How many of you dev.
polycounter lvl 17
Hey Honest question.
I know alot of you guys fancy yourself devs. But lets face it, making art isn't deving a game, and writing a story or writing up game play concepts with no exciton isnt either. And purely programming (while closer) is not.
My question to you guys is simple aside from the 1 or 2 of you I know personally.
How many of you guys have games running around and ready for release or are playable or at early alpha points?
What are some of your struggles you face. What are your goals? Is it for learning, is it to build for fun? Is it for profit? Is it for a future?
Just curious what you guys (or gals) have to say on this.
To NOT be full of shit. My current game I am hoping to aim for a August Release.
I have busted my hump on this with my business partners and despite it being a simple mobile game , it has been a big uphill challenge.
www.templetapgame.com
Just curious of other stories is all.
Also of success stories etc if there at all any on here!
Personally for me , my goal is to make my small game company, I recently started my 1st steps this year with my business partners and want to develop my own unique games I have had in my head for my entire life. An end goal is to become sort of like a Double fine studio, I want all my games to be unique and fun and no 2 games the same.
Its tough, mainly me and my 2 business partners are offering our services as freelancers while deving the game to pay the bills. And its not quite easy, but at the same time its what fuels us to move forward.
I know alot of you guys fancy yourself devs. But lets face it, making art isn't deving a game, and writing a story or writing up game play concepts with no exciton isnt either. And purely programming (while closer) is not.
My question to you guys is simple aside from the 1 or 2 of you I know personally.
How many of you guys have games running around and ready for release or are playable or at early alpha points?
What are some of your struggles you face. What are your goals? Is it for learning, is it to build for fun? Is it for profit? Is it for a future?
Just curious what you guys (or gals) have to say on this.
To NOT be full of shit. My current game I am hoping to aim for a August Release.
I have busted my hump on this with my business partners and despite it being a simple mobile game , it has been a big uphill challenge.
www.templetapgame.com
Just curious of other stories is all.
Also of success stories etc if there at all any on here!
Personally for me , my goal is to make my small game company, I recently started my 1st steps this year with my business partners and want to develop my own unique games I have had in my head for my entire life. An end goal is to become sort of like a Double fine studio, I want all my games to be unique and fun and no 2 games the same.
Its tough, mainly me and my 2 business partners are offering our services as freelancers while deving the game to pay the bills. And its not quite easy, but at the same time its what fuels us to move forward.
Replies
So, yes, I feel your concerns, I do also have my game while I also have my fulltime job. Its rough, but it's something I want to achieve. People say I'm crazy and they can't do it, but I don't know man, I'm young enough (31yo), and I think I can still do a lot.
My game: www.thinkhugegames.com
Epic Dragons takes me around 3-4hs per day, and around 6hs on weekends.
Then I got a great programming guy on board and it looked ok
Still, it's a long way from that to a full release game that is actually worth playing.
Struggles I face is... I have to much shit I want to make, resulting in me not being able to focus. I constantly juggle between art(not necessarily for a game I am working on), gamemaker, freelance stuff.
Right now it's mainly for fun/learning, but I intend to make a profit with it some day.
As I am still struggling finding a fulltime (game) art related job.
Developing is hard, but when you get the itch what can you do just got to bash it out, might try my hand at a bigger more ambitious game in a month or two depends on a lot of things.
made an iphone game by myself, currently working on a small party game with a friend, and starting work on a few year long project which i plan to put in the time for the long haul.
As for programmers not being developers, how does that one work?
Personally, I've been working on a fan-game which is essentially a remake of a popular classic adventure game with a small team of 4 other people while also trying to finish a degree for the last two years. I'm not sure if that would qualify as "developing" a game but I primarily do programming and occasionally art which I'm trying to improve at.
The hardest part of this journey has definitely been related to people. Since our game is non-profit, we have all had to make it a secondary goal as paying bills comes first. Additionally, we work together using the internet since we are all scattered across the world, and that leads to a lot of timing problems. When I'm working on something, everybody else is usually busy with work or school, and when I'm sleeping, other people are getting some assets done or something of the sort.
It has definitely caused the project to take longer than it should have, but we're still progressing and I hope to finish it soon, along with providing the full source to everybody interested in the project to continue maintaining the game after release, if they desire.
People in general can cause a lot of different problems though. Sometimes I'll contract somebody to do something like make a particular texture set to save me time, they'll tell me that it'll take a few weeks and in reality, they won't get back to me with a finished result for several months. Our "structure" hasn't been very straightforward either. In a professional setting, I think teams have a designer or "idea guy" come up with most of the gameplay mechanics, but in our case, development is very open. If anybody thinks of something that could improve the project, we talk it over and think about how to go about implementing the idea.
There's also the problem of motivation. I've been very motivated to work for the last year and I have done more than I originally imagined this year, but every now and then I have a deep feeling of "fuck this I want to quit!" which most likely comes from the fact that I've been working on something I care a lot about that may not see the light of day (since it is based on somebody else's IP, after all). At the same time, I won't get a paycheck at the end of the development cycle, and even when I'm done, I won't be employable since I have focused on learning a large variety of tasks rather than focusing on mastering a few amount of tasks.
Still, making a game is an awesome experience. I envy the people who get to do it professionally. I'd suggest giving it a shot to anybody who only knows a limited amount of skills (such as only knowing how to make art, or only knowing how to program) because you learn a lot and the feeling of overcoming the many challenges you'll face is always great.
Normally programmers discourage artists from programming and artist laugh their a..es of to programmers' understanding of "visuals". The only ones that posses both skill sets are usually ones that comes out of the game dev. environments who are indie or hobbiests and older industry vets that had time to devlop to other skill set.
I am trying to develop my own RTS currently and it is not easy.
no one really wants to give away that level of control, so for me at least I would still at some point like to learn some coding so i can make a little game of my own.
Programming a small simple game really isn't that difficult, you just have to be willing to learn, much like your first time learning how to do something in 3D for example. My sister is part of a club/organization that teaches middle school girls about programming in order to get them more interested in technology related fields and they just finished making some very simple "collect the items on the screen to win" type of games. If you start small you can apply that knowledge to larger projects too!
I did make a start on learning to code, but it takes a lot of effort to not only learn the basics, but to apply that knowledge creatively to make something useful.
maybe I will have another go at some point
Seforin just said that if you aren't making assets for an actual project then you aren't developing a game and being a developer... which is intrinsically true.
Seriously? People are taking offense to this?
"I know alot of you guys fancy yourself devs. But lets face it, making art isn't deving a game, and writing a story or writing up game play concepts with no exciton isnt either. And purely programming (while closer) is not."
I think it may be the way he's putting it that may offend people.
You guys are reading to far into it.
If all you have is art in a game engine doing nothing, that's not a game that's art.
If all you have is cubes moving around but nothing designed out. That's a prototype (and a bit closer, but still not a game)
If you have something with a little of everything and something I can pick up, play, and say "hey this isnt bad, or this needs work"
That's a game.
so AGAIN my original question was simple.
Who here has games they made. What are your struggles and such.
I say making purely art for a game is not a game simply because I can make cool art all day long and have people look at it. But in the end of the day if I try to release that , it wont sell, it wont get on steam, and im lucky if it gets attention.
Its why im saying making art for your game is cool. I get that.In example that guy on here, bannana steam punk guy (marshal bannana?)
That dude has been a 1 man train making a game, and art. But he focused on the art day one and only more recently (2 years down the road I think?) has made his game actually functional and such.
Thats poor execution was what I was trying to imply earlier saying "making just art, or just code isnt deving"
Seriously chillax guys, the question was straight forward. And if not I am making it clear now.
If you guys are gonna get upset I'll just delete the original thread messages in this posts. The responses starting a flame war was not the point of me even asking.
So again the struggles and journey etc. That was what I was curious about. And who here has done it
Hugo congrats on your release!
A bit of insight on my end. I this last year started my own company with my 2 business partners. 2 of us work full time as freelancers to keep our company going. We work remotely for now to pay our bills, and our goal is by next year is to open a small office here.
We have our 2nd game in a prototype phaze to be showcased at a big local event here in orlando called orlando nerd fest that we will announce our new game.
Our goal is to have a complete version of our current game temple tap out for release and purchase by the even, along with our new game.
This last year we have had a lot of challenges we have been faced with. Our biggest being how to stay afloat while deving our own games and not working for others. 2 of us (myself and my other business partner) are doing full time freelance and consulting for various projects and games. We use that extra money to put back into our company to help us for the following year and our eventual move into an office. And while we have down time (or the weekends) we work on temple tap , since its near a completed state for release.
The struggles of having people who honestly are willing to put so much risk with you has been the biggest issue Ive faced more so then survival. The money can be found qite easily if you sell yourself the right way.
Did you have your game become self released hugo? Or did you strike a deal with a small publisher of some sort? Muzz and any others who have made games that are out, same sort of questions imply. If you self released it, how successful was that for you?
Is it earning a decent number of downloads/purchases? Or is it not paying the bills? Or is it just a flagship title for you and its about getting something out vs the numbers to you? (we fall into the later as we are trying to get a name and show our quality bar and gameplay to be something fun.)
Our website has VERY old game play videos on it, so I need to redevelop the site upcoming for it to showcase what we have.
Anywho, hopefully everyone will not get upset. And Tor you flex out art and work for a big daddy studio, that's not what im asking here and you know it!
That should've been your topic of discussion and your thread title. Stop convoluting the idea and distracting from the main point of what the thread should be.
It's like calling a crain operator a fraud because they don't have a license to work underwater, and then asking them to talk shop. I'm not saying you did it on purpose, but it is pretty funny.
Anyway, I've released a few Flash games over the years, usually as parts of larger ad campaigns. One pitfall I've found is that you tend to calculate the tasks you're not native to like the ones you are. An artist might think, "Oh, I'll just whip up this punch animation and code in some damage numbers for it.", or a programmer might think, "I'll implement the leaderboards and throw a pretty font on it." The first part's easy, but the second takes 3X as long as you thought it would.
The best solution I've found is to list everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. Every asset you need, every class, absolutely everything. Then go through the list and figure out what you KNOW you're skilled in and what you're rusty with. (The rusty tasks will take at least twice as long.) When you're done with that, take your total predicted dev time and double that. That's how long it will take to get through the list.
When you're working with other people, be clear and specific. Show them the parts of the list they're working on and be specific about what each item needs. If they're making a leaderboard, what needs to be on it? (Scores, initials, gamertags?) The same goes for graphics.
A good list is your best friend on complex projects like this.
I wont get into horror stories, but in my experience they all come back to poor communication amongst team members.
I too have a dream game involving food.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ryanjamesblanchard.particlepreviewera
Made it with Unity, NGUI, and Playmaker in about a week. Super easy.
I have a couple prototypes on hold. I'm working a lot of overtime and so they are on the backburner.