The following facts, independent game developers need to pay attention

Like most people, like most people, when he was in college, he dreamed of going to a well-known game company to develop games after graduation, but the reality was too cruel and often not what he liked now, Always subject to the work arranged by the company or the boss's will, so the final decision to do independent development.Although their favorite things, but users continue to carry out personal attacks on him, cursed the work, he said, no one Indifferent to these abusive, but to learn is that the thick skin, the most important thing is to be proud of his work, which will support you to go on, for independent developers, will inevitably encounter these problems and see him How to deal with? And what to learn from.

The following is a full-text translation:

Generally speaking, it is impossible for a developer to survive in society without developing a few games. It can be said that not a well-known company to develop the game, his game is difficult to fire up. Malevolence is not the first game of my creation, but it is the first game I release. However, in such circumstances, I am quite pleased that the first game will still receive a very high degree of attention early in its creation.

For the first time, I was trying my best to develop games. Since the game was a success, I did not commit the common pitfalls of other indie developers - pessimism, so I wanted to share some of my thoughts and tell you some facts. As an independent game developer, you are Impossible to know from others.

Dream is beautiful, the reality is cruel

Like many people, the entire university is dreaming of getting a diploma, a few lines of code after graduation, an offer from an AAA gaming company, and soon after, honor and wealth ensue, and later Happy life, doing your favorite game, everything is smooth.

But only after graduation did I find that all my efforts in return were nothing more than a junior QA and were still on the "considered" list. QA such work, weekly in a small room for more than 70 hours, to do some repetitive, brain cell-killing work. Indeed, such a job can get me into the door to showing real skills, but the reality is that many game companies review the QA team at the close of each project and eventually abandon them, so the job itself is landmines.

Figure: QA hard to force life

If I do not do QA, do other things

Programmer: I might sit down and work 70+ hours a week, writing scripts with someone else's engine. Because you want to use third-party products to accelerate the development progress, then I have to understand the truth, you need to sacrifice the quality of the game to ensure the speed. As a result, I felt my sense of integrity as a programmer, enthusiasm for the development of new features will gradually fade, everything I do in my spare time owned by my boss, the passion for innovation will gradually lose .

Designer: Maybe I was just lucky enough to get a job I was interested in. I spent a lot of time designing shooting games, watching my work die and finally becoming a lifelike game. But one day, that producer, a computer idiot, game experience is limited to Bejeweled's second-stock come and tell you "My 10-year-old nephew is now very much like pony, change the game soon, into the ponies What is your solution? He is the boss, can only listen to it, change the game, give up before the creation, all because I am employed by people.

Those years, too young and too naive

With that in mind, I turned my attention to indie game development, which is more attractive than hiring, because I can do whatever I'm interested in by any means, but No one told me that this is also the devil.

After the decision, find a job in charge of daily expenses, in their spare time devoted themselves to the development of the game, the game is the aforementioned Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox. It is my ideal game, all I want to see in the game is in this game, new technology, new game mechanics, I think the world will change forever. But then I was too young and too childish to warn me of what happened next.

I started with a new way to create the process of creation, because the type of favorite game is RPG, so why not do one? So began to find that actually worked, and then opened a blog , Mainly for myself, things are going well.

Figure: Malevolence

Users too horrible, so to keep the skin thick + proud

I started to see some game developers, who introduced me to more people. I also started to make my development process open and increased the promotion of Malevolence. To my surprise, the game got a lot of attention, so I went on to PR, but with positive comments and negative remarks, I learned two things at the time:

1. The sheer size of the Internet audience and its anonymity are really scary

You got 1000 good reviews, but if you have a negative rating, you may ruin your whole day.

In fact, I was really trying to do something new that was terrifying to many people, so I got many horrifying comments. Some people maliciously belittle, as well as personal attacks. If I say so personally, I will certainly tell them, even if one or two of these comments are a threat. Those who do not have the courage to dream of people always like to let others also give up their dreams, so sad. It's not easy to say that you ignore all comments, but it is not impossible. Some people who disagree with the concept of games give their own opinions, write well and are worth reading, but such people are few and far between.

Anyway, from the very beginning, I took the approach of a public development process and had extremely close communication with the public. I also introduced an honor award to those who asked me questions. Many people like this way. While another group of people continue to take the opportunity to abuse, the beginning I just thought it was because of my new idea or idea at work, met other developers only know that this is a commonplace in the game community.

Rude players full of anger and hatred everywhere, they feel they have the right to say anything to the developers, but fortunately more people support my game. They communicate with you and encourage you throughout the process. But you also need to grab what people scolded you, one of my friends also told me that what the most fierce of the most fierce people in the end may also buy your game.

So all you have to do is focus on your product, it does not matter if you like your game, and it's important that you really like your work. If you like, others will follow like, look at the experience before MineCraft know. Sprayed for so many years, but does Mojang still sell hundreds of millions of games? Arguably, they are extremely proud of their work. Proud of what you are doing is very important. If you are proud of what you have done, then no matter what happens, you will hold it tightly and will not let it run away.

I was referred to as "visionary" by the Guild Wars 2 team, and I was also proud to have RockPaperShotgun be worth a visit, all of which made me proud of myself whenever I was ignorant or abusive Accusation, I will remember these things, to help themselves across the psychological barrier.

Figure: Malevolence

To be an indie game developer, understand these

Everything is extremely difficult

A large number of people will openly criticize your game, no matter what you have done, so learn to bear

3. Nobody knows more than you are about your work

4. Everyone thinks they know your project better than you

5. The odds of making money are pitiful

6. The face must be particularly thick

7. Open to the public does not always have to smile face to face

You will encounter many so-called "game developers", but in fact, almost no one really develops the game

9. You need to listen to all the suggestions, but remember, listening to suggestions does not mean that you have to accept these suggestions, but "listening to suggestions" will not hurt anything, so you have to learn to listen and you never know where you will go from high school To what.

Figure: the face of the attack will be "thick + more proud"

Independent developers, we must remember that these

1. Do not develop an RPG game as your first release of the game, do not do any other large projects. The beginning of a simple point, learn some experience, once accumulated experience, you can do a big project

2. Do not publish the date of issuance until your 150% confirmed date of issue

3. Do not let your life completely occupied by your project

Do not respond to your critics

5. Set up a test team to follow rigorous testing procedures

6. Make a thorough plan before you want to go all out to do one thing

7. Carefully consider the open development process, depending on the target user and the project itself, the effect may be better than your head alone development

8. Do not let anyone out of your pride in your work, you are no longer proud when people stop respecting it, if you do the game, even if the last money did not earn, you are still proud.

Have you had such an experience?