How do you become a successful independent game developer?

Not long ago I received an email asking me "How can I be an independent game developer?" ”

Although my response was to go all out, I was not sure what they were really looking for. We are often asked similar answers, so I decided to elaborate on this and offer some helpful advice.

About Us

Mode 7 is an independent development studio headquartered in Oxford, UK. We were founded in 2005, and in 2007 we released a Determinace war game, "the Book of the People."

After that, we released the "Frozen Touch" in 2011.

Frozen Synapse (from Mode7games)
Here are some information about the frozen touch:

Sold the 40多万份

Get 85 points on the Metacritic website

Got a high score on websites like 9/10 edge,eurogamer,destructoid.

Call yourself the humble Bundle

Get "Independent Games Festival Audience Award" "PC Gamer Strategy Game of the Year", indiegames.com strategy Game of the Ye Ar ", as well as Rockpapershotgun's" best glowy Lines in a Game "award.

Now we're working on the ipad version of the game, and it's going to be possible to meet you at the end of the year.

Ian Hardingham (Chief architect and programmer) led the company in his capacity as joint management Director and co-founder. At present, our studio has 4 other members, of whom two are full-time employees. At the same time we will also work with a number of freelancers remote cooperation.

Introduce yourself

I am Paul Taylor: I am responsible for business development, marketing, audio, music, writing, art orientation, UI design, some simple players involved, and so on.

Problem

To compress the content appropriately, I'll assume that your idea of how to become an independent developer is:

"I want to shift from what I'm doing to being a full-time independent game developer," he said. ”

If you want to create a stand-alone game just for creative expression or fun, don't blame me for telling you to go.

In fact, we need to take the opposite approach: I have found in the past few years that people who don't own any commercial cells often do something surprising. Some people can even make a huge profit, although that is not their main goal.

You might want to create interactive stories based on twine, or a real gaming experience like the Johann Sebastian joust (rather than a cliché computer game), which is something that will be mentioned, and you don't feel neglected because I'm concentrating on something else.

Let's get to the point after the long preamble is over.

Basic elements

The process of creating and distributing a computer game will highlight the following elements:

Game Design

Code

Checkpoint Design

Images and animations

Audio and music

Text

Business (legal, marketing, PR, and web development and other related matters)

All of these elements are necessary, and are very challenging disciplines, and we may need to be poor for a lifetime to be able to really master.

The problem is that you should be solely responsible for all of these elements, or find a trusted partner, or spend money to help you get the job done.

From my point of view, it's best to pay some professionals to deal with things you can't do at first: this is the quickest, easiest, and cheapest way.

If you've never outsourced before, I would suggest that you take a look at Tim Ferriss's "The Four Hour Workweek": Although the book presents a very extreme and funny attitude, I'm sure you'll get something from it.

If you are lucky enough to know who will be your partner, then you need to make sure that they are able to work with you for a long time in the game creation process and you have to trust them and follow the same goal together. Such people are hard to find, so you must hold them firmly.

Volunteers who do not collect money often choose to give up when they encounter setbacks. And they don't tell you to give up and waste a lot of your time.

Let's analyze each subject in order.


Game Design

Game design is a creative discipline that requires a higher level of analytical mind; It also explains why most of the game designers I know are a bit unhinged (I'm looking at the good side).

Game designers are involved in the design of game mechanisms, and of course, they are often involved in the creation of complex narrative content, but their main task is to involve real games. I am surprised that many people are not clear about this.

We can also learn game design in 3 ways:
1 Make the game, then watch others play your game
2 with analytical attitude to play other people's game
3 Learning Game Design theory

I'm not saying (2, 31 is worth nothing, but their value is not as high.

As a designer, your life will be much easier if you are in charge of programming, and you will find that programmers who are not programmer often need to work with a large group of high level programmers; Unless you are rich enough and want to take risks, you'd better not do it at first.

Of course, even if you're not in touch with programming you may become an independent designer: but you have to make up for it with other amazing "skills".

If you're using games like adventure Game Studio,rpg maker or renpy to create software, it's dramatically reducing the amount of hardware code you need to get started with the design. You also need to be aware that you may be subject to design constraints before you delve into the details of these tools.

Although design is important, it does not represent everything. Many successful independent game designers would give 7 or 8 points if they were asked to rate game design (10 points altogether).

In other words, no one can find a good reason to aim at mediocre designs: Maybe players will be attracted to the description and ideas of the game, but they will only stay in the game because of the excellent design.

Here are 3 things I want the designer to do better:
Try to make interesting and meaningful decisions faster for players
Try to shorten the time the player faces boring content
Try to contain at least one creative element, even if it's just a small piece of content

In short, there is nothing wrong with a wide range of types, but players who buy indie games prefer the fun of creative content: If your game is boring anyway, you're ready to face failure.

The last warning is that people will have ideas that they can do when they see something about the design of the game, but they have never tried before. I don't know what makes them think the game design is simple: But in fact it's a very difficult job.

The last thing I want to say about design is that you have to find ways and expressions that fit your personality. Define your goals and write them down, just as Tom Francis, the creator of "gunpoint", did.

Idea

Between aesthetics and mechanism, the idea of game occupies a strange space. They can add atmosphere and emotion to a rough mechanism, and that's the main motivation many people want to try or buy games.

If you have more types of ideas (such as "Fantasy MMO"), you add more pressure to other game elements and need to revise the original guidelines.

Here are some excerpts from the principles I wrote earlier:

Scott Steinberg will advise you to be honest with the mass market: "Whether it's music, animals, sports, or the family, you need to make sure that the game is rooted in the real world frame of reference all the while." ”

On the other hand, Jeff Tunnell that you should always stick to your passions:

"I will create the game I want to create and then look for users." Trying to predict is not an art or science, but a futile practice. Just like when Dynamix was just bought by Sierra, we had to do all kinds of marketing and forecasts, but it was wrong, like I had a very hopeful game, the incredible Machine, got a bad prognosis. ”

The following is my opinion:

There are also a number of independent games for great commercial success, which are about fighting each other's rabbits, the abstract scenes full of squeaky green little things, and sticky little spots. Although these games are not as big as "Sims", they are not meant to compete with them. As for "business success", I mean "earning enough to support them to continue creating games." "That's your goal, isn't it?"

Find the idea that inspires your greatest passion: you need to be passionate enough to drive the game creation process. If you come up with some weird ideas, you'll realize that you're trying to find users who like the idea and start thinking about what to do before it's officially developed.

Code

This is about design and philosophy: If you can't write code for the game, then the design and the idea lose meaning. There are a variety of "How do I Learn Programming" on the web. "Resources, you can only search on Google. And now I'm looking for Ian's help to listen to his advice on writing independent game code.

"I will assume you are using the existing game engine. If you're reading ' How to get into the game code ' link-if you're creating your own engine, that's beyond my recommendation.

Learning to program requires attention and effort, which is an element that most programmers don't have, so it's going to be a very difficult road.

Whether you've ever been in a programming situation before, or if you have a programming background, but you suddenly face a complex game engine with 500,000 of lines of code, you'll be overwhelmed. Don't worry about ' first contact with smaller content ' and directly face what you really want to do. But in the face of an ambitious framework, you have to be intellectually confronted with the first touches. Find a separate link for a larger project (you can take one months to get a real payoff here) and set it up as the first goal.

Run ahead, go into a code base, and overthrow everything until you can make some changes. Change the color of some content and start celebrating. Keep bringing people into the game engine community-your problems will become more stupid and people will start complaining, but your problems will become more and more reasonable over time, and eventually you will be able to help others. If you encounter any book that describes the engine you choose, buy it home and read it over and over again rather than blindly coding it from the start.

Let's say you have any programming talent (if you don't have the option to choose the image design side of the game development), then the real enemy you face is uncertainty. Don't take the "I don't know what to do," or worse, ' I don't know if it's possible ' attitude to deal with the problem. You can try everything, and if you're confident about it, you'll find it easier to deal with the problem.

Learning game programming is as complicated as learning something else: it may take you six months to master any relevant knowledge. ”

You need to find a game engine that fits your project. If you're really stuck in the idea, focus on torque,unity or HTML5-related engines. Of course, you can also pursue some of the more powerful objects, but I would advise you to use Gamemaker for beginners.

Checkpoint Design

Game design and level design are different skills: one is about system design, the other is planning how to render the system in the most efficient way.

The level design is often focused on the game in question, we have to plan on an iterative basis, and it always takes a lot of time. The reason I mention this here is to remind future independent developers that they can get used to it and find people who are willing to help themselves here.

The recent trend is about program generation, which requires both powerful code skills and a passion for game authoring: Don't think of it as a piece of work that is lightly loose. Yes, you can get a huge payoff, but only if you need to invest a lot of time tweaking the generator and creating the checkpoints manually.

Images and animations

I admire the independent developers who create their own images: I'm playing "Ben There Dan" with size five, and I've found that the hand-painted images of this unique game (especially the character's walking cycle) are really fun and game-friendly.

Ben there Dan Sizefivegames
If you're not an excellent art person, you can take advantage of your strengths and pursue some simple styles (note: Or use free tools like GIMP and blender), Or you can outsource it to someone else to help design the image.

I would suggest that you work with an artist who has experience in design. Those who have been involved in many projects and have industry experience will know what to ask and are more likely to finish the work on time. This advice also applies to freelancers in other disciplines.

You can invest more money in image creation