Tutorial Hell - Why You're There. How to Get Out.

TL;DR Your projects are over scoped and you are missing a solid skill foundation. There is no magic step. No magic course. No magic book. Build the foundation of your knowledge and finish lots of small and simple projects to build your skills.

You. Me. And everyone who’s going to read this post. Has over-scoped a project. We have big dreams and amazing ideas, but the projects never get finished. By the third, fourth, or maybe fifth failed project it starts to get pretty discouraging. I’d guess more than half of people give up within a year of watching their first tutorial and almost no one makes it to the point of releasing a complete and polished game.

This can be tormenting and dream-crushing. It’s so easy to get stuck watching one video after another. Feeling like the next one will make it all come together. While never feeling like you’re making progress or never feeling like you can truly create something on your own.

Content creators are rewarded for creating engaging content, not for their viewer’s success. Most content out there is well intended, but most of it is oversimplified and ends up selling the viewer a load of horse shit.

Quickly and easily add multiplayer!

Build an inventory system in under 10 minutes!

By glossing over the difficult bits many viewers get in over their heads thinking they are one step closer to their dream game. What feels helpful turns out to be the opposite. Most videos are about the product and not the process. Teaching a process takes time and patience, but neither of these is rewarded by the algorithms of YouTube or Udemy. The result, especially for beginners, is frustration, maybe giving up or all too often starting a search for the next tutorial.

This is tutorial hell.

It’s easy to feel stuck and I think many or even most folks eventually give up trying to make progress. So here’s my hot take on tutorial hell, why you’re there, and how to get out.

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The quick, dirty, and admittedly blunt reason you’re in tutorial hell? It’s because you don’t know enough to finish your current project. With the internet and clever thumbnails, learning looks like it would be easy. But it isn’t and good resources to learn are hard to find.

Building a solid foundation of knowledge is hard. My number one recommendation for folks who want to learn Unity is to work through the Create with Code course from Unity.

It’s 30 to 40 hours of work. It’s a real course and it’s free! If you are serious about wanting to make games with Unity this is the best starting place I have seen - hands down. You need to 100% this course. No cheating. No skipping content. If you already know the content covered by a lesson or unit, quickly read the text, skip the videos, but do the projects.

Speaking as a classroom teacher for over 15 years, the challenges are where the learning is really going to happen. This is where you will do more than listen and repeat steps. The challenges will make you think. You might even struggle. And that’s okay. Learning comes from forming new neural pathways in your brain and that’s not easy. So buckle up.

When you do finish Create with Code, I promise, you will be able to create and complete a project of your own. It won’t be an MMO, it won’t be the next mobile hit and it certainly won’t be the next hot e-sports title. But it’ll be YOUR game. And you’ll be fucking proud of it.

Your Project Is Too Big

If you’ve finished Create with Code (or have all the skills from that course) and you’re still finding yourself stuck, then the likely culprit is your projects. It’s not you. It’s not the way you think. It’s your projects. They’re too big and too complex. Getting started with a project is “easier than you think” but finishing those projects is so much harder.

Everyone has a graveyard of incomplete projects. Ideas that lived for a few hours or maybe a few months. And that’s fine. Perfectly normal. Frankly, it’s part of the journey. But I see tutorial hell as the result of biting off too much. Trying to build your dream game too early. Or not having the skills or the team to build that dream game.

But! This doesn’t mean you are giving up on that dream project.

So here’s my advice. Pick ONE mechanic. Running, jumping, shooting, or maybe just clicking. Or be more creative. It doesn’t really matter. Make a game around that singular mechanic and give yourself one month to finish the game. That’s it. No spending money. No 3rd party assets. Use free art if you want, but nothing else that isn’t built into the game engine and of your own creation. And no HDRP or stupid shit like that. Basic. Game.

At the end of the month if your game isn’t done. You designed too big of a game. Regardless you’ve learned something. So you’re done. Close the project. Basta cosi.

Pick a new mechanic. If your scope was wrong last month then adjust. But still no spending money. Zero. If you finished your last project, this time you are going to add more polish. More particles, more SFX, and more overall juice. You still have a month. No more. No less.

This process takes discipline. This is the actual hard part. If you find yourself wanting to add more mechanics and features. Tell yourself to fuck off and get back to work. If you find yourself getting bored, try designing even smaller games and give yourself two weeks or maybe just one week, but you must finish those smaller projects.

The goal is not to make good games. Or fun games. The goal is to learn to finish a game.

Design. Build. Reflect. Repeat. With each new project pick a new mechanic to explore and add to your knowledge base.

As a rough rule of thumb, you should know how to do at least 80% of each new project WITHOUT help or tutorials. That’s not to say you can’t look up documentation or get a quick refresher, but the goal of quick short projects is to learn and build your knowledge not add to your YouTube view history. If there’s too much that you don’t know how to do, then redesign a smaller project.

Finish 3, 4, or maybe 5 small month-long projects and you’ll be surprised at what you now know how to do. This will be easier for some and some will learn faster than others. But everyone will learn. Everyone will get better.

You’re Out

Easier said than done? Absolutely. But it is this simple and that hard. There is no magic trick. No magic tutorial series. No magic book. Build the foundation of your knowledge and build lots of small and simple projects to build your skills.

If you do? You’ll have found your way out of tutorial hell.

You’ve made it further than most! But you’ve still only started.

Moving forward you start designing slightly bigger games. Games that might combine more than one mechanic. Maybe this is the time to buy books, or maybe pay for a course or two. Or maybe this is the time to start learning to make fun games rather than bigger games. But stick to the rule of thumb - know how to build 80% of your next project before you start.