Category: Video Game Development

The 3rd day is the worst

After all the orientations and move in, I feel like there’s nothing for me to do. Classes aren’t starting till Tuesday. I don’t have anything major to do with my games right now. There was a lot of excitement on the first two days but this morning it’s all waning away.

Much like with game projects I always want to move onto the next thing. At times this can be a problem and with real life it’s something that I have to fix. As I’ve always told myself, enjoy it while it lasts.

There are only so many years that you’ll be an indie developer. There are is only one time I’ll have these college experiences. So enjoy it now and stop nagging.

The leap of faith

I have jumped off the edge of the mountain. Over the weekend I made a deal with United Minds Games to publish their upcoming game Space Renegades: The Series. The deal includes me doing the same things that I do for marketing any game but as a publisher the game will eventually have a recognized name behind it. Names and brands go a long way with consumers. Normally they don’t like to buy things made by a company that they don’t know.

The other great thing about this if Space Renegades becomes popular I can created a boxed version and get the game into retail outlets.

So it is really going to be an interesting ride from here on out. I’ve wanted to publish games for years and now I’m finally here. It took me a while to learn the ropes and gain the knowledge that I needed so now it’s all a wait and see process.

My goal isn’t to grow at a fast rate. College is my first priority so I have to see how that goes and how much I can handle before it becomes too much. 🙁

So what’s next?

I think that was the slogan for GDC 06… and now it’s the title of this entry.

Main thing is that I’m working on something pretty big that is really the only logical step for me to take if I want to grow. Of course what I’m I going to do about college? I’m starting up on August 29th so I don’t know if that will hinder anything, most likely it will.

Bottom line is that I won’t have a lot of time for this blog so I doubt I’ll be writing daily entries but I will still try my best to write something weekly. Maybe that will improve the quality.

As always connecting this situation to game development, as a high school student you really have a hard decision to make. Go to college, go to a game college, or make games full-time. I too went through this and damn it was difficult. With my skills making games full-time at wasn’t such a smart idea. It would be much better if I networked in college and planned my life out more.

So the next question I dealt with was, well game college or regular college? Places like Full Sail and Westwood intrigued me by their fast earning 2 year degree programs but I soon realized, why would I want to limit my high school social life to a bunch of nerds? It’s highly unlikely that there would be many if any hot girls at a game college. This factored in with my curriculum only being about video games bored me. Why spend 2 years only learning about video games? There’s so much else to learn about in the world. Do you really think the best game designers studied games?

So that’s how I decided. Of course that’s not even getting into the issue of what regular college to choose! If you can get into a regular college that still has game degrees, awesome! Sadly I didn’t. Instead I’m going to be studying my other love, film. The major that I’m aiming for is Electronic Media Management so I’ll still be able to deal with computer stuff.

I am happy with where I’m going though, in theory of course. Maybe when I get there I’ll hate it, who knows. cough cough The Shadow knows…

PS – I find it obnoxious when people do that. It’s a part of my life that has been used and abused, but I hold it against you.

Reviewers are Communist

Sorry to say it but any game reviewer that gets games for free is a communist. How are they helping the game industry by getting free games and saying this one sucks while this one rocks? I’m not complaining just stating a fact. Make sure that when you are giving out review copies of the game, you give them to legitimate websites. You do not want your game to show up on Warez sites because you gave away your game to anyone that asked!

Register your team name

If you’re going to deal with real companies, you better have a registered company name. It doesn’t matter what type of business you are as long as you look professional. Using a name Roxors probably won’t get you the respect that you’re looking for. Ideally you would come up with something that has meaning. Of course you don’t have to do it that way. Making up your own word like Yahoo and Google allows your company name to be unique and stand out above the crowd.

How to start up a Forum

You know what, I’ve never known how to really do this. The only way to get people to register is if they have a reason too. I started the Video Game Dev. Forum and for some reason no one from this blog has posted on it.

After there’s a reason to join, you have to advertise the forum. This is tricky because spamming on other forums about your forum will get you into trouble. So you just have to hope that people see your signature and click on the link. This is where I have failed. I have never advertised the Video Game Dev. Forum on its own. I’ve always mentioned the blog thinking that people would click on the Video Game Dev. Forum on the link. So I’m writing this post now to inform everyone about this Forum.

It’s tough to maintain a forum but usually when you and your team post messages on it your user base will eventually register. This is definitely the step that can take the longest time.