Advice for wannabe game developers
by Jennie Lees 
{ May 19th 2006 at 9:59AM }
The days of the bedroom coder are mostly behind us, though casual games and mini-games still provide the opportunity for a single coder to make it big -- not to mention one-man projects like Rag Doll Kung Fu which don't quite fit into the above categories. If you're interested in running your own game development project, Download Squad has some business advice for you. Covering engines, team-building, documentation, project management, testing, marketing and the all-important "making money", this article is a useful starting point and gives a good idea of what's actually involved in a small-scale game development project. Of course, you'll want to do further research before embarking on such a project yourself.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Amir @ May 19th 2006 10:34AM
Rag Doll Kung Fu is a pain to play. I'm glad somebody realised today's controllers are too limited (one button for punch and one more for kick, etc.), but neither this nor the Wii are the answer. The Wiimote just seems to replace button commands with over-complex gestures, as opposed to allowing on-the-fly movements (see Red Steel with its repertoire of 5(!) sword movements). Still, guys like the creator of Rag Doll are thinking outside the box, so props for that.
Martini @ May 19th 2006 11:19AM
There are people out there who work in small teams and achieve great things, just look at Project Offset as an example.
jay @ May 19th 2006 12:16PM
What? Bedroom coding is behind us? Not really.
Just google Multimedia Fusion, The Games Factory, Blitz3D etc. There are massive communities around the web devoted to this. and other sites like Gamehippo and Home of the Underdogs.
Freeware gaming and bedroom coding are alive and well. Why would you want to be misleading?
Matt @ May 19th 2006 12:28PM
Coding isn't the difficulty; it only really takes a few good coders to make an engine like in Project Offset. The problem is art, and gameplay code. Art takes time; Offset didn't look to have a whole lot of environments or characters, and there wasn't really gameplay to speak of.
That's of course fine; the Offset guys are running things on a skeleton crew until they can ramp up funding and get the staff they need to compete.
But make no mistake; in order to make a competitive, engaging first-person title, they'll need a fair number of people just to set up encounters in the levels.
Dustin @ May 19th 2006 12:50PM
Matt,
Coding Project Offset only takes a few good coders? Hardly... Programming all those effects and techniques takes a lot of work. If it didn't we'd see engines like that all over the place, yet we don't. Art takes time, just as Programming does. Neither are more important than the other when it comes to games.
jennie @ May 19th 2006 3:07PM
In my mind, bedroom coders and small companies are separate concepts; one person coding up a small game in their spare time as opposed to a group of people with legal and financial responsibilities trying to build a solid business. Hobbyists don't make it big in anywhere near the way they used to in the eighties, for example, hence my use of the word "mostly" in the post. Since my post gives examples of where one-man coding operations do thrive, I don't think I'm being misleading -- the days of bedroom coders making titles that become mainstream are pretty much relegated to the past IMO.
gh0st @ May 19th 2006 3:25PM
RE: Post 5.
I am a programmer (not industry, though I have worked on numerous non-profit games) and I have to agree with the first guy. Give a monkey a tech book and they could program. May not be good and may not be the best of code, but it will be exponentially better than the results of giving that same monkey a paintbrush and asking it to create some art.
It really is not that difficult. Of course, I have the mind for it so a lot of this is my perspective, but it is not unreasonable to claim that a single guy with a good DirectX reference could pump out a working 3D engine in about a week of normal-length work days. I did it in two while still learning DirectX from a complete n00b level.
Of course, my engine is VERY rudimentary and in all real objectivity, far from complete. But writing the code is not even close to what I would call "difficult." In fact, one who has been in the industry for awhile can tell you, most programmers are not paid what they are for their proficiency in one language or another (though some are good enough to get paid on that alone) but most are paid for delivering the value of design, architecture, efficiency, utilization, security, etc. and not at all for understanding what #include means.
I could start now, spend the rest of this year and I might be able to create a handful of decent quality textures. THAT artsy crap is very difficult. I have a very logical operatus to work with and as such I can work through any problem no matter what by simply applying logical thought. Art is subjective, you can't just "debug" a bad color combo or dodgy shading.
We will teach computers to write programs (we already are). We will not for a very, very long time get computers to create art. This is the best argument I can provide. Computers are dumb. Very dumb. Dumber than monkies. Anything that we can get a computer to do, cannot be that difficult (they are ubber calculators, the value they provide is speed).
That is what programming is: explaining to these utterly stupid boxes of wires what I want it to do.
Slashbunny @ May 19th 2006 5:43PM
Mostly behind us? I think not. If anything they are more mainstream than ever by way of mods to popular games. In fact the most popular FPS game on the internet, Counter-Strike, is mostly the result of 1 programmer/modeller in his bedroom (of course now owned by Valve).
Andir @ May 19th 2006 7:43PM
Amazingly enough, there are plenty of talented people out there that come up with things all the time. They may not be blockbuster selling games, but I wouldn't rule out the little guy as fast as the gaming community is trying to do. I keep seeing these articles popup that say, "You can't do it alone!" and "Your never going to make something as cool as...". I have to believe that's the standard forward thinking people in business today. They try to protect their own crap and stint the imagination of the lone developer. On the other hand though, I've seen alot that comes out that truly isn't worth a grain of salt. I can only recommend to those rogue developers: Get five other people to play it and see what they think of it first.
Dustin @ May 20th 2006 12:58AM
Ghost,
I like your point, you make it very true. And I am also a programmer, but i feel i split the line between programmer and artist because i do both. Ask a true artist that only knows Maya to write a new Shader Model 3.0 with HDR game engine in a few weeks and he can't just as you and I can't whip out a fully detailed 100k polygon dragon out of some hollywood movie.
Its our mindset, left brained vs right brained. I've always been stuck in middle wondering if i've made the right decision with Programming.
But i also find programming to be art too. Just as people find architecture to be works of art. They took lots of planning and engineering. Just like a great piece of software. Not so much in small VB apps of most of the world, but in Game Engines and Enterprise level applications.