Adversity | Gamedev Brain

If You Don’t Do It, I’ll Do It Myself

Posted on November 8, 2015 by magicrat_larry

A huge lesson that I have learned doing indie game development is that if you cannot pay a person to do some work chances are they will not do it. They can be the perfect talent for the job and be able to do it no problem, but if it is voluntary they probably won’t do it for you.

Nope, not even giving them a place in the future of your dream will make them do it for you. See most people are only driven by what they have now or what they can get now. So your dream means nothing to them personally until it can pay them. They are not bad people or anything, they are just motivated by their lives and their dreams. This makes it hard to rely on others while trying to start something new. You can throw tasks around as if people are getting paid but the truth is you will probably have to do them yourself.

I have a new rule in my life. If I am not paying for it and it is important I must be able to do it on my own. This does not stop me from handing tasks over, but I am my own safety net. For sure if it is important and there is a date attached to the task, just do it yourself. Don’t waste the time handing that task off to another person who has no skin in the game.

I know some of you are thinking, man this guy sounds like he has some bad experiences here. The response to that is, yes I do have experience here. I do not believe they are good or bad ones, but I have been in the places where I put things in the capable hands of another, or two, and they simply do nothing, or something terrible, for your vision or dream. Take it from somebody who’s been there, until money is involved make sure you can do it yourself and assume you will be doing it all.

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These Are the Days of Our Gamedev Lives

Posted on October 25, 2015 by magicrat_larry

So Last Friday, it was fun. Fun like taking a kick to the zinger fun. Here is how it all went down…

I started my day as normal, no problems. Got to work and Aaron, our architect, let me know his car broke down. So that is terrible for him. We worked our normal, day job, day. Then go to the weekly game development meeting for Violent Sol Worlds. In this meeting we see the final art for some cars etc. Then we begin to discuss the Kickstarter video.

See, we have somebody else helping us edit the video down and make it great. That person is busy. So we debate how to move forward to meet our deadline we set for the Kick to launch. We figured we would end up editing the video ourselves. Then we kept talking.

At this point I threw out the questions of, why not delay the launch, to start the conversation. Then my head started to freak out. Yes, one more delay. I knew it was the right thing to do, but delaying one more week seemed like I was being asked to kill a puppy. It was hard.

I tried to rationalize it away as I could take a week off and get ready for the deep dive in to design that we will have to take. That did not work. I then realized that I had to convince myself that the video will be much better because we wait the week and that we will be better off for it. That seemed to calm my brain down a lot. I also had to get myself in to a head space of there will be no more delays beyond that.

So the basics is that we are slipping one more week on the Kickstarter we had planned to launch really soon. So we basically were done with our meeting at that time. We did what we always do, and walked out to the parking lot. At which time Ben, sees his car tire is flat.

What a lovely day for game development. It was a great test for the team to have nearly all of us have some sort of mental test that pushed us to a breaking point. We held together, and made what I think were great choices. Like I always say, when the world gives you lemons, it’s a trick, get an axe.

If you have not checked out my current project…

Violent Sol Worlds home

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Make Daily Mistakes

Posted on October 6, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Although I do not like hanging out outside my house, I do not terribly hate the existence of people. They make the world fun. The truth is people are dumb, make mistakes and inject a certain amount of randomness into the world that not everyone can enjoy.

When you work as a team and you see yourself as a team player you need to be one of those people that can roll with the mistakes and see the genius in them. When people create problems they do so simply by trying new things, they are learning. Encourage that. Don’t be the moron who wants everyone to just be mistake free, that means nobody is stepping out of their happy place and learning anything.

When it comes to yourself, make sure you are making mistakes daily. If you are not making mistakes, you are not living life like you should. Mistakes are the key indicator to learning and experimentation. If you feel like you are mistake free, take some time to figure out a good area to explore in a new direction. It’ll change your life, literally.

If you have not checked out my current project…

Violent Sol Worlds home

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Why Work Hard?

Posted on August 14, 2015 by magicrat_larry

What comes out of hard work? I wondered this years ago and never really answered it. Hard work in itself gives you nothing. It is not something that by itself makes anything happen. You have to be smart about what you are working hard on. With the correct focus hard work can make great things.

How you choose what to focus on is the key to success and the American Dream. Choose wisely and you will never be disappointed. Don’t listen to people. You don’t have to work hard on something you love either. What? Why would you do that? You can work hard on a smart idea that is not something you love and be successful at it. Hard work gets you that. The key to being happy though is to find something you like more that is still smart.

You cannot just work hard at the thing you love and expect great success. The fact is the thing you love is probably dumb to work hard at for business success. Find the next best thing that makes good sense and go for it. I’m lucky, the one thing I love to do is make games, and here I am making one and it makes sense for business success.

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

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Life Is Hard

Posted on July 29, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I’m writing this during the middle of the day. Why you ask? Because life is hard. See I had to change my daily schedule due to the difficult nature of life. It happens. I get it. What I hate the most is when this stuff makes people truly believe that the world is almost too hard to succeed in.

There are two types of people that think life is hard. The first is the “Life is so hard, I can hardly stand it” person and the second is the “Normally life is easy, but I make my life more difficult because I interact with the world” person. I am the second person. If I wanted to I could lay back and have a simple life. I have a good job, a great family and I generally enjoy everything about my days.

I personally hate that, oo life is good, feeling and always push myself, and the world to the next level and feel satisfied doing it. So The other people, sit around waiting for an excuse to explain why they do not do anything other than what they do today. I hate that. Don’t be one of those people, please!

Do something that is hard. Make life hard. I took my normal life and said I need to do more with it. So I started fitting more and more in and now it is bursting at the seems. Not because life is hard, but because I choose the difficulty level. I choose to be a game developer chasing a dream after work. I choose to play with my child whenever I can. I choose to get up early and sleep less. I choose how difficult my life is and my life is hard and I love it.

Seriously, You Are a Terrible Inefficient Mess

Posted on July 23, 2015 by magicrat_larry

You are a terrible inefficient mess, now that, that is out in the open let me reassure you it can be fixed. I know, you are saying, no way, I’m just really busy, I have no time. Yup, that is because you are a terrible inefficient mess. Just admit it like I did years ago and attack the problem, because it is a problem.

See, I bet you spend more time doing basically nothing you care about than you do on the things you love. I bet you sleep, or relax more than you need to. I bet you watch TV. I’d bet that over 50% of your waking hours, not at work, are wasted on things that you personally would say are not important. It’s true, I didn’t believe it at first either, until I spent an entire year looking at it to remove the stuff I did not care about and just leave the golden bits of awesome that is a satisfying life.

Take the time today to look at your daily actions and ask yourself, if I didn’t do this would I be less happy? If the answer is no, then stop doing it and ask yourself what you could be doing that makes you more happy. It will change everything, you will find yourself productive, satisfied, and excuse-less. You will no longer pick up 500 new things to do because they sound cool, your day will actually knowingly be full. Changes to your day will actually sadden you, because some of your golden nugget time will be taken away by changing a tire or going to the doctor.

It is something I wish I would have done from the beginning of my life. Do it now, you can find time to do the things you love. Me, I’m making games at a rate that blows most peoples minds. Filling your life with things you love, is nothing less than pure joy.

Getting Tired

Posted on July 22, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I’ve been attacking game development like a raging bull for over a year now. What I mean by raging bull is, I get up at 5am and work for a while on it. Then I go to work. Then I come home and whenever I can I fit it in during the rest of the day until my daughter goes to sleep I work on the game. Then I work for at least another hour, collapse and go to sleep.

I enjoy the schedule, I feel very rewarded every day, but, I am feeling tired, warn down, and a bit sleepy. I think I need a weekend off. I think it will suck, but I think at this point it is mandatory. So my plan is to do nothing this weekend, maybe just keep up on the marketing stuff and sleep in, play games, and just relax. I think I deserve it.

If You Aren’t Doing the Happy Dance, Do Something Else

Posted on July 21, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Life is not easy, being a creator makes it harder. Make sure that you are happy with what you are doing. Game development is creation, you take nothing but an idea of an experience and start typing code that to a normal human being would be unrelated and, BOOM, experience comes out. If that doesn’t make you do the happy dance, do something else.

I mean it, if you are not jumping out of your chair and dancing, or at least holding your hands in the air wanting to shout…

I’m the greatest programmer alive!!!

If it doesn’t, then maybe you have the wrong hobby. It gets rough, it gets terrible even. You will think you cannot do it. You are wrong, but only if success makes you do this…

See the only reason game development is so rewarding is because there are times where things all fall apart. It crushes you, and makes you feel very small.

The thing is, directly after that, if you make it through, you hit the highest of highs. You defeat that crushing moment and feel like king of the world. You take down what seems like a dream killer, and you elevate yourself to seemingly one of the best in the world at problem solving. You stand up on the mountain and you simply dance, mostly alone, but you dance none the less. For a moment you are in game developer heaven.

So if you are in it for anything other than this, get a different goal. You won’t make money here, unless you love it. You need to understand the highs and lows, the crushing defeats, and the elevation of the successes. Really think about game development, do you love the lows? Can you get through to the highs? When you get there will you dance?

If the answer is no, get out. 🙂

No Pressure, It’s Just Your Dream

Posted on July 20, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Well, we are getting very close to the moment where we actually unleash what our project is to the world. It is not done or anything, but up until now we have just been talking in general terms. We will be posting our full list of features and description of the game.

We think it is a wonderful idea, but it is our baby. What if the world hates it? Or worse, what if nobody ever sees it? The latter is my biggest fear. I have taken it upon myself to get the word out about our work. I’ve invested a lot of time building a foundation to help us get the word out. I would be crushed if we still couldn’t get anyone to notice that we are making a game. The pressure is on, I hope my creativity and time pays off.

It would be far better to be told that our game idea is terrible and the concept looks bad than to have it just sit there with no interest at all. At least if you hear the truth you can move on. In any case, please wish me luck in the coming days and months. I’m excited and nervous all around.

Your Idea Is Awesome, Right?

Posted on July 15, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Is my idea awesome? How do you get the answer to that question? Who has that answer? That is what I am trying to figure out. Your game idea is always awesome to you. So you don’t have the answer. The answer has to be with your potential consumer, at least that is my initial thought.

So how do we ask them these questions? Kickstarter seems like a nice place to ask that question, but it is based in money. That could be good, or it could be bad. It seems like this question is outside the scope of cash. Is my idea awesome, usually does correlate directly to a sale though.

Is there another way to ask if the idea is awesome besides Kickstarter? Places on the net like tigsource could help. Maybe even Indie DB. But, how do you go about asking that question? Do you just throw a bunch of content out there and see if anyone likes it, or randomly posts about it? Or, do you come right out and ask the question, do you like this idea?

So many questions, but they need to be answered quickly and early in order to not waste a lot of time on a game that is not wanted. We have a lot of work cut out for us to figure this out. Anyone have any suggestions?