The path of the developer: stories about my fabulous failures, part 1
The story of how I got into game dev is a rather unusual one. It all started with the fact that I worked as a promoter of a strip club on Nevsky Prospect. One night from Friday to Saturday of August 2011, a car with a cheerful company inside stopped in front of me. One person from this company wondered where you can have a good rest nearby ...
Sit back, dear reader. This publication opens a series dedicated to the development of a mobile device, with stories about my fabulous failures, finding my way and overcoming myself. If you want to make your own game (or whatever), but you don’t know how to program or draw, then by example I want to inspire you to take the first steps and direct you in the right direction. The series will be useful to those who know how to think something and start their journey in game devise - after all, learning from the mistakes of others is more pleasant than from their own. I did many things not efficiently enough, in my example you will absolutely know how to do it. Some information will be useful in other areas (in particular, in the field of business with China).
What I have and the team today: a very playable demo of the arcade tower defense with a unique gameplay (we saw similar games, but nowhere did the gameplay 100% match ours) and the colorful visual style praised by the art director Zeptolab. The demo gradually acquires new content and inexorably moves to release.
')
Not so great achievement, but still better than nothing.
It could have been more if, over the years, it had not seemed to me that the development of games from the realm of magic is too complicated and incomprehensible. The reality is that now the threshold of entry has decreased by so much that anyone can make the game an advanced PC user. All tools have already been created, instructions for them have been written, and if you have a specific question, then you will always find the answer in the developer community. The biggest obstacles are inside a person: laziness and fear of the unknown. Everything else is complete nonsense, not a real problem. Although even laziness and fear of verification turn out to be illusory problems, so in reality there are no problems to make the game. Well, that is all. Can you think coherently and press buttons? Take it and do it!
If I had known this 5-7 years ago, then I would have had a whole bunch of projects released and, most likely, a decent amount of money. I want you not to repeat my mistakes and miss your moment.
My too long stay in the power of fear led to the fact that I missed two almost guaranteed opportunities to make good money on games. The first is in the social games market, but everyone has long known about its saturation. The second is in the mobile market.
Yes, the golden time of mobile games is over. Until 2010, you could make any Doodle Jump and it would be sold in millions of installations, now the chance to make money on a small mobile game tends to a chance to win the lottery. It will turn out only at the most creative, desperate and in a good way insane (I hope that one of them). But this does not mean that everything is bad, in various areas of the digital world (and in the world of games in particular) every few years, faults open up into new unexplored dimensions, the pioneers of which manage to stake out its most delicious sections. You can become one of them if you do everything right. The best thing is to start right now. Just what to start? In my opinion, the closest area in which singles or small teams can find success is augmented reality, and, possibly, virtual reality. And most likely augmented, because make it a decent small forces at times easier. I regard my mobile game as the first significant attempt at writing: if it doesn’t take off, I still have the knowledge that I can use in developing other projects, including for augmented reality devices.
Start right now and do not expect any special coincidence of circumstances, as happened to me.
So, I always dreamed of making games, but instead I worked as a promoter for a strip club. One night, a car stops in front of me, a merry company falls out of it, one person of whom wonders where you can break away, and I, naturally, tell him about the club where I work. The man understands that he was already there and leads the conversation towards his club - not a striptease, but slot machines. Underground. And he offers me to work there.
I agree.
We, of course, almost immediately covered the OBEP (that night was even more fun than when I was offered a job at the club), but before that the director of the underground club found out that I was a “creative person”, wrote a science fiction novel and all that . And his friend just needed creative help in developing a social game. So I got into game devs - through some incomprehensible climb from the back door, which opens in a random place of the city every few years. For smarter, there are more obvious ways.
So, fate brought me to the game development team (distributed, but at least this). I would think a little bit, understand that "Here it is! I am finally in gamedev! What has always dreamed of! And now you need to understand how to maximize your personal and wallet potential to reach your potential? ”
But I was not smart enough to ask myself such a question. Consultations on game design were a one-off business, and I focused on the area where I understood even less - business based on manufacturing in China. Why did I do so stupid? I did not appreciate my prospects in game development and relied on a partner with whom I was going to open a business. From the help mate there was exactly zero. I would still think of a game dev ... but no! I decided to hope for another partner. Never do that. Never.
- Young man, do you believe in God?
- What are you, I don’t believe in people!
the truth of life
From the first partner at least there was no gestures at all. From the second they were, but as a result they turned out to be wrecking - at the most crucial moment he was gone. I had to wriggle out myself. And then the Chinese set me up, producing such indecency, that neither in a fairy tale to say nor to describe with a pen. Only frighten children for the night.
Moreover, to scare me in the literal sense: I ordered masks, and for some reason, the Chinese decided to redraw the well-known image in their own way. It turned out that it is a shame to remember.
And here, it would seem, a ray of reason had to break through the thick stupidity. But the stupidity turned out to be bottomless and the ray in it was lost ... I decided to order masks from other Chinese. Never do that. Never. They did better than the first, but in t / c I did not take into account one important point from which the quality was seriously affected.
But my main mistake was that, immediately after the idea of ​​a business with China came up, I did not conduct a study of the demand for such masks. They were not needed by anyone. So, if you are thinking of starting a business with China, I advise you to do the following:
1. Read Paul Badler’s Poorly Made in China Book. If the book does not put you in fear and horror, go to the next item.
2. Study the demand for goods.
3. Collect pre-orders, and only order money from them.
Such a strategy will destroy all your castles in the air, lower from heaven to earth, test the performance of the idea and save a lot of nerves, money and time.
But let's go back to the game dev. While there was an epic with masks, I performed an interesting freelance - an order for texts for a mobile game. I made 135 plot texts, each no more than 300 characters. At any level, the same thing happens in this game as in the rest, so I almost always had to play around with a monotonous and simple gameplay. It was very interesting, and the customer was satisfied.
Sci-fi novel, consultations on game design, 2 articles about game design (one of them, Google still gives the first on-demand "game design Warcraft") and the script for 1 game was enough for me to be invited to a full time job as a game designer in office in Moscow. The most interesting thing has just begun ...
And how did your unusual story begin in game development (or in another area) and where did it lead you?
The article used pictures from the game, which is now in development.
Sit back, dear reader. This publication opens a series dedicated to the development of a mobile device, with stories about my fabulous failures, finding my way and overcoming myself. If you want to make your own game (or whatever), but you don’t know how to program or draw, then by example I want to inspire you to take the first steps and direct you in the right direction. The series will be useful to those who know how to think something and start their journey in game devise - after all, learning from the mistakes of others is more pleasant than from their own. I did many things not efficiently enough, in my example you will absolutely know how to do it. Some information will be useful in other areas (in particular, in the field of business with China).
What I have and the team today: a very playable demo of the arcade tower defense with a unique gameplay (we saw similar games, but nowhere did the gameplay 100% match ours) and the colorful visual style praised by the art director Zeptolab. The demo gradually acquires new content and inexorably moves to release.
')
Not so great achievement, but still better than nothing.
It could have been more if, over the years, it had not seemed to me that the development of games from the realm of magic is too complicated and incomprehensible. The reality is that now the threshold of entry has decreased by so much that anyone can make the game an advanced PC user. All tools have already been created, instructions for them have been written, and if you have a specific question, then you will always find the answer in the developer community. The biggest obstacles are inside a person: laziness and fear of the unknown. Everything else is complete nonsense, not a real problem. Although even laziness and fear of verification turn out to be illusory problems, so in reality there are no problems to make the game. Well, that is all. Can you think coherently and press buttons? Take it and do it!
If I had known this 5-7 years ago, then I would have had a whole bunch of projects released and, most likely, a decent amount of money. I want you not to repeat my mistakes and miss your moment.
My too long stay in the power of fear led to the fact that I missed two almost guaranteed opportunities to make good money on games. The first is in the social games market, but everyone has long known about its saturation. The second is in the mobile market.
Yes, the golden time of mobile games is over. Until 2010, you could make any Doodle Jump and it would be sold in millions of installations, now the chance to make money on a small mobile game tends to a chance to win the lottery. It will turn out only at the most creative, desperate and in a good way insane (I hope that one of them). But this does not mean that everything is bad, in various areas of the digital world (and in the world of games in particular) every few years, faults open up into new unexplored dimensions, the pioneers of which manage to stake out its most delicious sections. You can become one of them if you do everything right. The best thing is to start right now. Just what to start? In my opinion, the closest area in which singles or small teams can find success is augmented reality, and, possibly, virtual reality. And most likely augmented, because make it a decent small forces at times easier. I regard my mobile game as the first significant attempt at writing: if it doesn’t take off, I still have the knowledge that I can use in developing other projects, including for augmented reality devices.
Start right now and do not expect any special coincidence of circumstances, as happened to me.
So, I always dreamed of making games, but instead I worked as a promoter for a strip club. One night, a car stops in front of me, a merry company falls out of it, one person of whom wonders where you can break away, and I, naturally, tell him about the club where I work. The man understands that he was already there and leads the conversation towards his club - not a striptease, but slot machines. Underground. And he offers me to work there.
I agree.
We, of course, almost immediately covered the OBEP (that night was even more fun than when I was offered a job at the club), but before that the director of the underground club found out that I was a “creative person”, wrote a science fiction novel and all that . And his friend just needed creative help in developing a social game. So I got into game devs - through some incomprehensible climb from the back door, which opens in a random place of the city every few years. For smarter, there are more obvious ways.
So, fate brought me to the game development team (distributed, but at least this). I would think a little bit, understand that "Here it is! I am finally in gamedev! What has always dreamed of! And now you need to understand how to maximize your personal and wallet potential to reach your potential? ”
But I was not smart enough to ask myself such a question. Consultations on game design were a one-off business, and I focused on the area where I understood even less - business based on manufacturing in China. Why did I do so stupid? I did not appreciate my prospects in game development and relied on a partner with whom I was going to open a business. From the help mate there was exactly zero. I would still think of a game dev ... but no! I decided to hope for another partner. Never do that. Never.
- Young man, do you believe in God?
- What are you, I don’t believe in people!
the truth of life
From the first partner at least there was no gestures at all. From the second they were, but as a result they turned out to be wrecking - at the most crucial moment he was gone. I had to wriggle out myself. And then the Chinese set me up, producing such indecency, that neither in a fairy tale to say nor to describe with a pen. Only frighten children for the night.
Moreover, to scare me in the literal sense: I ordered masks, and for some reason, the Chinese decided to redraw the well-known image in their own way. It turned out that it is a shame to remember.
And here, it would seem, a ray of reason had to break through the thick stupidity. But the stupidity turned out to be bottomless and the ray in it was lost ... I decided to order masks from other Chinese. Never do that. Never. They did better than the first, but in t / c I did not take into account one important point from which the quality was seriously affected.
But my main mistake was that, immediately after the idea of ​​a business with China came up, I did not conduct a study of the demand for such masks. They were not needed by anyone. So, if you are thinking of starting a business with China, I advise you to do the following:
1. Read Paul Badler’s Poorly Made in China Book. If the book does not put you in fear and horror, go to the next item.
2. Study the demand for goods.
3. Collect pre-orders, and only order money from them.
Such a strategy will destroy all your castles in the air, lower from heaven to earth, test the performance of the idea and save a lot of nerves, money and time.
But let's go back to the game dev. While there was an epic with masks, I performed an interesting freelance - an order for texts for a mobile game. I made 135 plot texts, each no more than 300 characters. At any level, the same thing happens in this game as in the rest, so I almost always had to play around with a monotonous and simple gameplay. It was very interesting, and the customer was satisfied.
Sci-fi novel, consultations on game design, 2 articles about game design (one of them, Google still gives the first on-demand "game design Warcraft") and the script for 1 game was enough for me to be invited to a full time job as a game designer in office in Moscow. The most interesting thing has just begun ...
And how did your unusual story begin in game development (or in another area) and where did it lead you?
The article used pictures from the game, which is now in development.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/242095/
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