FOR GAME CREATORS HERE: HOW DID YOU GET YOUR START ON HOW ARE YOU NOW?

Lots and lots of patience...

I've always wanted to make games as a kid and would draw a bunch of stuff related to the game ideas I had. Sometime early in my teens I took a programming / game design summer course, and while I didn't do well at the former, the latter was interesting as I found my first relatively easy-to-use game-making program (Multimedia Fusion). I made quite a few short, buggy and forgettable shit with it, then I discovered RPG Maker XP in my mid-teens and I've been an RPG Maker fan since.

Nowadays, I mainly use VXAce for stuff and I'm exploring Stencyl a little bit here and there.

I've bounced between... 4 or 5 different communities prior to becoming a regular on RMN. It's definitely not the same as it is today, particularly that before RPG Maker got an official forum, people regularly went to three major giants within the community: rpgmakerxp.org (Now known as HBgames), Rpg Rpg Revolution, and Creation Asylum. Pretty much all of those are dead/near death now that the company website includes their own boards now.

Aside from that, there was a bit less of a "commercial focus" that the community had during the prominence of RMXP, even less with 2k/3. We were almost like a modding community who would regularly share resources and advice on game design with each other without a whole lot of higher ambitions behind it. It was somewhere around the time of VX's release that the indie-scene as a whole started to explode, and RPG maker was becoming more of a viable option for developing commercial games, and was practically codified by the time VX Ace was released. I'd venture to say most people outside of the community didn't even know what RPG Maker was until the start of a saturation of commercial projects.

Note, in my view, this is a great thing in that it allows what was once a kind of secluded community to get exposure and actually make something of themselves outside of joining the AAA industry. The con, however, is that there are now many members who put in such a strong business focus on the entirety of the sub-culture that kind of feels alienating to those who would rather stick to using the tool as a hobby, but the the helpful people still exist.

I came to gam mak very late. Just three years ago, at the ripe old age of 26, starting with VXA. Prior to that, I had zero programming or game design experience, no education on the subject, etc. I kinda just screwed around with it and worked on projects here and there.

About six months ago, my hours at work were drastically cut so I didn't have much else to do but sit around and practice doing this. Which I guess isn't the best reason but it's something to do between sending out resumes.

Played A Blurred Line - started liking homebrew RPGs. Picked up 2k/2k3, made a couple 1-min walk sims. Time passed. Picked up VX, tried to make a non-linear puzzle mansion game, it was pretty terrible. From the beginning I realized I found most battles of the time boring, and liked designing puzzle games. Battles are better nowadays in modern RM games, they're way more interesting and require more strategy in general. Had a few really ambitious ideas about a life sim game that I still have in my head. The game was gonna be called The Dying Life of Thom Walters or something like that. It never hit the editor.

I wanted to join a game making contest so I found one on RPGMakerVXAce.net. Made Maximus Jones, a silly little game with 5-minigames inside it. It got 3rd prize for that contest. Then I created Quincy & Amber for an Autumn Fest contest on RMW, and it got honourable mention. Then I created Account Mu, a black-and-white puzzle game for VX Ace, for the IGMC 2014, the game I'm probably most proud of and I'm still working on it today.

I have a game called Paper Thin which is mostly under wraps but it's hard to make games nowadays because of my 9-to-5-er. Then I created a game called Project1 which is extremely meta and my most personal game to date.

I have an unfinished game A Conversation which is an intimate interactive conversation game as a spiritual-prequel-of-sorts to Paper Thin, which is kind of like supposed to be my magnum opus (except, for all that it looks like, Account Mu will most likely be my swan song).

The old times I felt were more constrained to a certain way of game making, whereas now, people are more open to all sorts of genres. I got the feeling people were making the same type of game over and over, whereas now you see a lot more variety. I'm finally seeing puzzle games that make me envious, especially from the likes of NeverSilent or Grettgor or Artie or whoever else I forgot to name drop because I'm so clumsy. I want to see more of those.

As of late I've become way more enamoured with the idea of telling meaningful emotional stories. I haven't had the urge to tell a story in the past - historically I've avoided the storytelling portion - but recently I've just had the urge to craft characters and storylines and I have no idea how to get there so that's my struggle at the moment.

How about you?

Riding unity's coattails :V

I'm sort of poking at my own games, but I'm most comfortable doing graphical assets and letting other, more competent souls take care of the actual game design. I'd probably help more teams if I weren't trying to actually make money as an artist, so gettin real paid or doing my own stuff takes precedence. :/

ETA:

author=pianotm
When I was a little kid, my grandparents got me a Commodore 64. For those too young to remember, C64 was designed to make your own video games on. I always did little things with it, but it wasn't until I was a teenager I started dabbling in C++. I only hobbied and never got very far. I made a few text games, and made a flying shooty game that looked like crap.

Oh dang, I have super happy memories playing games on Grandpa's C64. Ugh, so cool.

My first RPG Maker was the original RPG Maker for the Playstation console. I would spend so many hours and days working on games back then. It was brutal. Very little customization (graphics only, if I remember correctly), and you had to enter text by controller. You got used to that last part, so long as you set cursor speed to the fastest available, but it was still difficult.

After many test projects and tiny games, I eventually made a game called "Autumn Winters" for the PSone. Had about 3 hours of gameplay. Then I went on to make "Autumn Winters 2", which was about 6 hours, and then I worked on "Autumn Winters 3" and that never got finished (lost interest), but it was going on hour 8.

Of course back then I never had a tool to take the save files and put them online, so nobody ever got to play them but me. Now, we all have broadband internet and cool computer programs, so it's no longer an issue.

The current game I am working on, Veritas, borrows a couple main characters and some ideas from the old PSone games. Of course I'm much older now and the story is far different, but it was something I always wanted to make.

It started long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

I picked up XP and started messing around with it. Made a short little RPG called Something or Another. No, that's not a joke. I then went on to make a series of small, slightly horrible games that make me cringe today. Seriously, some of my design choices back in the day were laughable. But most of us probably have memories of those days. Eventually, I went on to VX, where I dabbled for a bit but ultimately lost interest for a few years. Skipped over VX Ace; grabbed up RPG Maker "Master Race" instead. Now, after at least ten years, I am working on releasing my first full-length RPG called Heartfire: A Born Again Saga. Hopefully people like it. But if not, it's back to the drawing board.