Thursday, September 19, 2013

Now You're a Hobo... Er, "Indie Developer"

Three months ago I left the world of big game development to take hold of an opportunity. You see, while I have a few skills in production, design and whatnot, the best I really have to offer is the quality of people I have the blessing to know. As chance would have it, several of my most talented former colleagues and friends had the summer off at the same time. We could get together and build a deck, paint a house, tune a hot rod... or we could found a company and make a game that we'd never be able to make anywhere else.


For more ten years I've wanted to update a game that's a quarter century even older than that. I can't share all the details just yet... but if I'm completely honest, my primary motivation to work on this title that I want to play it on my phone! I think this game is just begging for push notification-based asynchronous multiplayer, and my colleagues agree. Even the crudest former execution of this game design pushes all my buttons. In my favourite matches I've spent a half an hour sweating in my seat and trying to think five moves ahead, guessing at bluffs and weighing odds.

I worked with awesome studios before, so why not make this game at any of them already? Well, because this game is hard to win. Like, really hard. Now, don't get me wrong - we're going to do everything we can to make sure that an awesome tutorial guides players through concepts. We'll make sure players are matched by a top-tier skill balancing system, and that every single PvP match is fair. Still, there's no changing that this design is all about skill and focus, while truly successful games on mobile have comparatively little to do with player skill. Well, the truly profitable games, anyway.

You see, I've spent years trying to make games as profitable as possible and I can tell you from experience right now: this game is not going to make as much money as Farmville nor get as many downloads as Angry Birds. Nope. It is, however, going to be a 100% skill-based game that will respect and believe in its players. If we do this right, a smaller group of fans are really going to love it. Good thing none of us are in this for the money!

There really hasn't been a better time in the last twenty years to be an independent game developer. Free, quality tools like Cocos2d-x, Bitbucket and Google Drive allow us to rapidly build out. Inexpensive self-publishing in places like Google Play and Apple App Store allow for people with minimal business ties access to huge audiences. Social media make it possible to sidestep mainstream ad campaigns. None of this is easy and the big guys still have huge advantages, but bootstrapping a game company really is doable if you're lucky enough to save up living expenses and recruit the right team.

I can't thank my colleagues, former employers, family, teachers, and friends enough for giving me this life where I can take a half year 'off' to help make a game that may not pay the bills. It's true that we may all be sending our resumes around in coming months... or maybe we'll be able to keep shipping new content and updates to support the playerbase. Either way, I really believe we're going to ship a game we're proud of.

This is scary, and totally fun.

If you're curious about the project itself, please take a look at Fixer Studios on Twitter or Facebook.

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