Marketing

Your Idea Is Awesome, Right?

Posted on 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?

The Glamorous World of Game Development

Posted on 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.

Hand Waving Visionary

Posted on by magicrat_larry

This morning it seems I am creating animations.  We need a few more for our game demo and I’ll be putting them together.  I play an interesting role on the project, one of many hats.  I am an animator, a lead programmer, and I believe most critical, hand waving visionary.

What is a “Hand Waving Visionary?”  It’s the person that keeps life and the project exciting and on track within the context of the game.  It’s not something that you learn to be.  I think it is just something I am.  I can take a small thing, and hype it up and make it important and likable.

Why do you need that?  Game development is hard, it is not the glamorous thing you thought of as a kid.  You need the small things to seem grand and impressive to keep going at times.  It really is about creating a team that feels every part of the process is fun, energetic, and lovable.  So I wave my hands, talk about warm fuzzy things, and watch in amazement as my teammates and I put together an amazing interactive world.