The dangers of developing a video game

Our vacation has started and here is how a typical day of an indie game developer goes during vacation:

– Wake up at some point before 12 am.
– Work.
– Breakfast and probably 1 hour at the beach (if we have time)
– Work
– Lunch
– Work
– 1-2 hours outside
– Work
– Dinner
– Work
– Asleep after 2 am

Days go so fast when you do the same things at the same time for days, months and soon years. You can gain a lot of weight if you are not aware of what you eat and how much you work without getting out. We’ve begun with training at home as going out to some training club takes way too much time. Even at home you need to find time for training. If you do it before dinner then it takes about an hour. A lot of time. We are now trying to train in the mornings as it takes just about 20 minutes to do it then.

Be also aware with what you eat. Cola, chips and energy drinks give energy fast, but the sugar level goes down fast as well. Consume more “real” food and drink more water or tea, instead of cola and coffee. That’s our advise.

Our vacation last year looked just the same as now. It was all about making a “Monster” game that turned out to be a waste of time. We used one and a half year to prototype an Alpha version of Monster and it didn’t look promising to us after so much time. Framerates were very low due to a very large world and the idea of a world where you can do wherever you like is already implemented in the very popular Minecraft. We tried to show a game to other people and the feedback we got was like “Oh, it’s like Minecraft!”

This year we are working on a new game “Burnt islands”. The plan is to finish a gameplay prototype by July 17th, make a fancy trailer and see what people will think about it.

We’ve also decided to formally register a company and one of us has quit the day job to make an effort into trying to get this game / a game released.

If you had a social life to begin with, there is no such thing when you’re making a game, unless you do it with friends, which can be a complicated thing to do unless you’ve covered everything (workload / shares / responsibilities) in agreements. If you didn’t have a social life to begin with, it’s easier and it won’t be improving unless you plan to release something 10 years down the track.

And at last the most important thing you need to keep in mind is that it all can turn out to be a huge waste of time and effort. Your game won’t be popular and you won’t sell much of it. That’s always a risk.

Comments