Dont pursue this as a career, there are many people that give up everything to pursue their dreams and fail not for lack of effort, they just fail and never try again because of their ego, circumstance, life keeps them down, eg. I believe resilience and persistent effort are the most import thing
For context, ive been working through the process of both asset creation in blender and game dev with unreal seriously for 3 years. Anyone can scroll through my twitter and see the variety of stuff ive made and worked on covering model creation, rigging, vfx, game dev. I thought I could find comms for characters but no one really needs it. It taught me a lot about art, i learned too much and probably wont be open to comms for that for very long. Ive been working on and off in the last 3 years in real jobs, but ive been mostly full time on this. I never had a stable job, all the work i was trained for and working on was contract, and im pursuing this because there is no other option really. My options are drive doordash and move boxes in the amazon warehouse, if you have a better job its never worth giving that up for this, even if you get to a point where you think maybe you can take the risk. Its not worth it and you shouldnt quit until this makes more, since thats the only time this might be viable. Too many artists ive known have suffered and quit nsfw on that idea
That said, its brutal, you will work a 40 hour work week, your social life will get neglected, no one will understand what youre doing, and you have to decline invitations and social obligations to put in your 4 hours a day after work almost every day just to develop your skills. You'll be exhausted, and neglecting other aspects of your life, you will want to take a break which fine sometimes but you have to actively push yourself to be uncomfortable and work on this anyway.
When youre learning a new skill, look for a structured course, anything highly rated on udemy will probably fine, it doesnt really matter what it is, whats imporant is that you follow along doing it, then keep repeating those skills after to reinforce it. For your own sanity, scale back whatever your expectations are. I looked at other devs before i started taking things seriously and accepted that it will take 5+ years at least before anything can be released competently and even at that, it will be mediochre because there is always someone whos been doing it for 10 or 20 thats much better. You might learn quickly, it might be exciting at first, the main thing is to not stop, and not take long breaks. Everyone burns out, thats normal, and you need short breaks to just digest what you learn instead of grind all the time, but never go through extended off and on again cycles. Touch on your skills at least once a day even if its just a few minutes
Youre not the only person with those ideas about nsfw content, but i cant imagine someone who works and doesnt already read as a hobby writing anything worthwhile, and if youre only reading is these vn's you've got even less of a grasp for it. No consumer will take an nsfw story seriously. Never fall in love with your work and never fall into a trap thinking your idea is great and an exception, you have to do everything you can to escape those creative pitfalls and that means making friends with peers that you trust and will tell you when your work is shit instead of gaslighting you out of kindness. Its toxic but its what a lot of creatives do, even i do, the random drama from going against that culture to legitimately keep people from themselves isnt worth it. Ive met many people with shit ideas and shit work over the last 3 years that think just being capable of doing something is enough. People who think that just the minimum to be functioning is more than enough, instead thinking of it as a baseline, just because it was a lot of work to get to that point. The technical part of all creative skills can be learned but your creative skills arent about your technical skills. What is actually good takes a lot of exposure to others and reflection, not just in what you value but what others do as well. That said, i dont really see people get that until after they improve their technical skills and theyre mind has the free space to think that way. To think about what is possible but hasnt been seen yet, and how to accomplish that, something i learned from reading and writing that i can see applies to programming and art now that ive done those as well
Anyway ive never made a game that isnt a project just to learn and exercise skills, never written a story worth sharing, and never finished a 3d model, so you can discredit all this but i think ive worked on these skills more than most people that try, including many who have games already.
