careers | Gamedev Brain

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…

Facebook – Like us on facebook

ViolentSol.com – Homepage

IndieDB – Indie Games Community with news, screenshots, and video

You, Yes You, Never Stop Amazing Me

Posted on August 3, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I used to get up as an indie game developer and start coding my game. Now I get up and start marketing my game. When did that happen? When did marketing win as the leading task of the day? Seems like it was a smooth transition because I did not notice it until now. I think the community might have fueled the move though.

Let me explain. I get some awesome responses from people about our game that is in development – Violent Sol Worlds. I think that feeds the want for my brain to get more, so I have slowly turned into a marketer first and a programmer second. Never in a million years would I have seen that coming. It is wonderful though.

Before now, my interactions with people over the internet has been basically them yelling at me about my mother. You know, the XBOX live crowd. But now that we are building a community around a title we all love and want to see built the interactions are much more loving. I truly hope we keep this up and you all keep motivation high for me to keep engaging on this level.

All your praises, follows, and general encouragement have been amazing. You all blow me away, and make me feel like I can do anything, even knock out a shark.

If you have not seen our game – Violent Sol Worlds check it out.

When People Finally Notice How Much You Are Worth

Posted on July 30, 2015 by magicrat_larry

My whole life, I have been basically passed over by the world. Not in a bad way, just in a career way. I’m often the voice in the room that says the thing that nobody wants to hear, but 3-6 months later everyone realizes it was correct. Why is it that once people finally realize the worth of myself it is either too late, or I no longer need them anymore.

The truth is, when people finally notice how much you are worth, you usually do not need them anymore, they need you. The key in business is to notice those people who are of high value quickly and acknowledge them. Don’t appease them. Acknowledge them and let them know, with pay, and gratitude, that their input is worth gold to your business.

I’ve never been able to figure out why I am one of the people who sees things as very simple and easy, but is never listened to. That is a lot of the reason why I think starting a game studio was a good idea. Who controls a game studio? Your worth is 100% apparent because you are the product. It is not the other way around where political games keep people in places, and others are just left behind.

At least I hope our studio in the end is successful and feels like home. Everyone should feel like their voice, in games, is heard. Input is king, and every idea has potential to rule the day. Games never leave anyone behind, and they make everyone feel their worth in equal measure when played.

Take time today to recognize somebody who’s worth to you is immeasurable, if you don’t they will probably out grow you.

Check out our game on indieDB – Violent Sol Worlds

What’s Your Game Development Dream?

Posted on July 28, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I had a nice conversation of Twitter yesterday with @berit_anderson, yeah I’m calling you out. In that conversation I was asked the following questions, “What is my gamedev dream?”, and “What would be an ideal setup for you?” Let me attack each one of those this morning.

What is my gamedev Dream?

Well to begin with, it is on my bucket list, actually the final item on it, to create a game and sell it to at least one person I do not know. Sounds dumb, but it’s a dream. Starting with that I think it has evolved from there. I am a computer programmer by trade, so I spend my days coding to save companies money. It’s not terrible, it is kind of fun usually. In the end though I am working for companies and providing value to an entity that is not a living breathing person, so I am changing the lives of people through proxy of the company I happen to be coding for.

What I believe games are is a means for me to directly change peoples lives without a proxy. In games people feel emotions, and generally get happier. What a better way to spend the last portion of my career, fulfilling my bucket list and making the world a happier place, one game at a time.

What is my ideal setup?

I have already done business before, so I really don’t want to do it again. What I want is my current job to turn into game development. I work for an amazing company OST and they have showed interest in creating games after Aaron, my partner in crime, and I told them “They have a game development company, they just don’t know it yet.”

So Ideally, we work for OST full-time on games. Right now we are in the attempt to prove to them that we are not nuts, that there is money in it, and we are the right people to attract that money by making great games.

Conclusion

I want to make games, to make peoples lives better. I do not want to be the accountant of a games company. I want to concentrate on making high quality games that people will enjoy for years. So I work my butt off trying to make that happen, daily.

If you have not seem our project on IndieDB yet, here is my shameless plug – Violent Sol – Worlds

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. 🙂

The Glamorous World of Game Development

Posted on June 29, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I think there is a misconception, game development is such a great job, all the fun, all the excitement, all the joy of Christmas every day. I’m sorry, that is not true. Let me explain what game development is like for me, and remember I love it.

You get up early, look at your task list, if you are lucky there is a task on there that sounds fun. You begin working on that task, it expands to a large programming mess. You stop programming and design a better system to fix or create whatever you were doing. If you are lucky once the task is complete the game still compiles and nothing different is displayed.

I know there are some days where you create that awesome effect that changes the look and feel of everything, but most days are debugging, tweaking, or designing. If you throw in marketing you got a real nice day. See, game development is one of the hardest programming jobs you can have. It is not like business software, you actually care about memory usage and display rate.

The next time you are sitting at home playing some game, and think how great it would be to be a game developer, stop and think of the massive effort, stubborn commitment, and tears it took to put that game together. Then smile and keep playing.

Be Something For Real

Posted on June 28, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I’m learning recently that there are many people in the world of game development, or even regular Tech careers who are pretending to be one of whatever they are doing. What I mean is they act like a programmer, web designer, or game developer, but they do not truly, either believe they are one, or love it at all.

If you are in game development, or your career, for anything other than the love of it, you are on the wrong path. Don’t take this road, it is an unhappy mess for you. Nothing will satisfy you if you do. Choose what you love, not what is the new awesome thing everyone else acted like they loved in college. Take the world by the face by understanding yourself and what you truly want and leave the careers to others that you do not love. You will enjoy life a ton more, be something, but be something for real, not for money, or popularity.