I have demos I've made in a couple days. 49% of the work is getting assets into the game and looking nice and 49% of the work is tweaking the logic to play nicely. Then 90% of the rest of the work is post-release support to show your fans that you won't flake on the next game you make.
Also, a good portion goes into the more fanciful polishing touches or intricate systems. Like you can purchase marketplace assets to help with some of those, like complex crafting systems or detailed NPC generation, but you'll have to put extra work in to make those systems fit with not only how you want it to work, but also make sure it connects properly with other mechanics and systems in your game. Oh, and netcode, if applicable.
But of course it all depends on what kind of a game you're trying to make. You could make a basic singleplayer shooter incredibly fast if you wanted to, without having to know any C++ at all.
A painter is using a brush that someone else made, on a canvas that someone else made.
Even if you make all of the game assets yourself, you are using software that someone else made, on a computer that someone else made, etc.
Chasing the "it's not really yours unless you do everything yourself" mentality goes nowhere.
I have demos I've made in a couple days. 49% of the work is getting assets into the game and looking nice and 49% of the work is tweaking the logic to play nicely. Then 90% of the rest of the work is post-release support to show your fans that you won't flake on the next game you make.
Also, a good portion goes into the more fanciful polishing touches or intricate systems. Like you can purchase marketplace assets to help with some of those, like complex crafting systems or detailed NPC generation, but you'll have to put extra work in to make those systems fit with not only how you want it to work, but also make sure it connects properly with other mechanics and systems in your game. Oh, and netcode, if applicable.
But of course it all depends on what kind of a game you're trying to make. You could make a basic singleplayer shooter incredibly fast if you wanted to, without having to know any C++ at all.
Or you hired someone to make but they're an artist and not a programmer so they don't know how to do the data entry to make it work in your engine.
A painter is using a brush that someone else made, on a canvas that someone else made. Even if you make all of the game assets yourself, you are using software that someone else made, on a computer that someone else made, etc.
Chasing the "it's not really yours unless you do everything yourself" mentality goes nowhere.