Elite Team

How does one form an elite development team without any money?  I’m probably taking the most dangerous and ill-advised route of them all…

Asking your friends to work for free. (Don’t try this at home!)

The problem with this is that people will pour an enormous amount of time, energy and resources into a game which never sees the light of day.  Most game projects simply die an ignoble death and spend eternity in “game development hell.”

So, to help curb this and because everyone’s time is important, I am first making a graphically simple game shell.  And only once the game is pretty solid will I ask for help making the art assets.  This is pretty much the same method that Jonathan Blow used for his game “Braid.”

Yeah... My art looks just as ugly.

Once I know I have a rock solid (but ugly) game.  I’ll be hitting up a couple artist friends to help me reskin the sucker and put some lipstick and mascara on the pig.

I learned my lesson from last year when I asked for art before I had a game.  A friend of mine, Jonathan Stuart, was creating art for our game before it was even fully constructed or technically tested.  We came up with a very beautiful but completely unusable prototype called Space ROX.

Beautiful Art! Technically unsound.

The game looked beautiful even at its fifth prototype iteration.  But under the hood, there were huge performance issues already arising from my liberal use of particle effects in Adobe Flash.  And while I was clonking my head in solving these technical issues, our interest and motivation fizzled and life events happened which ultimately nixed the project.

There have been countless other game projects you can find all over the place that have taken much more time, energy and effort that have come to nothing with no compensation for the time and energy wasted.  And those contentious projects can end (and sometimes have ended) friendships and ruined reputations.

Thankfully Jon is up for trying again, and he even brought along a friend: Scott Brown, who is a brilliant pixel artist as well (see top).

But this time, I’m going to finish the game first before asking for their time in making it look pretty.  No need to waste time with creating a beautiful dress, if there is no princess to wear it, or even without knowing if the dress will even fit because you have no measurements.

And to make things simple and because I have no starting capital, for our first game, we’re going to work for royalties, percentage based on number of hours spent.  So basically, we’re all working for free, but for them it’ll be working on something practically finished rather than vaporware.

Will you ever trust me again?

As for resolving Space ROX’s massive technical issue and performance limitations of Flash?  Well, not only did I figure out how to increase Flash’s performance, but I believe that Flash has the technical capability of being the gaming platform for the next decade…

But even then, art is like computer programming – it is a technical field. It is all about directed practice and skill – not about getting A’s by parroting a professor’s philosophy or appealing to their aesthetic sense.

One of my favorite 3D artists is Monty Oum. In his interview with Screw Attack, Monty Oum admitted that he never went to college, and is in fact a high school dropout. He doesn’t endorse the path he took, however, it is impossible to argue with his talent.

After he created “Haloid”, he got enough publicity and attention that he was recruited by Midway. At Midway, in his spare time, he created the “Dead Fantasy” series and later landed a job at Konami. He is arguably one of the most talented 3D artists in the industry.

I'll just hang around for a while.

A friend of mine read my post and commented about my “slothfulness.”  He said, “If YOU are slothful, what the heck does that say about the rest of us??”  I wanted to give a more elaborate answer, especially if there are others who are thinking the same thing.

I am a naturally lazy person who likes to talk big and do nothing.  I don’t like to work.

For me, it took a tremendous amount of energy to build up the inertia so that I would complete my game “Strike Eagle.”  There were many moments where I felt like bailing before crossing the finish line.

There are many other people who simply get things done because it is natural to them. These people talk less but get things done.  That is something that amazes from my wife and is one of the things that I have actively sought to learn from her and attain in almost 5 years of marriage.

Just recently, I cleared out my library of books to make more room for my wife to work on her projects.  I removed over a dozen game programming books that I’ve kept over the last 10 years.  Each one representing yet another excuse and another reason why I just can’t create a game and another $50 wasted.

I like making excuses on why I can’t get things done.  I love talking about games.  I love designing them on paper.  But building it?  Well… I don’t have the books, the smarts, or the time to get it done.

Yes…  I am a sloth.

It took quite a bit of life events and circumstances to realize I was just making an excuse for my own laziness.  Among them was meeting and being inspired by another indie programmer who has a lot of his own tenacity and courage, and seeing the small company of 3-4 developers who I worked for bought out by a mega-corporation because the mega-corp could not compete.  But mostly it comes from my wife who said, “If we are going to do this, then let’s do it and not look back.”

This blog is made to help me conquer my own slothfulness by putting my struggles and procrastination out in public so others can see how long it takes for me to move on my own words.

But also, in a way, I hope that others can learn from my mistakes.

So, yes, I am a sloth.  But with God’s help and by all the people that have crossed my path and continue to do including through my blog…  Maybe I can become something more.

As a side note, I wanted to thank a number of posters who have been supportive and encouraged by my show of tenacity.  I want it known that I fully admit that I am a very slothful person.  And I have been rather disappointed and discouraged by the number of mistakes I made – among which was pursuing a contest and not seeking a sponsor and the poor returns I’ve gotten on the game because of my rushed game design that focused on 3D rather than on gameplay.

I would not have gotten as far as I’ve gotten had it not been for my wife inspiring me.  Even now she is encouraging me to push on.  I am already started feeling the symptoms of fatigue, and I put my trust in my wife on how to keep long-term tenacity.  She was, after all, a competitive long-distance and marathon runner.

But I wanted to make a separate post to all those who have been posting and encouraging me along the way.  It also helps to know that there are those out there who are watching and rooting for me.  And you stand as witnesses to what I have resolved to do.

Now onto Game #2!

Danc was very gracious to write me back and asked me about some of the things I learned from the experience.  This is what I wrote.

Hi Danc,

Thanks for writing back.  I hope that things are going well with your game, “Bunni.”  Your blog continues to be one of the most insightful blogs out there on good game design.

I learned quite a bit from the experience of programming my first game: a lot having to do with tenacity and making design compromises to hit the contest deadline.  But upon reflection, I see my game as focusing too much on technical prowess and too little on gameplay.  One of the major design requirements for the contest was to use a 3D element in the game and I used the a 3D plane quite extensively.  However, because of that, the focus of my design became technical mastery rather than “fun” factor of game design.

My game was modeled after “Afterburner” from the 1980s arcade.  But the reason why a game like “Afterburner” is fun, is the novelty of using a flight stick in a fast-paced arcade-like shooter.  Translating the experience to the keyboard and mouse loses a lot of what made “Afterburner” fun.  I’m quite proud of the technical tricks I used to get the moving background effect to look convincing, but in the end, what matters is if the players enjoyed it, and will come back again telling all his or her friends.

I am quite proud of the numbers my game has produced: over 100,000 in ad impressions in a month, and a spike in site traffic on my blog, however there is also the reality of spending over 120 hours of long sleepless nights for a low return.  So far, I’ve gotten back about $.40 to every hour I’ve spent working on the game and to be frank, there are many great games that I’m competing against that are far more polished and deserving of credit that I believe I will not win the contest.

But as my Dad would say, “Count this as a tuition fee.”  I am still a student of game design and have much more to learn.  I will be sure to make my second game a lot more fun and I’ll let you know when it is posted.

Again, thank you for all the incredible posts on your blog, and especially the art that you so generously let game developers like myself use in their games.

Sincerely yours,
Paolo

Now, the next question is, do I go on or do I give up?  Is it worth the price especially looking at my son sleeping next to me as I write, the countless hours of sleep I will lose on my next endeavor, especially in the face of even more hours at work in the coming weeks?

You better well believe it.  Let’s do this again until we get it right.