Blogs - 29_games

I'm currently working on my latest game, Rogue Machine, and have recently gone through the ten stages of the mid-project blues:

1. The initial excitement of the early stages of development have worn off.
2. A creeping sense that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.
3. Write a few articles and release a “pre-alpha” to get some feedback and a little encouragement. Get despondent when no one comments or leaves feedback :(
4. Why have the npc's suddenly started spinning around in circles?
5. Write a to do list / plan of everything that needs doing to finish the game. Then cross out half the things otherwise it's going to take for ever but leave that one cool feature as it looks easy to implement.
6. That “cool, easy to implement” feature took a lot longer than I thought
7. By jingo, developing this game is getting boring*.
8. Take a break that should have only been a couple weeks but turned into a couple of months.
9. Have another look at the to do list. Complete one task off, add two more.
10. Take a deep breath, go and sit in a bar or coffee shop, carrying on working on my game and rediscover the fun.

* I went speed dating a couple of weeks ago, mentioned to one lady that I make video games as a hobby. She said, “that sounds cool”. I replied, “it can be but it also gets really boring and it's really not that much fun”. The conversation kinda went down hill from there.

I make games for a hobby and find that the skills I've learned can be useful in my day job but I never thought that they would actually help me get a job.

I’ve been a mechanical engineer for 14 years and have been looking for a new job and a change of industries and recently had a second interview where I had to give a presentation of my achievements. During the first interview I had already done a kind of mini-presentation of my prior work so decided to do a presentation on my hobby of making video games, focusing on my game Purple Complex.

I started by talking about the game in very broad terms and then narrowed it down to some very specific details of how the enemy artificial intelligence behaves. I also talked about creating and animating CGI models but stopped short of demonstrating the sound effects as I didn’t think it would be appropriate to fill the meeting room with the sound of gunfire.

I finished the presentation by listing what I think of as the key skills that are required to make a game: imagination, problem solving, ability to learn, planning, dealing with critique and feedback, determination and motivation – which I think is a pretty good set of skills to cultivate.

This was a risk, it could have all gone horribly wrong and I hate doing presentations, but I’d put a lot of effort into the presentation and spoke with confidence and clarity. I was pleasantly surprised that the technical director was genuinely interested in the process and impressed at the effort as he had no idea of what was involved in making video games.

I was offered the job and accepted.

I find choosing a project can be tricky, especially having gone through the "post project blues" - see previous blog post - but now having binge watched the first three seasons of Parks and Recreation I feel ready to tackle a new game.

The biggest challenge with taking on a project is to find the balance between ambition and what can be achieved in a sensible amount of time. It's very easy to get carried away with writing ideas down and making a long, detailed design document. Most ideas look good on paper and it all seems so easy until you sit down and actually try and implement it. Like other people wanting to make games, I have wildly ambitious ideas but because I work alone and have a full time job I temper my ideas to something manageable and I'll drop aspects of a game if I feel it'll make the development drag on too long.

However, I feel that I might have gone too far and that my ideas are not ambitious enough. It took me three years on and off (probably more off than on) to make Purple Complex, with a lot of that time spent learning how to use Blender and then creating all the content. The other three games I have an IndieDB are no where near this level of ambition. Part of me doesn't like the idea of spending years making single game over a period of years and I really don't like the idea of starting a game and not finishing it.

I've now started playing around with a couple if ideas one of them being "a game of exploration" and a small part of me wants to add "... with a big open world like Fallout 3".

Having recently finished my current game, Invaders of the 29th Dimension, I find myself in the usual state of the post project blues. This usually lasts between four and eight weeks and is generally characterised with:

1: withdrawal symptoms from the old project

2: a general disappointment that the game wasn't instantly popular

3: a desire to start something new

4: doodling and jotting down ideas

5: no energy to actually start anything new

6: understanding that popularity isn't all that important, whilst secretly harbouring a general bitterness and jealousy of developers who actually have a fan base

7: finishing whatever book I'm reading and binge watching DVDs

8: getting depressed again because I don't have the time or the energy to actually work on and completed my more ambitious ideas and falling into a kind of "it's not as if anyone's going to play it anyway" bitterness

9: reminding myself why I make games

10: "to hell with it, making games is better than not making games"

I've currently finished reading Reamde by Neal Stephenson which is apt as MMORPGs are central to the plot, so now I've just a week or so of depression and bitterness to get through :)