Should you start developing your own game? And why?

No you shouldn't. Thank you for reading and good bye...
Just kidding. Maybe you should!?

Who am I and why do I think I can tell you something?

First, let me introduce my self a bit.
I studied business informatics and worked a few years as technical consultant for business software. Since 2015 I am working as application manager in a big company in Austria living through the complete software development cycle over and over again. From old school water fall driven development to the new agile standard.

But tust me, developing games is something completely different. Business software is easy mode in programming - seen as a project - not neccessarily by its code complexity. And the upcomming lines will explain you why.

I have been developing indie games for many years now. Started many own game projects and participated in various bigger ones whereas my current one will be published on Steam by end of this year. For more informatin check out Blood And Pixels

Why would you even consider game development?

Let us be honest here.
Who has never thought "Well, that game sucks! I could do it better!" ?
Who has never looked for a game but missed his favourite features?
Who has never though "Damn, games were better back then!" ?

And if you're are bit of a creative mind, had a cool idea for a game or even have some coding knowledge, then you're not far away of starting your game dev career.

Why you SHOULD start developing games

The first impression goes the longest way, so let us start with something positive.
Lets take a look on the positive aspects of game development and what it takes to be successfull.
This is not going to be so boring list to check every items but more of a short story.

My very first game was written in Visual Basic. I was about 12 years old and had no idea of what I was doing. But I had some kind of text based sim city. Was fun.

Later, switching to C#, thing got more serious.
Better code, more features, more everything. At this point I quickly figured out that you won't get far with "free to use" graphics. Especially when you would like to have some special art style.
But hey, lets start with stock assets and focus on gameplay first.
How about sound and music? Ok, "free to use" it is. Again.
And how about story and all the lore? Now THATS something every creative mind can shine on his own. Depending on the genre you want to create this can be a really strong aspect of your game.

I learned a lot about various aspects of developing games. The psychology behind game design. Met a lot of interesting people with creative minds and found a lot of enjoyment in developing stories and quests. Also my coding skills got much better which was - more or less - usefull in my job.

Even my marketing skills got a little boost.

And with powerful engines like Unreal or Unity you can get quite far, even as a solo developer.
I would even go that far to say, it is a really good time to give it a try!

Why you should NOT start developing games

Source

As you might expect, not everything in game development is fun and giggles.
To be honest, there is a ton of doubt, anger and frustration during the whole development process.

First, you need an idea. Ok, easy, right? It cool and easy until you find out that there are about 1000 games which are almost exactly the same as your idea.
Good, then take your favourite game and make it better, right? But... Can you actually point a finger on something bad and also come up with an actual improvement of said feature?

Now you might have your idea, brought it to paper and you're ready to go. Good.
How about your hard skills? Can you code? Draw? Animate? Make sound effects and music? Write good stories? 3D-modelling?
Allthough the open source market is huge (especially Unreal offers really awesome assets) as soon as you're missing on of mentioned skill you will need to find other to help you.

So you start searching programmers and artists. Like thousand others who have a great idea for the next World of Warcraft killer or the better and faster Call of duty. Just like you probably.

And even if you find a team. Someone will abandon it because your new awesome MMO wont be done in 3 months. Maybe not in three years.
And even if manage to get it done, is it going to be good enough that people will pay for it?

What now?

Source

I hope you get a bit of an insight of what game dev is about.
It is not about making fancy games out of nothing, but it is a lot of work. But it is work that can be very rewarding IF you have the required endurance and motivation.
Which leads us to the key word:

You can create awesome games, even alone (Great examples of solo made games is Minecraft and Banished IF you bring enough motiviation. For you AND your team.
And in any case, you will learn from it and maybe gain some new skills.
Good Luck!