Answered PM.
Making video games is really easy and really hard.
It's really hard to make something that is actually enjoyable, especially since you learn really quickly that "really enjoyable" changes depending on the beholder. On top of this, you can have the entire game done, but it needs polish before the "fun" reveals itself... and adding that polish? That last 10% of effort? Takes 90% of the time.
It's really easy in the fact that all the information you will ever want or need is already available to you for the taking. With dedication, you can build something. It just takes time, effort, and dedication.
I've temporarily slowed down some on game making because I was in crunch mode all of Fall working on my VR Dungeon Crawler and wanted a coding break, so I'm looking into opening an Escape Room and spending time with my twins to cool my brain off a while and figure out where I want to move the project forward.
The other hard part of game dev is getting things that you can't do / don't have. This takes talented personnel or money. It's crazy how easy it is when you have either of those things, but also crazy difficult to have either.
Most of the "cost" of gamedev comes from personnel. Indie devs like me work for $0/hour and instead get a revenue share of the game they release, so our ultimate hourly rate is a variable and often very low. If someone said they wanted a Smash Brothers type game with online capability, 3D models, and for it to feel like Melee, I could put something like that together with 3 people and $50,000 - $80,000.
The money seems really small for gamedev, but that's because the 3 people would be working long hours for $0/hour. Having a 3D modeler + animator who is obsessive and takes a craftsmanship approach, a programmer that focuses on the online portion, and a programmer/designer that focuses on literally everything else could finish a game like this with that small budget in about 2 years or so, with a prototype in about 4 months, assuming they all worked on it on a semi-regular daily basis.
Smash is a pretty "big" game.
If you pare that down and instead say "I want to make a platformer like Super Metroid", that takes even less. Maybe $5,000 and two people -- a spriter and a programmer/designer.
Think about what's "in" Super Metroid from a programming perspective.
Want a character that can walk around, jump, and shoot? Less than a day.
Functioning camera system? Done in five minutes, they've already been built a thousand times.
Option to use power bomb, missile, and other projectiles? Maybe two hours at most.
Grappling hook? If you've done it before, an hour or two. Otherwise less than a day.
Saving? Less than a day.
Player health system? Less than a day.
Enemy health system? Less than a day.
Doors that open only if hit with certain attacks? Minutes.
Special abilities like the dash boots and super jump, etc.? A day or two, if not less depending on the number of them.
It goes on like that, but nothing in SMetroid is actually complicated. You can build it pretty fast.
The issue is getting the graphical content and making it "fun", which takes a lot of time, and making sure all those systems interact properly.
Just takes a lot of time.
So if you want to make games, start building. Start with "roll a ball" tutorial in Unity and move from there.
