I am just interested in learning more about game creation and design for games like Skyrim, but I am also curios if is even possible to learn this completely on my own.

It would be very time consuming, and you'd need to learn a lot of skills... but it's certainly not impossible.

Very hard, and not so much impossible but impracticable for one person. There are a wide range of skills involved in game design and development, while it's not impossible for one person to have all of those skills the time it would take to acquire them would be considerable. There are many books available on game design and coding if you're keen to start developing a skill set appropriate to game development. The best thing is to find something that you love doing and apply it to games. That could be music, art, publishing, coding, de-bugging etc etc -- it's a long list.

Nope.

Just for starters, nobody can both program and 3d model and sound design and write interactive stories all the while actually running management (management is the real problem for most...unless you've been taught how or been under a good manager before you wont be able to plan out a project).



A small team (such as 5 or so people) could make a small sandbox game, but nothing on Skyrim's scale....there is a reason it took millions of dollars to make Skyrim and many people....it is a big game.


EDIT:
I am personally working on my own game engine, though even if you use a pre-built engine like Unity or Unreal, it is still lots of work to actually get a game out of it. 'Game Design' positions don't exisist (don't get a degree in games design, it is worthless) what you need are skills, either as a 3d Modeller, a software engineer, a project manager or other....you'll find the best way to get into games development is to do stuff that is related but not aimed at. There are very few people in industry that ever studied 'games', they would have all done something much more useful.

I study/work as a software engineer, I want to get into games development, but in the mean time I do various things as a software engineer.

I would suggest finding some "co-workers" rather than trying to take on all of this by yourself.

No. Impossible.

Creating Skyrim requires not only madz coding skillz (well, for creating the toolset), but you also need to be able to create 3D models, textures, deal with interface design (which the PC team lack extensively) and most importantly have the creativity to create those ideas in the first place.

Even if you simply want to recreate Skyrim's functionality (graphics and QA department can be ignored) it's still hard to do. It's tedious, if one thing.

It's not impossible.


But it would take about 20-30 Years by yourself. (Without Stopping)

There is a lot of things going on "under the hood" of a game. It would be impossible for one person to "do it all" on a game the size and scope of Skryim. Something more do-able, and valuable if you are teaching yourself about game design - is to take a small project. If you have a PC version of the game, then you have access to the Creation Kit, and there is a lot of info out there on how to create stuff in the game. I think it would be a valuable exercise to create a small, simple quest, for example, or create a playabel space (house, farm, whatever) within the existing world space. See how the different parts work together. Level Design, World Building, Concept Art, Effects, Graphics, Optimization, Content Design, Fiction/Quest Design, Animation, Modeling, Platform, Combat/Leveling, Progression, Technical and Functional testing, - these are just a few things off the top of my head that I have read about in reading about games. I am sure there are a lot more.

In trying small projects, or just studying them, it gives you a better look in a more approachable way, at what goes into a fully functioning game world like Skyrim. It might focus you on an area that particularly appeals to you,rather than being overwhelmed with how many moving parts there are in a game.


Edit: That is not to say that one single person cannot design and implement a working game - it has certainly been done. But an open world game like Skyrim... no.

The overall concept or storyline of the game program of what you want to do, then the bit-by-bit getting small sections to work properly, quests, interactions, fights or whatever. Then the joining together those parts to function as bits of the whole storyline.

That's one way, the bit by bit way, and making a whole game by joining the pieces together into a plot-line story-line. The Creation Kit as Leydenne indicated, should help in making things work properly, so not everything need be figured out from the very start... as Skyrim programmers mostly had to.

Start with a small functioning game that works, and expand it over time..... a very long time, but one person couldn't make a game the size and content of Skyrim, multiply the time it took the team to make Skyrim by the number of team members, and it's going to be a life-time, but god luck.

Could make some good additions to the game though, like a DLC (download content).

Well, there is proof of people making games all by their lonesome, but to achieve the level of Skyrim...You got your work cut out for you.

By the time you got close to a finished product you would more than likely have to update for new tech.

Duke Nukem anyone?

Short answer: No!

Skyrim was a multi year effort that cost over 100 million. If you do 200K per man year that is 500 man years, which seems about right . Obviously more complex than that, equipment costs, etc, but really the major cost of these and other software efforts is people. Think about all of the different hats a single person would have to wear: software developer in many disciplines (graphics rendering, internals, networking, etc.), QA, writer, graphics artist, modeler ...

So, even if you wre brilliant enough to do all of the writing, softwrae development, graphics, modelling, and everything else all by yourself, it would still take you a lifetime or two to get the game out.

Ha so you're saying because you don't have all those skills that no single person could possibly possess them? Someone can easily possess the skills but the resources and money to use those skills is another matter. Also whats to manage if your doing everything by yourself? "Hey self, how you coming along with that storyboard? Ok self but self is busy working on 3d models...alright, tell self to stop talking to self by the water cooler and get busy because self is on a timeline"

Imo a single person could do this, it would take them many years to do so and that's only if they have the right equipment

Not too mention your bug patches would be longer delayed than Bethesdas.

There are college courses in game design. You would need a lot of very expensive equipment and you'd also need to be a polymath.

Not with 1 person!

Pretty much all of this except the 5 people comment. There are a few modders out there that on their own create "Dragonborn" type mods, with storys, quests, and even voice acting (ok, the voice acting isn't theirs, just people they know) for the game and they do it entirely on their own. Of course, they already had the engine and items already made.

Essentially, it really depends on what you're building something from. If truly from scratch, I don't think one person could do it practically on any platform. Game engine, graphics, mechanics, story...just too much to list.

Assuming you made the game world out and everything, you still need to playtest the hell out of it to make sure there's no bugs, and most of the stuffs in your game is working nicely and playable. And if you encounter some errors and stuffs you will need to go back and review those coding and spot the error. And if your game consists of many dungeons like Skyrim, you will need to playtest all of them to ensure that they are working correctly. So yea that's a lot for quality assurance.

Yeah, of course. It just sounded to me like the OP was at the dipping their toes in the water stage; hence, I recommended trying a few books first. Also the OP needn't be getting into the technical aspects if they already have a skill that is transferable to gaming i.e. artwork, music, publishing, PR, business acumen etc etc. There are many skills employed in the development, production and publishing of a game.

It would take you a lifetime.

Possible to learn this on your own? Sure, but there are dozens of universities and other places that have degrees and training programs in this field. Best to learn the basics from people who know what they are doing.

As for making a game all on your own? Sure, it can be done. To make a game like Skyrim all on your own? You don't have enough time.

Here is why. People who mod this game typically work in teams on the bigger more ambitious mods. Say 4 to 6 people is typical for a project mod. They can work for months on a mod that adds a few hours of content and maybe a few new cells to an existing game. And, they have an existing game and it's content to work with, they don't have to make that much from scratch.

Not impossible but it would take 1 person like 30 years...

It would probably take more than a decade for one person to develop a game like Skyrim.

Game engines take years to create, and that's usually with a team of developers. You'd be spending a good chunk of your life developing a game like Skyrim on your own.

It took a team of about 100 5 years to do it. One person in a decade is optimistic.