Hello everyone, I was sitting down just now working on my game. Then I thought, damn. I really enjoy this. Now for me, I am no where near as talented as some of the great game designers out there. My mapping skills are not as good, my stories may sound cliche. However, I love doing this, it's really fun to me. Like when I get a good idea in my head and then I actually do it. Feels great. I have been messing with the RM series since RM2K. My favorite thing to do is making animations. Nothing bugs me more then seeing poor attempts at battle animations. Anyhow, I want to know out of curiosity. What drives you to make your games? Thanks guys.

Hmm, well for me I think it's that I love games so much, that when I saw that there was a place that ppl made games at I just had to join and do it myself, with games and art, if I see it and like it I have to be able to do it to, I would just feel kinda cheap, or incomplete if I couldnt, and making games here has led me to one of my greatest acomplisments art wise so when I look back at it all im very proud.

i know alot of people in my personal life that have used the RM series as kinda a gate way to other things. My friend has applied to Devry Video Game school and the RM series, for him was a big influence on that. Even if everyone hates my games, or if i never get a good review. It honestly wont matter at all. I do it for the simple fact that its one of the most fun things I can do.

EDIT:
With that being said, that will not mean that I am going to ignore what people say. Or change things if I feel the criticism was justifiable.

For me, its about the sheer thrill it gives you, not only do i want to be a professional game designer at some point, i could also entwine it with my Storywriting abilities, It's just a good thing to do when passing time, or if you have spare time on your hands, It depends majorly on how seriously you take it to be honest, There are certian games where they have an intro, custom battle system and whatnot, those types of games take months' work, But no matter what level game design skill you are, wether you're working on a project or working With people on a project, it's pretty much like an online addiction, I too, have been messing around with rpg maker since 2000. I'm currently working with RMMXP and 2k3, But overall i've loved game design since i was like 10. I used to play play play games all the time, then i thought one day "Why not make them? " It's also about the fact that once your game is released, you get to see what OTHER people think, so you can better and alter your ways of making games so you have your own sort of "Touch" to game making that no one else has. Like for me, i add a few touches of my own element here and there. I remember when i used to suck at making maps, playing a few of other peoples' RPG making game me inspiration, then finally, i learnt how to add scenery, diffrent types of music depending on the day, animal sound effects, ponds, rivers ect ect. Everyone has started from the point in an rpg maker where it's just a path of that 1 by 1 tile of grass leading to a town XD, Anyhow, I game design for the thrill of it being my carrer / half job, There's always ways to improve, and the fact that you can almost never get bored of it if you're working on a project hard enough. Being as young as i am, whenever i mention game design in my school, everyone's like "Wow, at your age?" Too bad school doesn't exactly help you excell in game design :/ 2 years till college anyhow!

I don't do it as much now but I know why I did it back then.
It's creating a game. Who in the world did not search up "Online game maker" or something similar.
I believe I wanted to create games as quickly as possible at first, but then that started to slow down realizing how bad my mapping, story, and eventing was.

So, I first improved my eventing. I literally spent hours making up new ideas with the events I have.
I was always improving the visuals of cutscenes, making the conversations more unique and interesting, and using animations to improve the atmosphere.
I was blown away on how long I took just to make this event that heals you by the amount of kills you did. I put a lot of effort into that.

After I was the master of eventing in my mind, I realized my mapping could use improvement.
So, I took some advice from several people, read a couple of tutorials, and began countless hours on improving and creating better maps.

When I was satisfied with that, I finally realized how important it is to create a game with a plan.
I always said to myself "If I create it on the spot, it will be unique," but I guess that wasn't the case.

Currently, I am waiting for some inspiration to write a good RPG up.
Sure I have lots of ideas that have been passing my mind lately, but I can't seem to even write/type them down into a story.

Maybe this is part of the process, but I'll wait for that time to shine.

Indeed it is, Ideas just come across your mind randomly, then over time you get so much, that you're pretty much brainwashed to force and compact them into a thing we call a "Storyline" XD Its like a complicated jigsaw pretty much.

for me, its funny. i never have the whole game planned out. i get a basic idea then do up my intro. and honestly i just go from there. the next ideas just come along as i am creating the current part of my game. lol thats how i have always been.

Its fun, passes the time, lets you use your own ideas, and if you wish you could make a paid game to earn some cash. There is lots you can do with games. Look at Runescape and Club Penguin (Not saying I like these ) They are rich because of all the 'Members' who pay, but they still offer lots to 'Non members' to encourage them to pay for FULL experience.

Thats just my opinion, but there you have it

I love the thrill of making the Game world of a game. Its so epic to program things and think logically how a story can be made within the game, as well the A.I creation. All of it is soo fun.

When I was younger i bought the console rpg makers just because I wanted to make a game. I got absolutely nowhere though since I could'nt find any characters I really wanted to use. I really started getting into it when my friend told me he was writing a book. He sent me what he had so far and I thought, "I wish there was some way I could help." I'm not a great writer so I decided to help him by making a game version of his story.
That way the picture of what's going on could help him with description in his story. At first i thought it probably would'nt help but it actually helped him alot to be able to see what he was writing about. Unfortunatley, once I began to actually make progress my computer crashed and everything was deleted

I've always enjoyed gaming, and wanted to be a game designer since I grew up around 6+ (maybe more). Later, my brother's friends told me about a program which lets you make your own games. That is RPG Maker 2003.
I got excited, and my brother got it. He decided to use it, but never truly got into it like I did. I was working and working, and I still prefer RPG Maker 2003 to this day.


Same with me.

My first game was Final Fantasy 1 for the NES. Or perhaps some Commodore 64 games. I am unsure! But yeah I did play other types of games too but somehow RPGs really piqued my interest. Then the SNES RPGs cemented my joy of RPGs, such brilliant titles like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 6, and Chrono Trigger (If any of you haven't played those, stop RPG Making and play them first).

I used to want to join Squaresoft (Until recently, now I would be embarassed to work for them) because of the great games they used to make. Seriously, Final Fantasy adventure, FF4, FF5, FF6, Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3, Even Legend of Mana was nice, Bahamut Lagoon, Chrono Trigger, this is quite a nice list!

My goals in game making are to improve on myself, learn new things, experiment, and try to make good games and fix my mistakes. You just see so much of the same type of game out there like: "Oh, cliches are fine, it's just how you use it! That's why my game has a first town that burns down, he's a chosen one that uses a sword, you have a white mage girl who will be your lover, you are 16-18 years old, and the player can guess what's going to go on throughout the entire game"

I was the same way when I started! Once I figured out how to use RMVX I was pretty good at eventing. My maps were't to bad when I first started but I'm DEFINATELEY betetr now!

The reason I use RPG Maker VX is because I enjoy being as creative as possible. Sometimes my ideas sprout from professional ideas but they end up different enough to be original. I used Lunar Magic until I found RPG Maker!

@Oceans Dream

I never played thouse games I probably won't since I no longer emulate games (SMW hacks >.>)

From when I was a small child to now, I've loved video games. I'd play them to no end with my family, and when we beat one, we'd go right to the next. My start with the RPG Maker series started back in '07, when I tried making a Shadowgate remake in RMXP for my grandmother's birthday. I remember clearly how difficult I found it, and gave up soon afterwards. A few days later, she was taken to the hospital, and fought for her life against breast cancer. This inspired me to complete it before she came out of the hospital. Sure, it wasn't the greatest game ever, it was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, and the functions could have been done a little bit better, but she loved it. The look in her eyes that day is why I make games, because even if they aren't that great, they will make someone happy.

My plan is to enslave the masses using hypnotic suggestions to squirrels via my video games I design. They will then deprive the world of nuts, allowing me to corner the market, then I will use the proceeds to ENSLAVE THE ENTIRE TRI-STATE AREA!!! lol

(Ahem) Kidding aside, I just enjoy it, I'm even using one of my games as a resume of what I can do. Who knows, maybe I might be noticed, or maybe I'm just wasting my time. Still, it's a nice addicting hobby that I just can't get rid of, and I'm allowed to have a dream. Even if that dream may never happen.

First I love games , second I think creating game can make me know game more

In perhaps the most honest reply I can give, it's because I crave the attention. I love the community involved with RM, you meet some interesting people, you feel like you have an important role to play when it comes to helping and giving advice, as long as you can accept the criticism yourself, and while some games aren't quite so golden, there's plenty of others that I've enjoyed testing and playing, while working on my own in my spare time.

Yeah, that's how I work it out too. It works out pretty good for me, I haven't really seen a flaw in it so far, apart from the fact that you need to make it make sense in the actual story, but really, I never actually plan out a whole game to like, the "Center" of the game, Of course, from time to time, I do go back and make sure everything ties well together, I tried to plan out a whole story once, I didn't get very far, mainly because it was like "Oh, man... I have to do this part before this part" or "Oh man, this is the boring part! >< gotta do that for today" and got bored, because it either got boring, too repetitive, or I just couldn't quite grasp the right "Feel" to the story. I find planning it out as you go along, aswell as making the story understandable and balanced, puts thrill into it.

THAT. Best reason for anyone to get into making games. It's the same reason anyone does anything constructive. To improve. Also I agree on the "cliches" thing. Cliches are great if you manage them well. I should know that well being the Dragon-Quest fan I am. It's a great series but even I can admit the older ones were cliche. But you know what? We were raised on those cliches so I'm not gonna damn them.

Yes, I agree with Ocean's views, but I'd also like to add Xenogears and maybe even the first two KH games to that list as well, before it became just another franchise for them. But the SNES and early days of Playstation are far behind us. Good thing I still own one of each.

I create them as a hobby knowing full well they are and could never get me into the industry of game making. How ever I like doing it as its fun and relaxing

As do I. SNES, NES, Sega Genesis and Game Boy Color are wonderful things~! Somehow I have had the same SNES and NES my whole like. The Sega one I got at a garage sale about 5 years ago and the GBC a miracle-find in a Game Stop bargain bin for ten bucks. XD

I played games a lot when I was young, and I liked to draw. I eventually got to drawing my own levels for games. Most of them being Mega Man levels with lame pun bosses and stuff. But...after working with RPG Maker, I realized I wanted to make RPGs!

I just like creating things, it's so extremely satisfying. While I usually make weird crossover fangames, I have my own original ideas too. And, a quick note about fangames. You might say they are easy, just throw stuff together! That's not how I go about it. I try hard to have it make some sort of sense, to have the characters be accurate to their personalities, to tribute the sources all of these characters, monsters, dungeons, and songs came from. It's actually really hard to do effectively. And, I try to use lesser known characters for something a little different (not as obscure as the character in my avatar, lol) So, don't expect to see one of my crossovers to feature Link, Cloud, and Mario teaming up to defeat Sephiroth and Ganon. UGH.

But for my original ideas, it's a way to express myself. I love creating characters, and to have a way to put my own characters into a game is just awesome. I try to do things differently, not for the sake of being different, but because that's just how things work out. I literally can't design a generic teenage sword wielding destined hero anymore, I have some kind of mental block that prevents me from doing so. And I like combining things in different ways. It is possible to take something overused and cliche, tweak it a tiny bit, and make it unique. Like, say, take a generic medieval fantasy setting, and mix it say...with like, an African setting, and BOOM, what the heck? That's never been done before, has it?

I do it for the challenge. I remember when I first started using 2003 and couldn't figure out how to use the show message function so instead, I made the scene without words. And by that, I mean that I made a spinning RTP fairy utter a low meow sound effect and then move away to the left and disappear (I almost facepalmed when I figured out that the show message function was the first button on the first page). With each thing I did, I progressively added more difficult-to-event events than the last. I've also slowly worked my way out of the run time package and have been making custom graphics for my projects.

When I was in 4th grade, I had some ideas for a game of my own based around a very generic gender neutral female (is that even a thing?) and her quest to free the mayor of So and so land from some spiky haired carrot-top called Antwan. That idea made me want to become a game designer when I grow up so that I could make that game. In 6th grade, I continued this girl's adventures in my math notes as I designed the levels and such. This part of her story was supposed to be the sequel to the first story I made about her in 4th grade.
I later turned these notes into Mimi's Mountain (the first game that I completed... kind of.). The original notes turned out to be somewhat of a ripoff of Kirby 64 so I modified the mechanics to work better for the engine. Now that I look back on that game, I really could have ran with the "collect all 452 crystals in some random areas" instead of "go though these random areas in order to go further up a mountain" and the quality seemed to go right down the toilet after the 2nd rock crusher upgrade. I've decided that I should let that flaming piece of half-baked childhood dreams die in peace so that I can work on other things (being a game loosely based upon a comic series that I worked on in my planner's calendar).

So in short, this is all just practice for the real thing. Now that I know what I'm doing and I have my old wishes fulfilled, I can work on strengthening my eventing/scripting skills along with my artistic skills. When I get attached to a project that puts me on a team, I have a crazy work ethic. I love spriting and stuff so much that I will stay up late on school nights if I have to get things done for a deadline. I guess this all comes from my ambition to get somewhere in a career doing pixel art, along with the nagging little voice trying to explain that the world doesn't need pixel artists anymore; which in turn drives me even more to prove my worth to such a shallow pool of opportunity.
I got started with scripting in an intro to programming class that I took in high school (I had to wait until I had passed geometry to take it which I got into later due to taking a lower math course because of my lack-of-paying-attention-and-learning-in-6th-grade-math thing. <_<). I found that I could make nearly anything happen on-screen if I could look up what sort of command I needed to use and how to use it . Of course I would run into limitations of the engine, random little glitches, and getting confused due to forgetting to put comments in tricky spots.
Nevertheless, scripting and eventing has always been a fun puzzle to me. A puzzle that changed upon the conditions and always had a reward for being completed. And the best part was that I could solve it nearly any way I pleased. The ultimate puzzle in its dynamically simple form. It would be a dream come true if I could get a job drawing bitmaps and making cool things happen with scripts and events.

As for me, I started developing games because of:

I have no other RPG games to play. I couldn't afford a new game platform such as XBOX or Playstation 2/3. I only had DS, a few games were included but they weren't too much of an RPG. So out of boredom, I typed in "rpg games" and I found some, which I didn't *like. After that, I thought to myself, why not create my own? I searched "rpg maker" and saw the actual website.

There began my craving to create a veeeeeeery short game but I failed due to the lacking of my development skills. I wondered if there was any forum about RMing. Thus, I found the VX.net which guided me to RMVX. That's where I developed my artistic skills and as well as my developing skills. I realized that time, people who created/developed nice games get recognized easily. Till now, I'm striving to create a game but laziness overtakes my soul. I end up playing Happy Wheels or Pokemon Black.

So probably, reasons why I wanted to create games are: Develop my skills, Get recognized and discover a lot of stuff.

That ends my heart-wrenching and touching story.

Huh, I just remembered some other details.

I'm highly considering a career in game making some day, so I think RPG Maker would help me get experience. HOWEVER, I feel that if I'm just one person on a team, I won't have much input.

Which leads me to my next point, one reason I want to make games is because so many games I play, even my favorites, I feel like if just a few things were different, it would be amazing. There's always that ONE little thing that can ruin or lessen the experience for me. Sure, maybe those tweaks might ruin it for someone else, maybe I'm being selfish...But I feel that there's always something that could just be done a little differently...If I make my game, my way, then I can only blame myself for things I don't like. That's part of my weird masochism, preferring to blame myself rather than others if it makes any sort of sense.

Sooooooooo...if I'm part of a company or team, I won't have as much creative input, and all those little tweaks I'd want to make things just right...I wouldn't be able to do. So, I'm torn. But in the end, I know I still want to make games either way, so hey.


One more thing! There's always that time when I think, "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" Which leads me to a new idea. Usually a character. That sentence is usually finished with "...a character like this was playable? Or better yet, the main character!?" There are so many unique and different kinds of characters, I'm tired of the main characters always filling the same role. There's nothing wrong with mixing things up. Like how about an RPG starring a firebreathing gentlemanly walrus? And one of his best friends is a clown skilled in martial arts? WHY NOT?

I would go into some lengthy prose about how it's my life calling, how it lets me escape the real world and my problems, and how in a game I can do and be whoever I want to do/be, but that would be a lie.

I make games because it's fun to, and that's about it.

I make games for fun! With RMXP, you can't really sell your games, so it's for fun! However, Once I get a new laptop I'll be getting Unity and THOSE are games you can sell! I probably won't sell them though xD
It's just something to do in my free time, and it's very fun for me. Keeps me away from the drugs.

Not only did I dream of it to be a full time job someday,
When I was 7 I got hooked on Pokemon and imagined making my own version of Pokemon as a video game. I imagined the console and I imagined the events... YEARS later I discover the two game makers and that is why I create.

Also... I feel like I'm good at something no one else I know can take from me. It's a great feeling, and I feel that by making my game, I myself become a better and stronger individual.

It may sound fairly off, but that's why I create games: Child hood memories, pleasure and having my own hobby

I try to make games because I have a story to tell, ideas I wanna see become reality and a lack of friends I can manipulate to do the footwork for me.

Well, I must of played most commercial rpg's out there....38 games in my collection aint so bad.
Fact is, not many being released, nor has there been for several years....its almost become a distant memory when
you could walk into any game shop and choose which rpg game you wanted on the shelves...not the selection now.
Thats one reason what got me into RM, okay, I played with RM2k3 at the time which was THE RM at the time, then
RMXP was released...wow, it was revolutionary, much more professional looking and good capability.
Making the games was and is purely for the fun factor, fanbased games whatever drives the inspiration, certainly
helps me to create games. I could add up six different rpg commercial games that drive me forward when it comes
to creating my own games, yet the fun is converting the games into my own RM fantasy story....simple.
Someone mentioned the cost of games these days too, too right. Another reason why I love to make games free to
everyone....but don't expect a final fantasy 7 class of game ! Thats the fun of RM to me....there are some superb games
here in RRR alone.
Those wanting to make a career from game development, I can think of quite a few members that have made a success
of getting into the business from here, so there's always hope for everyone.

This is another reason for me. I've had the story for my head in my head since making my first game in 2004 (and before then, even). It's been largely the same for every game I've made. I have trouble getting it down into the gameplay though rather than just subtext in a project thread.

For me, making games is... a method of artistic expression for a man who cannot paint. I mean this quite literally; for someone with minimal artistic ability, I must find an alternative outlet - game design - for the art I want to make. The... experience I want to make, on a very impressionistic level - work from emotion to create emotion - this is what I want to capture in my games. This is what I want to capture in my art, through code and story and music and sweat and tears: an experience.

It also helps that any art form, in its creation or consumption, can function as a way to express oneself. Video games are particularly powerful in that they give the player an even greater chance for self-expression than a book or a movie, even though your actions are still largely dictated by the plot. So I also make games to deal with a need for expression and play them as an escape from life. Very common motivations, I suppose.