I posted a while ago in the happy thread about me and a friend finding a site that would give us relatively basic access to programs like Maya to help our video game company get started, all for a not so bad monthly fee. I couldn't access it right away because I had to leave on a family vacation, so I told him to get to know the programs while I was gone so we'd be able to make up for lost time. I worked on concepts and ideas during the vacation as best I could with pen and paper, knowing he was probably accomplishing way more than I could. I came to his place this weekend to see what he'd learned, and to see what we could build on.
Turns out he "lost all motivation" when I had to go on my family vacation (I had no choice in the matter about going, none), and wasted a good two weeks doing nothing at all. So I had to wrestle his username and password out of him to load up the site to find the darn programs myself. After two bad rounds of League of Legends. Then I couldn't find them on the website. And my friend laughed. Finally posted on their forums, and their moderators curtly replied, "we only provide access to thousands of training videos here, you'll have to get the programs yourself." Woah woah hey now, let me look up your advertisement that said... no wait, it heavily implied that I'd get access to those programs, but could also be taken to mean that I'd get access to their overpriced training software, not the actual gaming software. When I tried to post about the advertisement in the forums, my post was "directed to the moderators for consideration" and was never actually posted. Swell.
Back to square one again. Is this an American thing or something? I can't make games until I pay tens of thousands of dollars in software. I can't make that much money without selling games. I also need a ton of experience in game design, which I'd get from education in gaming... if I had the money. It's so infuriating. I see companies with experience, money, talent, time, and the expertise, and they crap out games like Metroid: Other M. And all I can think about is "if I had been on that team, I could have made a difference. I know good characterization, I know how to write, I could have made that game shine." But no, no I can't. I'm not good enough.