Indie way How I started making games
Greetings to all! I decided to tell you my story, maybe someone will be interested. And if this will inspire someone to great deeds, it means that I took this article for good reason.
Recently I turned 3 years from the moment I became a professional game developer. The word “professional” is not in the sense of “cool developer”, but in the sense that this is my only source of income.
Total, from 2009 to 2011, 7 games were developed. The number of gameplays from all games is about 100 million, and the revenues from these games are toward [cut out by censorship]. But I will not write about this today, because there is little romance in this, and too many figures. Today we will talk about what preceded the choice of profession.
1993 year . I'm 6 years old, no computer. A friend has a ZX-Spectrum, and this is impressive! He played at his time at a party. In a matchbox, he cut out a square hole, passed paper ribbons through it, drawing pictures in the hole that were imprinted in the impressionable children's brain. I drew computer games on these tapes, frame by frame. I did not show anyone ...
1995 year . I am 8. The father at work is 386DX. Miracle of technology! Games of the time - Prince Of Persia, Golden Ax, Flash Back. Impressively strong! Several times a week, after lessons, I run to him to play. Later appeared at home Dendy, and behind it - Contra, Battle Toads, Double Dragon.
')
1996 Computer at home! It was a Pentium 133, 16 Mb RAM, 1200 Mb HDD. There was no sound card and CD-ROM. My father from work on diskettes dragged Doom 2, Warcraft 2, Duke Nukem.
1997 I am 10, and the first symptoms of game devil have appeared. I discovered Power Point and vector graphics. He drew a "Robocop" shooting at cunning enemies. In PowerPoint 95th version it was possible to do frame-by-frame vector animation, in the 97th this chip was for some reason spoiled.
1998 Creating vector cartoons tired. Started doing quests. The entire "scripted" part of the quests was to set up transitions between slides in PowerPoint, when you click on specific objects. 4-5 of my friends played these quests.
Favorite games - Cyberia, Cyberia 2, Another World, Tomb Raider 2.
2001 I was 14. I looked at “Masyanya”, went to the market, bought a CD with Macromedia Flash 5. I couldn’t even think that he was pirated. I sat down to study ...
The hits of that time are Fallout 2, Deus Ex.
2002 I'm 15, and I decided to make a game. We drank beer with friends, recorded a sound track with a guitar. A friend helped with the plot, they wrote the script. I drew graphics in flash, and wrote scripts. From the programming in the game there was only an interface, the rest - script transitions between frames - gotoAndStop ().
The game was called “Punk's Not Dead or Must DIE Teletubbies!”. Alcohol, marijuana, underground. Difficult childhood ... Actually, from this craft it all started. At that time there was no flash-game business, there was no Kongregate, there were no Newgrounds. And the game was done only by geeks, and other lovers.
My father at the Institute was the Internet! I then wrote on HTML a simple website for this institute, and they had their own hosting. I quickly built a satik for the game, and it’s useful to send spam to the forums. A month later we were kicked out of the hosting, because traffic exceeded 1.5 GB. I had to look for free ...
The game was never finished, I just grew up and lost interest in it. 4 levels from 5 conceived were made. I can not imagine how many people have played it, but I think about 100 thousand. Until now, it can be found on torrents and file sharing. I left my e-mail in the credits, and I still receive letters, although almost 10 years have passed.
If you google, you can find, for example, this:
http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=340499
Year 2005 . I am 17 years old. Youthful maximalism is flourishing, and it has occurred to me to make a cool quest about the two rastamans. Grandiose ideas, a lot of script sheets, weeks spent drawing complex scenery. Didn't take off ...
Later, I realized that it is impossible for one person to make a big project for months without receiving money or outside help. Yes, and just could not calculate how difficult this idea was.
Year 2007 I am 19, and I moved from Pyatigorsk to St. Petersburg, to finish my studies in St. Petersburg SUAI. I got carried away by 3D-modeling. It took it a head to do a remake of “Punks Not Dead”, but with cool graphics. Spent a couple of months, made a dozen scenery - did not take off ...
As usual, too many ambitions. A large number of labor costs, lack of income - and the motivation is exhausted over time.
Year 2008 I am 20, and I am sitting in the office of the Research Institute "Urban Studies". I am engaged in maps of Karelia (this is north of St. Petersburg, near Finland). Work sad, pay a penny. I have been working there for half a year. Unfortunately, I had an Internet connection in the office, and I stopped working.
By old habit, I was browsing the Flasher.ru forum, and came across the post of Vadim ( mrBadim ). He wrote that in 3 months he earned $ 10,000 on ... flash games! I didn’t work at all.
It is worth noting that the professional career of so many indie developers in Russia began with mrBadim's blogs and JohnnyK . These guys inspired me too. I left my office and went into experiments.
Year 2009 I am 21, and I still have not given birth to anything. Maximalism did not stop everything, ambitions beat the fountain. I wanted to make the coolest Tower-Defense, with non-standard gameplay, with 3D models and skeletal animation, with blackjack and ... Well, you know. Did not take off.
It was done a lot. But there was a banal problem - running out of livelihood. And then…
Straining the brains in the throes of creative search, I came up with a simple and casual game about balls. I thought I would do it in a few days. It took ... 5 weeks. Surprisingly, even now, after 7 full-fledged ready-made projects, I did not learn to soberly assess the deadlines (but I was very close to this).
I did everything myself: graphics, code, and even music. In the credits wrote 4-5 people to the sponsors, it seemed that "the team worked." Now it seems to me stupid, but then I thought it would give an increase to the fee.
The game was sold through the FlashGameLicense.com auction to the Swedish portal King.com, for $ 11.000. And this is in 5 weeks. I could earn such a sum in my research institute ... for 2 years. It was something fantastic at that moment! In a fit of euphoria, I did not work for half a year :)
Year 2011 I am 24. Further romance was over, and work began everyday. If anyone is interested, I can tell you more about my commercial games - what, how and how much. If you want to play my games, you are welcome to follow the links:
Laser cannon 2
Level editor
Atomic puzzle
Go home ball
Thanks to everyone who had the patience to read this out. Your Max aka Crash-512.
Commerce
Recently I turned 3 years from the moment I became a professional game developer. The word “professional” is not in the sense of “cool developer”, but in the sense that this is my only source of income.
Total, from 2009 to 2011, 7 games were developed. The number of gameplays from all games is about 100 million, and the revenues from these games are toward [cut out by censorship]. But I will not write about this today, because there is little romance in this, and too many figures. Today we will talk about what preceded the choice of profession.
Childhood
1993 year . I'm 6 years old, no computer. A friend has a ZX-Spectrum, and this is impressive! He played at his time at a party. In a matchbox, he cut out a square hole, passed paper ribbons through it, drawing pictures in the hole that were imprinted in the impressionable children's brain. I drew computer games on these tapes, frame by frame. I did not show anyone ...
1995 year . I am 8. The father at work is 386DX. Miracle of technology! Games of the time - Prince Of Persia, Golden Ax, Flash Back. Impressively strong! Several times a week, after lessons, I run to him to play. Later appeared at home Dendy, and behind it - Contra, Battle Toads, Double Dragon.
')
1996 Computer at home! It was a Pentium 133, 16 Mb RAM, 1200 Mb HDD. There was no sound card and CD-ROM. My father from work on diskettes dragged Doom 2, Warcraft 2, Duke Nukem.
1997 I am 10, and the first symptoms of game devil have appeared. I discovered Power Point and vector graphics. He drew a "Robocop" shooting at cunning enemies. In PowerPoint 95th version it was possible to do frame-by-frame vector animation, in the 97th this chip was for some reason spoiled.
1998 Creating vector cartoons tired. Started doing quests. The entire "scripted" part of the quests was to set up transitions between slides in PowerPoint, when you click on specific objects. 4-5 of my friends played these quests.
Favorite games - Cyberia, Cyberia 2, Another World, Tomb Raider 2.
Teenage years
2001 I was 14. I looked at “Masyanya”, went to the market, bought a CD with Macromedia Flash 5. I couldn’t even think that he was pirated. I sat down to study ...
The hits of that time are Fallout 2, Deus Ex.
2002 I'm 15, and I decided to make a game. We drank beer with friends, recorded a sound track with a guitar. A friend helped with the plot, they wrote the script. I drew graphics in flash, and wrote scripts. From the programming in the game there was only an interface, the rest - script transitions between frames - gotoAndStop ().
The game was called “Punk's Not Dead or Must DIE Teletubbies!”. Alcohol, marijuana, underground. Difficult childhood ... Actually, from this craft it all started. At that time there was no flash-game business, there was no Kongregate, there were no Newgrounds. And the game was done only by geeks, and other lovers.
My father at the Institute was the Internet! I then wrote on HTML a simple website for this institute, and they had their own hosting. I quickly built a satik for the game, and it’s useful to send spam to the forums. A month later we were kicked out of the hosting, because traffic exceeded 1.5 GB. I had to look for free ...
The game was never finished, I just grew up and lost interest in it. 4 levels from 5 conceived were made. I can not imagine how many people have played it, but I think about 100 thousand. Until now, it can be found on torrents and file sharing. I left my e-mail in the credits, and I still receive letters, although almost 10 years have passed.
If you google, you can find, for example, this:
http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=340499
Year 2005 . I am 17 years old. Youthful maximalism is flourishing, and it has occurred to me to make a cool quest about the two rastamans. Grandiose ideas, a lot of script sheets, weeks spent drawing complex scenery. Didn't take off ...
Later, I realized that it is impossible for one person to make a big project for months without receiving money or outside help. Yes, and just could not calculate how difficult this idea was.
On the way to the conscious ...
Year 2007 I am 19, and I moved from Pyatigorsk to St. Petersburg, to finish my studies in St. Petersburg SUAI. I got carried away by 3D-modeling. It took it a head to do a remake of “Punks Not Dead”, but with cool graphics. Spent a couple of months, made a dozen scenery - did not take off ...
As usual, too many ambitions. A large number of labor costs, lack of income - and the motivation is exhausted over time.
Year 2008 I am 20, and I am sitting in the office of the Research Institute "Urban Studies". I am engaged in maps of Karelia (this is north of St. Petersburg, near Finland). Work sad, pay a penny. I have been working there for half a year. Unfortunately, I had an Internet connection in the office, and I stopped working.
By old habit, I was browsing the Flasher.ru forum, and came across the post of Vadim ( mrBadim ). He wrote that in 3 months he earned $ 10,000 on ... flash games! I didn’t work at all.
It is worth noting that the professional career of so many indie developers in Russia began with mrBadim's blogs and JohnnyK . These guys inspired me too. I left my office and went into experiments.
Year 2009 I am 21, and I still have not given birth to anything. Maximalism did not stop everything, ambitions beat the fountain. I wanted to make the coolest Tower-Defense, with non-standard gameplay, with 3D models and skeletal animation, with blackjack and ... Well, you know. Did not take off.
It was done a lot. But there was a banal problem - running out of livelihood. And then…
Straining the brains in the throes of creative search, I came up with a simple and casual game about balls. I thought I would do it in a few days. It took ... 5 weeks. Surprisingly, even now, after 7 full-fledged ready-made projects, I did not learn to soberly assess the deadlines (but I was very close to this).
I did everything myself: graphics, code, and even music. In the credits wrote 4-5 people to the sponsors, it seemed that "the team worked." Now it seems to me stupid, but then I thought it would give an increase to the fee.
The game was sold through the FlashGameLicense.com auction to the Swedish portal King.com, for $ 11.000. And this is in 5 weeks. I could earn such a sum in my research institute ... for 2 years. It was something fantastic at that moment! In a fit of euphoria, I did not work for half a year :)
Results
Year 2011 I am 24. Further romance was over, and work began everyday. If anyone is interested, I can tell you more about my commercial games - what, how and how much. If you want to play my games, you are welcome to follow the links:
Laser cannon 2
Level editor
Atomic puzzle
Go home ball
Thanks to everyone who had the patience to read this out. Your Max aka Crash-512.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/126773/
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