any skill requires patience, passion, and perseverance to achieve long-term success.

### Mastering Game Development: The Eight P's of Learning
* 🎮 Learning game development is a journey that requires **continuous improvement and efficiency**, regardless of whether you follow tutorials or seek information online.
* 🔍 "Talent is a lie; success in any skill comes from **dedication and time invested**." It’s important to recognize that everyone learns at different rates, and **patience is key** in this process.
* ⏳ Progress may feel slow day-to-day, but a year from now, you will see **significant improvement** if you remain committed to your learning.
* 📈 The first P is proof; **accountability through sharing your progress in a community** can help keep you **on track and motivated**.
* 💡 Presence is the second P, emphasizing the **importance of engaging with others in the game development community** to enhance your learning experience.
* 🔥 Passion is crucial; you must **enjoy what you’re doing** to sustain your **motivation and commitment over time**.
* 🛑 Prevention of burnout is essential, and taking **active breaks** or shifting focus to different aspects of your project can help **maintain your enthusiasm**.
* 💪 Finally, perseverance is vital; despite challenges, **consistent effort will lead to mastery**, as demonstrated by the **3,000 hours dedicated to learning Unreal Engine** over ten months.

basically, the moral of the story is it doesn't matter where you're learning from. It matters about how you're learning and how you apply yourself. Hey, welcome to today's video. It's going to be a little bit of a different one today because we're not actually going to be learning anything directly game dev related. I've been asked a few times for some reason in the past week or two by a lot of people in comments on videos or people contacting me on Discord asking how did I learn Unreal Engine and game development in general seemingly so rapidly. So today, we're going to cover Charlie's eight p's like words that start with the letter p, and hopefully, if you've been meaning to learn a new skill like game development or if you're currently learning a new skill and finding it a bit difficult, then this will help you out. So let us begin. So the first p is proof. Now, what does proof mean? If you went to primary and secondary school throughout the semester, you learn a bunch of stuff, and there's a

lot of little tests in between those tests are proof. So, the way that I apply this in learning game design is if I'm ever following a tutorial, I'll follow the tutorial, I'll watch it all the way through, I might actually follow along with it and, you know, create the thing. And then most people would just call it quits there, you know, they've done the thing, they've got what they needed from the tutorial. But if you don't prove that you've learned that, then you won't be able to recreate it when it comes to creating something custom or something that has a really specific need. So, what you should be doing when you follow tutorials is follow the tutorial to the end, then close your engine, don't save it, revert all of the work you did, and recreate it from the ground up without referring to the tutorial as often as possible. Try and remember all of it, see if you can get it working. If you get really stuck on something, skip to the bit in the tutorial that you need to to get this step that you've

forgotten, but the most important thing is that you've actually learned and absorbed this information, and you've retained this information so that you can apply it in whichever way that you need it to. P number two is passion. Now, it kind of sounds a bit hippie, you know, you gotta have passion, man. But when I think of passion, I'm thinking about do I want to be doing this, am I enjoying doing what I'm doing, am I having fun, do I feel like I'm spending my time well by learning this new skill. Now, there is a distinct difference between not being passionate about something and being like stuck in a rut. You might know that like deep inside this is what you want to be doing even though you're currently not enjoying it in the short term. But if you're working in a creative field and over an extended period of time you're not enjoying what you're doing, then sometimes it is really important to re-evaluate, you know, is this still what I want to be doing for the rest of my life or as a career or as a hobby.

Am I still actually passionate about this? And if you ask yourself that question and you find, Okay, I'm not actually passionate about this anymore, then that's absolutely fine. The key point is that you haven't wasted all this time learning this skill only to become dispassionate about it. You've essentially gotten better at learning itself. Every time you learn a new skill, you get more efficient at learning new skills after that. So, when it comes to learning, it's impossible to actually waste time because every time you're learning, you're getting better at learning. So, that brings us to point number three, which is patience. And when I say patience, I'm not referring to waiting for Unreal Engine shaders to compile. Patience in the way that building up skills and learning new things takes time. A really good sort of analogy for this is thinking about where you are now in life versus where you were as a child and how much has changed since then and all of the things that you learned. You know, like you know how to pay taxes now.

you know how to wash the dishes efficiently and take the bins out, but when you're a kid, you know you didn't do any of that. But the thing is, even though you've gone from not having a skill to being competent at a skill, you don't actually remember learning that along the way. I wasn't doing this at some point, and now I'm really good at it. And that's something that you need to keep in mind when you're learning a new skill. You need to know that, okay, tomorrow I'm not going to feel like I'm any better at this, but if I compare today to a year from now, I'm confident that I will have learned a ton of stuff. It can be really disheartening when day-to-day it feels like you're not really learning anything, but you always just need to remember that in a year's time, you're going to have learned a whole lot compared to where you are today. So, the fourth P is purpose, and this is probably one of the most applicable points in this whole list.

purpose means that you need to know where you want to go. You need to be able to set goals. You need to know what you want to learn, and then you need to have purpose and work towards that. Because I've had people ask, How do I learn Unreal Engine? Asking How do I learn Unreal Engine? is like asking someone, How long is a piece of string? You need to kind of narrow down, Okay, what do I want to learn about Unreal Engine? Maybe I want to learn, How do I set up a custom movement system? How can I create textures and materials for assets and stuff? You know, maybe you want to make a VR game, so you'll need to know about virtual reality implementation and all of the stuff that goes along with that. So, the first thing that you can do if you want to start game design is, What do you want to learn first? And this also ties into passion because you need to be passionate about what you're learning. There's no point jumping into Unreal Engine and thinking, Okay, you know, I need to learn Blueprint. I

need to learn animation. Then I need to learn materials. Then I need to, you know, learn networking and stuff. Just go for what you find the most attractive and just go at it, just hammer at it non-stop every day. Just learn what you're passionate about. And usually what will happen, and this is exactly what happens with me, for example, I'll be learning about, you know, movement and moving pawns in Unreal Engine, and then that naturally led me into learning about animation. And then from animation, when I had attack animations and stuff set up, that got me into blueprints, and I was working on a combat system. And then because I was working on a combat system, I was like, Oh, I need some blood particles, so that got me into working with particle systems. And then because particle systems need materials on them, that got me into materials. And so you end up just going through these huge sort of pathways, and if I had sat down and thought, Okay, I'm gonna learn about materials just in general, I don't have a purpose, I don't have any

reason to learn materials, but I'm just gonna do it anyway. Then I wouldn't have learned anything. There's no point trying to absorb a bunch of different information all at the same time because that's just not how brains work. You need to focus on one thing. You need to prove that you learned it and then move on to the next thing. So this next one, the fifth P, is one that's really important to me and something that's really, really worked for me. Now, it might not necessarily work for everyone, but I can guarantee you that if you at least try and follow this to some extent, you will see better progress in your learning. So the fifth P is presence. And what I mean by presence is put yourself out there, put your work and your progress out into the online space, join a game development community. We have a Discord server where, you know, we're all sharing progress on our games, asking for help, asking questions. Every single person that's active in the Discord is learning at least one new thing that's useful every single day.

and the main reason that you need to have presence in a community or on YouTube or Twitter or Reddit is for accountability. Now, accountability when you're learning, even if it is just a fun little hobby, if you don't have accountability, you will miss deadlines, and you will get sidetracked, and you will give up when things get a little bit too tough. And you know, even if you are passionate about something, you can still just, you just can't be doing it on some days, and that's absolutely fine. But ways you can kind of manufacture accountability is by starting a devlog series, which is something that I did. That was why I created this channel in the first place. And by kind of setting a goal like, Hey, I want to release a full devlog every two weeks, and maybe every other week, I'm gonna just upload a little snippet of the game, or maybe every three days, I'm gonna upload some progress on like a tiny little system that I've started working on. And so by doing this, you're basically giving yourself

deadlines like you would have if you were doing this professionally. You know, you would have deadlines; you have to get this done. Now, another way that you can have accountability with your project and your learning is by getting together with, you know, someone that you've met in a community, or maybe you've got a friend that wants to get into game design, or maybe you've got like an artist friend that does 3D modeling, and you're really interested in coding and stuff. And by forming a team, you have a lot more responsibility. If you don't do your part, then they get held up, and if they don't do their part, then you get held up. So basically, having other people to share your work, you know, maybe get them interested in your project, because then they're always asking, Hey, when's the first demo coming out? You know, when can I play Prismatic? And then even better, if you can find someone else, you will be more productive. [Music] All right, so the next one that we're going to talk about is persistence. Every single day, you should

be flexing your learning muscles, right? You need to work at a skill every single day. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to be at your desk four hours a day, like late in the night after you've come home from eight hours of work, and just be grinding it out until you know your fingers are just little bloody stumps. Simply just thinking about what you've learned, what you're going to learn, and trying to figure out how to do things in your head, you know, maybe while you're working at your day job, that is still learning, and that's how you can get your hours in. [Music] So, we're nearly at the end. We are up to our second last P, and the seventh P is prevention. Now, this one kind of seems a little bit mysterious, but when I'm talking about prevention, I'm talking about the prevention of burnout. Now, burnout is very real, and it sucks. And I can tell you, as someone that's worked in the creative fields for my entire life basically, burnout is

terrible, and it will happen to you. But there are ways to prevent it. Now, obviously, the really obvious one is, you know, take a break. Just taking a break is simply not enough. It's only half the solution. It needs to be an active break from what you're doing. You need to not go to your computer. You need to not even load up Unreal Engine. You need to not even think about it while you're at work. You know, try to learn a different skill so that your mind's just in a completely different place. Because just taking a break can lead to feeling guilty about not progressing. Because if I'm getting, like, really frustrated over something and I feel like day after day I'm just not enjoying this, and then I end up taking a break by accident, by, you know, playing video games instead, there's always this sort of feeling of guilt. Why am I playing video games? I should be, you know, developing my game, but here I am playing video games instead. So you get stuck in this sort of cycle.

of I'm taking a break from learning this new skill, but at the same time, I feel like taking a break from it, and that just feeds into each other, and then you get really pissed off, and you just, you don't go anywhere that can actually have a huge impact on your entire life. I've been there, I've been there, I've, you know, gotten in too deep into that cycle, and I can tell you just sucks. So, active breaks are great, but probably more applicable advice, and this is what I do with prismatica, is to work on a different aspect of your project. Let's say I've been just on the grind, I've just been programming blueprint, you know, this is how blueprint programmers program, they're just, I've just been doing that for like a week straight, and I've just run into blockers, and I'm just getting real annoyed, and I just feel like because I'm not getting anywhere, and when I try and do something new, it breaks the thing that I did before. The thing that I'll do is I'll work on a

different aspect of the project. So maybe I'll take a break for three days and just work on composing the music or something, or maybe I'll take a break and I'll work on my 3D modeling skills and try and build some assets for the game. And by doing that, you're taking a break from the thing that you're getting burnt out from, but you're also making progress towards your end goal of completing and shipping a game. That's my preferred method of preventing burnout, and it works. It just, what can I say, it just works. Now, the very last P that I have to give you is perseverance. And when I say perseverance, I mean that learning any new skill can be very taxing, both mentally and physically and emotionally, and financially even. And you might just feel like it's never gonna happen, like it's never gonna click. I'm never gonna be able to do this thing that I wanna learn how to do. I'm never gonna be able to achieve my dreams. And you might look at other people and

think they're just naturally talented, and I, you know, I'm not talented at this. But talent is like just a straight-up lie. Like, no one is talented at anything. If someone is good at something, it means that they've either put in the hours and they've grinded their ass off and gotten good at it, or if it seems like they've been learning super quickly and they've just come out of nowhere, it means that they've had past experience in other fields that have allowed them to learn faster. And it goes to show that everyone learns at different rates, and that is absolutely fine. And that's something that you'll have to come to terms with, and that's a part of, you know, patience. You need to know that you're not going to learn as fast as this person. You might learn faster than this person, but at the end of the day, everyone's going to get to where they want to be at some point. And so basically, to answer the question of how did I go from knowing absolutely nothing about game design.

to you know running a YouTube channel and teaching a bunch of people how to use Unreal Engine. The short answer is I came from a creative background: music, photography, videography, graphic design. Basically, every time I learned a new skill like that, I was learning how to learn. And also, I'm neuro-atypical, so you know, I'm not really interested in socializing, being the kind of person that doesn't leave the house for months at a time. I'm not really the kind of person that needs friends at all. I'm very happy to be by myself, you know, with my lovely cats. I don't have social media because it's just boring and lame. And I guess since my brain has completely sacrificed any ability to function in society, on the flip side, I get very, very engaged in particular things, in particular subjects. You know, whatever I get interested in, I just go full throttle. I just dive in like double fist first. And then the final ingredient was having way, way too much time on my hands.

because I've covered everything, got shut down, I couldn't work. I had 16 hours a day to just do nothing, so I dedicated all that to learning Unreal Engine. And I think it's been about nine or ten months, so I'm nearly my Unreal anniversary. Lame. Let's say there's 30 days in a month. I've been doing it for 10 months, that's 300 days. Let's say I do about 10 hours average, that's 3,000 hours. Now, if you're a person that maybe only had, you know, an hour every night on average to work at this skill, 3,000 days, which is, I don't know how many days in a year, I'm just going to say 350-ish. So essentially, what I've gone and done is crammed eight and a half years. You got to put those hours in, and as the Nutri-Grain cereal box told me as a child, you only get out what you put in. So what are you doing? Open Unreal Engine, get the word.

but at the end of the day, I've enjoyed every single moment of it immensely. Every time I sit down, I open Unreal Engine, I start working on something, I enjoy it, it makes me feel good. And so, if you're not feeling, you know, too flash about what you're doing, you feel like you're going nowhere, just know that it's gonna happen eventually. You're gonna get there. Don't give up, don't spit the dummy, don't have a little hissy fit that everything's not working. Just take a deep breath and just know that it's gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine, everything's gonna work. Anyway, that's gonna be it for me today. This is a bit of a weird video, a bit of an oddball, but I thought, you know, it's worth putting out there since heaps of people have been asking me, you know, how did I learn Unreal Engine. And basically, the moral of the story is, it doesn't matter where you're learning from, it matters about how you're learning and how you apply.

yourself. It doesn't matter if you follow YouTube tutorials or you just Google every little issue that you run into like I do. It just matters that you're always learning, you're always trying to learn, and you're always learning efficiently. You've got to learn efficiently. So, with that, I say goodbye. [Music] [Applause] Goodbye. [Applause] [Music] You.

How I learned UE4 in ~3 months [And how You can too!]

PrismaticaDev

Learning Game Development: Charlie's Eight P's

The key to learning a new skill, like game development, is accountability and application.

Creating a presence in a community and setting goals, such as a devlog series, can help maintain accountability.

Enjoying the learning process and being patient with oneself are crucial for long-term success.

Focusing on one thing at a time is crucial for effective learning.

Putting yourself out there and joining a community can enhance your progress and provide valuable learning opportunities.

Proving your understanding by recreating tasks without referring to tutorials and being patient with the learning process are key to developing new skills.

Taking an active break from work and learning a different skill can help prevent burnout.

It's important to set specific goals and have a clear purpose for learning, rather than aimlessly trying to master everything.

Following your passion and interests can lead to a natural progression in learning different aspects of game development, such as animation, blueprints, and particle systems.

Strategies for Overcoming Learning Plateaus

Taking breaks from learning can create a frustrating cycle, but active breaks and switching project aspects can help.

Passion for the work is crucial, and if enjoyment is lacking over time, it's important to reevaluate career or hobby choices.

Forming a team with others can provide accountability and motivation, leading to increased productivity and shared responsibility for project success.

I have a creative background and thrive on learning new skills, which has led me to run a YouTube channel teaching Unreal Engine.

My neuro-atypical nature and preference for solitude have allowed me to dive deep into my interests, dedicating significant time to mastering Unreal Engine.

I use a method of taking breaks to work on different aspects of the project, preventing burnout while making progress towards my goal.

The Importance of Efficient Learning and Patience

Efficient learning is key, whether through tutorials or self-guided research.

Talent is a myth; success comes from hard work and past experiences.

Everyone learns at different rates, and it's important to be patient and consistent in skill development to prevent burnout.