Why Do We Make Games?

We interviewed 100+ users who love making games. These are NOT just professionals but also young individuals who make games on platforms like Roblox and Minecraft. These are curious and highly creative people who we don’t hear about regularly. While “What is wrong with Roblox” is a blog in and of itself, we will keep that for another time. Let’s keep this on why people want to make games:

1. To make a popular game
2. To make money
3. To get the joy of creation
4. To have fun with games
5. To express themselves and tell stories
6. To experiment with game ideas
7. To challenge themselves and gain mastery
8. To share games with friends
9. To learn the basics of game design
10. To socialize and develop collaboratively
11. To learn the basics of programming

Let’s go one by one:

1. To make a popular game:

This is the absolute and most common reason we heard from literally everyone. From the very young to the most experienced game developers. Everyone wants to make a game so that many people can play it. The definition of “a lot” varied from 10 people to 10 million people for different people, but the emotion was always about a lot. 

2. To make money:

The young kids want to make a career in games, the professionals wish to grow, and the indie developers want to make money by selling their games or copies thereof. 

3. To get the joy of creation:

Fame and money are the most common reasons that we want to do anything, but beyond that, creativity is an innate desire. The kids want to make games because they enjoy making games. They enjoy the sandbox nature of building. 

4. To have fun with games:

Everyone who makes games just loves games. They also typically love to play their games. 

5. To express themselves and tell stories:

We see games as a means of storytelling. And that’s one of the reasons why people make games. They want to make a game about helping older adults, about how their parents help them during camping, or just a cool homework assignment—games as a means of storytelling. 

6. To experiment with game ideas:

Kids love sandbox. Experiment with different ideas. Different projects. They want to know what a GTA set in Delhi would look like, or what Subway Surfers would be like if mom is chasing you with milk. Or what would games be if I have very little time to solve a puzzle to understand how to fly a plane.  

7. To challenge themselves and gain mastery:

The folks who are a bit more experimental, who have made even a 30-second game in the past using templates or simple languages like Scratch, just enjoy making games like a sport. And they want to do it more to gain mastery over it. 

8. To share games with friends:

This is a more personal version of popularity that the users seek. They want to make games that are specific to their friend group. Something akin to internal jokes. 

9. Learning the basics of game design:

Users in the 16-24 age bracket have a nuanced understanding of socials, storytelling, and game design as a discipline. For them, making games is another way to learn game design. Quite a few of them have previously watched videos on how to make games, or what game design is, and what level design is. They are always looking for tools and teammates to help test their ideas. 

10. Socialize and build collaboratively:

This set of users can be classified as curious nerds. They’re not alone in wanting to experiment with ideas, but they have groups of friends. These groups often take the form of Discord or WhatsApp/Instagram chats. They exchange memes, create them, play some games together, and literally experiment with strategies. They want to have something digital to do together. Some of them have a regular schedule of coming back from school, sitting together on Minecraft, and building their worlds. This group of users wants their ideas to come to life as they hang out on a group chat. 

11. Learn the basics of programming:

This was a fascinating observation. Quite a few students or potential users who wanted to get into game design actually had the notion that learning game design meant learning programming. When we dug deeper into their thought process, we found that this perception was a consequence of past trauma from trying to make games or attending coding courses in the name of game design. 

These are some of the insights we got from interviewing aspiring game designers. We’ll be putting them into a jobs-to-be-done framework and making some comparisons with existing products. We will see which product decisions this shapes up for us and how we define product requirements based on this. Till then, if anyone asks you why kids even want to make a game. You can point them here.