Hours per week

I'm just interested in hearing how much time people put into their game development. If you like, please respond with an average weekly total in hours, and what's your level of experience. (Are you hobby programmer only, or professional as well? Is this your first or second game, or have you completed 10 games?)

roughly 2-4 hours / week.

I'm a professional non games programmer (The games are a hobby)

I've completed 8 games thus far(all of them before i started programming full time for a living) and got 2 more in progress (one is a side project at work and one is a personal project (My employer is nice enough to actually let me keep my personal projects for myself which is a bit rare these days).

I do software development of some kind 40+ hours per week though.

40 hours a week professionally and ~4-8 hours a week at home when I feel like it. Completed 4 AAA titles so far and working on the 5th, never completed a home project due to them being hobby and learning other stuffs.

Just learning, so I've been putting a lot of time into it. Once I'm comfortable I won't spend the majority of my time learning as opposed to doing, I'll slow down but for now, 15 throughout the weekdays and 6 or so on Saturday and Sunday.

(Not games) Somewhat professionally - from 0 to 30/60 hours a week. It depends on what project I am doing or upgrading. Mostly web based.

Games related, from 2 hours to 30ish. Before I would spend my hobby time on learning and experimenting with technologies/designs like OpenGL, Lua for scripting.

I have made 2/3 small game demos (to apply what I am learning ). Currently making my first full game (just a small 2D space shooter).

Im not working on a game but it is structured to work well for real time rendering and in a game if I ever want to make one. I focus up to 14 hours a day, depending on and almost always pass the 90 hour a week mark, I wish I could spend more on it but meh got other things to do. I have always been funny about branding myself with a title as it is meaningless, I will let others judge how 'pro' I am. However I have been heavily focused on graphics since early 2012 and programming in general since 2010

I spend ~40 hours a week at work (I'm an engine programmer) - have a number of smaller titles out, one AAA and working on a second. I also spend ~6 hours a week working on my own projects.

About 25-30 hour a week at work (to be honest, half of that is compiling... :D), and... currently 0 for game development, but it is in my TODO list.

About ~40 hours a week at work (well.. internship really) and next to that I spent a couple of hours (depending on the schedule that week, also need to spend some time with the missus) on my hobby engine (purely learning stuff) aaaand I get together once a month with a friend of mine to work on a small project we have. So in total probably 40 to 50 hours a week?

In terms of how professional.. The company I am working at now is an indie studio working on a PS Vita project which would be my first professional title. Next to that I made 2 games in college that are decently polished for something made in that timespan.

I'm also more of a tech guy though, I love working on games, but more under the hood. :)

Couple of last years or more usually about regular 70 hours a week (at home), but incidentally last half year only about a half of it (i was feeling strangely overworked )

Got about 6- 5 years of regular day-to-day coding (though i learned coding as a child I do regular coding mostly just last 4-5 years )

Result: only a pack of prototypes in my backpack, (but also some amount of knowledge and experience )

I'm a professional, but my working week varies dramatically as I've been doing mercenary work. Generally speaking, I've been doing a forty hour working week and recently no hobbyist work. When I do do hobbyist stuff, it gets between six and twenty hours.

I've worked on quite a few games (professional and hobby) over the past ten or so years, though I don't tend to give an actual number as 'shipped', as that implies always working on them for the bulk of the development cycle, which isn't always the case.

To answer my own question, I am a professional non-game programmer. Assembly(as is described in my signature), so not remotely connected to hobby gaming. (If you're using assembly-level programming in your game, I'm calling it not-hobby. ;) ) On my hobby programming, I usually manage 4 45-min lunches through the work week, and one night of 1.5-2 hrs.

So in total I only get in about 4.5-5 hrs per week.

If you like, please respond with an average weekly total in hours

35 hours at the office, 6 hours at home = 41 hours or so.

and what's your level of experience. (Are you hobby programmer only, or professional as well?

Both.

Is this your first or second game, or have you completed 10 games?)

Around 30 shipped titles.


L. Spiro

Im not a professional programmer at all, nor am I a CS major. Just a hobbyist. I try to get in a hour a day after Im done with college work. So 7-hours a week for me.

At all of my professional jobs, I've done 38 hours per week (the legal maximum here).

These days, I'm "an indie". When I was working out of my home office, it was pretty hard to tell how many hours I was doing... my workday and personal day were so blurred... Recently I moved into a small office building, and I've been spending about 45 hours per week there.

So in total I only get in about 4.5-5 hrs per week.

Probably spending more time on EVE yeh ;)? Cant believe I only just noticed the logo

<- ex player, left for programming :D well worth it ;)

So in total I only get in about 4.5-5 hrs per week.

Probably spending more time on EVE yeh ;)? Cant believe I only just noticed the logo

<- ex player, left for programming well worth it ;)

Heh, ya used to. But I also dropped my subscription to code more. I lapsed in August. I just couldn't excuse the sub for 2-4 hrs/ week, not counting lunchtime PI updating. I'm thinking about taking a break in January and subbing again for a month, lose some internet space pixels. I used to blog a bit about my journey, just a little. And I love my Amarr ships.

I'm just interested in hearing how much time people put into their game development. If you like, please respond with an average weekly total in hours, and what's your level of experience. (Are you hobby programmer only, or professional as well? Is this your first or second game, or have you completed 10 games?)

I'm a novice game programmer, and have only been coding for about a year (C++), so most my time is still spent learning how to do things. but on average i spend at least 6 hours a day coding, but fairly often i get into a groove and will end up spending 12+ hours coding. id say i spend between 40-70 hours a week coding.

im doing this to become a "Professional" game developer/programmer.

ive completed a handful of dinky games, and recently have been cloning classic games, starting from pong (of course! :) )

I spend around 4-8 hours a week on game development, mainly my own solo projects but also some freelance model/graphics work. Would like a ten or twenty-fold that amount but life gets in the way :)

I spend about 5-10 hours per week on my hobby projects.

My day job is game development-related, but not programming.

The time I spend at home is still valuable for my day job (making key decisions based on tech, etc.)