Your list of preferred careers reminds me of something, maybe relevant for you.
I used to teach in a high school for gifted children, when there were children with high intelligence but different skills. (As opposed to e.g. math-specialized high schools, where even without the IQ test you also get children with high intelligence, but their skills are very similar.) In this school a new computer game programming competition was started, with rules different than usual. In a typical programming competition, the emphasis is completely on the algorithm. It is a competition of students good at writing algorithms. But this competition, called Špongia, was different in two aspects: (1) it was a competition of teams, not individuals, and (2) the games were rated not only by their algorithm, but also by playability, easthetics, etc. Which in my opinion better corresponds to a possible success in the market.
I mention this, because there was an opportunity for people with various skills to participate in creating the computer game; and they did. Some of them even didn’t know programming, but they composed the game music, painted pictures, writed texts, or invented the ideas. Sometimes the most important member of the teams was the one able to invent a cool idea, and motivate other people to do the technical parts of the game.
So my advice for you is: if you don’t want to specialize in something, find someone who does, and cooperate with them. Find someone who can write algorithms, but doesn’t have very good ideas or is bad at painting graphics, and who also has a dream of participating in creating a computer game. Then find someone who can paint, who can compose music, etc. Create the team, start with very simple projects (beware the planning fallacy) and if everything goes well, progress to more difficult ones.
If the coder asks you about why would they want to cooperate with you, if the most difficult part of work (in their opinion) will be done by them, show them Knytt—a game with rather simple algorithm, and yet great artistic impression, because of the other components. This is your added value; to organize a team that changes an algorithm to an enjoyable game.
You can start today. Get together someone to code, someone to paint pictures, someone to compose music. If you don’t know anyone with these skills who would be interested, make a poster with your e-mail address and put it somewhere in the school. Make the people meet in the same room and together plan your first game. Insist that your first game (where the team will test their skills and cooperation) should be completed in two weeks at most—the planning fallacy will make it a few months anyway. This way you also won’t have to deal with the topic of money, etc., because no one will expect a big profit from the first simple game. For inspiration you can look at the smartphone games, which are usually very simple; or make a list of random ideas (e.g. “cars”, “flying”, “puzzle”, “Santa Claus”, “elephant”, whatever) and pick a random one or two of them and think about what you could do with it in two weeks. (Maybe it would be a good idea to use an existing engine, such as Unity, instead of writing the code from scratch.)
This is sort of what I am doing right now, I’m working with two people who are focusing on the programming side of a game while I’m essentially designing it, only it’s an unrealistically big project and the other two people don’t seem to grasp the idea that if you want to make something it won’t magically make itself and you actually have to push yourself to work on it.
I realize that I could make a dumb two-week iPhone game if I wanted, only this doesn’t really appeal to me at all, to the point where I don’t think I could find the motivation to do it. I think what I will do is I will probably wait for the current big project to eventually fall apart, work on a medium sized one until it falls apart, at which point my brain will realize that I actually need to start small.
Your list of preferred careers reminds me of something, maybe relevant for you.
I used to teach in a high school for gifted children, when there were children with high intelligence but different skills. (As opposed to e.g. math-specialized high schools, where even without the IQ test you also get children with high intelligence, but their skills are very similar.) In this school a new computer game programming competition was started, with rules different than usual. In a typical programming competition, the emphasis is completely on the algorithm. It is a competition of students good at writing algorithms. But this competition, called Špongia, was different in two aspects: (1) it was a competition of teams, not individuals, and (2) the games were rated not only by their algorithm, but also by playability, easthetics, etc. Which in my opinion better corresponds to a possible success in the market.
I mention this, because there was an opportunity for people with various skills to participate in creating the computer game; and they did. Some of them even didn’t know programming, but they composed the game music, painted pictures, writed texts, or invented the ideas. Sometimes the most important member of the teams was the one able to invent a cool idea, and motivate other people to do the technical parts of the game.
So my advice for you is: if you don’t want to specialize in something, find someone who does, and cooperate with them. Find someone who can write algorithms, but doesn’t have very good ideas or is bad at painting graphics, and who also has a dream of participating in creating a computer game. Then find someone who can paint, who can compose music, etc. Create the team, start with very simple projects (beware the planning fallacy) and if everything goes well, progress to more difficult ones.
If the coder asks you about why would they want to cooperate with you, if the most difficult part of work (in their opinion) will be done by them, show them Knytt—a game with rather simple algorithm, and yet great artistic impression, because of the other components. This is your added value; to organize a team that changes an algorithm to an enjoyable game.
You can start today. Get together someone to code, someone to paint pictures, someone to compose music. If you don’t know anyone with these skills who would be interested, make a poster with your e-mail address and put it somewhere in the school. Make the people meet in the same room and together plan your first game. Insist that your first game (where the team will test their skills and cooperation) should be completed in two weeks at most—the planning fallacy will make it a few months anyway. This way you also won’t have to deal with the topic of money, etc., because no one will expect a big profit from the first simple game. For inspiration you can look at the smartphone games, which are usually very simple; or make a list of random ideas (e.g. “cars”, “flying”, “puzzle”, “Santa Claus”, “elephant”, whatever) and pick a random one or two of them and think about what you could do with it in two weeks. (Maybe it would be a good idea to use an existing engine, such as Unity, instead of writing the code from scratch.)
This is sort of what I am doing right now, I’m working with two people who are focusing on the programming side of a game while I’m essentially designing it, only it’s an unrealistically big project and the other two people don’t seem to grasp the idea that if you want to make something it won’t magically make itself and you actually have to push yourself to work on it.
I realize that I could make a dumb two-week iPhone game if I wanted, only this doesn’t really appeal to me at all, to the point where I don’t think I could find the motivation to do it. I think what I will do is I will probably wait for the current big project to eventually fall apart, work on a medium sized one until it falls apart, at which point my brain will realize that I actually need to start small.
That sounds exactly like akrasia and this forum is chock-full of techniques and tools to deal with it.