The Post of the Beast

According to wordpress this is my 666 post. So go me and go satan!!!

Today was a frustrating day. For my “real” job I am having to deal with a poorly designed system that makes my job take a lot longer then it should. It is also a system that is impossible to automate in anyway. I basically babysit my computer and click on the occasional button… it is dumb.

On the plus side it has given me a lot of time for reflection. I got thinking about making video games. This is what I want to do. I want to spend my day creating awesome games that are fun and simple to play. I would also like to spend my days creating awesome games that are fun and possibly a little more complicated to play. I think simple is better.

Falling Cats was the first game I ever made. Yes I was using GameSalad and yes I don’t agree with some of the things they have done but I think they are a great company and they allowed me to make a video game. Falling Cats is proof to my self that I can make a video game. I think it has been downloaded maybe 1000 times but it is something that I created with some friends and it was a lot of fun to make.

I learned that in order to make the games I want to make I need to be able to actually code them and not have to monkey around with someone else’s program. Having to force your idea into someone else’s product is hard. So I set off to learn python. I have no learned python the hard way. I am not sure that I feel confident in my ability to create anything with it other then text based adventures but hey… those are still games!!

One of the problems I have run into is that I am (as usual) a jack of all trades. I know how to write code, write story, make graphics, animate shit and put it all together. But I am not an expert in any of these areas. Since I am not rich I am unable to pay people to help me so I abuse my skills with people to get people to do things for free. The downfall of this is when those people’s passion for the project doesn’t match mine. This is how teams fall apart.

I have looked at using some sort of crowd funding solution to get some money to pay people for their skills but I don’t want drones I want passionate people. Still I guess purchasing talent is the only solution when you have crazy ideas.

In the gaming crowd I have found an interesting split in people. They are either interested in making a quick buck by making the next angry birds or they have crazy high ideas like making a game that tells an amazing story while having mind blowing graphics, a soundtrack that blows your mind and other amazing things as well.

The downfall of group one is that everyone is trying to make that game. And I mean everyone. There are so many games that are trying to be the next big thing on iOS that it makes it hard to compete. But you can… or better yet I can. How? No idea.

I am going to try to do two things. First I am going to remake Falling Cats with out Game Salad. Since I have most of the mechanics of how the game should work figured out It will be a good thing for me to use for learning actual game development. Secondly I am going to start working on a second game. I have a few ideas but I need to develop them a little further before deciding. Probably something simple.

If you haven’t checked out Falling Cats yet, you should. It has problems… but it is fun and can only get better.