Interview with indie dev Rob Mostyn: • The Story of an Indie ... Find Me: Twitter: / kurt_indovina Instagram: / kurt_indovina Facebook: / krutindovina Personal blog: kurtindovina.w... Video game blog: vgcandc.com/
At last, someone is not trying to teach you success but rather emphasizing mistakes made. Good job man, regardless of your story, you're spreading good attitude towards entrepreneurship.
I really appreciate this comment, and I can't thank you enough for understanding my intentions of sharing my failures. Means a lot. Thanks for watching.
"Perfections and expectations are creative killers. When you have an expectation of something, you're essentially immediately setting yourself up for failure, because you are creating an illusion of something that does not exist yet. There was a lot of thinking power, but nothing there to make it a game." - Kurt Indovina --- I wrote this in a piece of paper as a quote for my motivation
Thank you! I made the same mistakes before, but I never knew what the mistakes were. Thank you so much for showing us. I'm working on this new game project, and I will have to show my friends I'm working with. I am now working on a remastered version of my failed project. I hope you change your mind and make the game that you failed on, because now you know what's the problem. Again, thank you so much for this video!
I'm an indie dev in training at the moment and if I can give you some advice, it would be this. Failure is more important to personal artistic growth, than succes is, you learn way more out of it, just don't forget to keep going. :)
Have you considered dumping the "mysterious island" part, skipping kickstarter and just complete the first part (making drinks in a cafe) as a standalone game? It looked like you planned more of it out than the rest, plus its game mechanics are probably simpler than whatever you had planned for the island. Just add a point system so the goal is to get a high score rather than be a lead in for the main game. If, at some time in the future, you decide to try the rest, you'll already have the intro done.
I'd break it up into parts and build each part like a separate game that way he gets the learning experience that he would get from doing Frogger ect. like Rob Mosten said. I've been trying to make games as a hobby and having 5 different projects going at once has helped me learn things that I can apply to other areas. (plus it's good to have some thing to fall back on when I'm stumped till that eureka moment)
Kurt, very interesting video. First off, you are a spectacular artist. Your style is so incredibly impressionistic and makes perfect sense through a kind of dream logic. Also, I'm an atrsy fartsy type of person like you and I'm working on my own game. The difference is that I developed an opposite strategy from yours. Instead of bursting out of the gate with a tremendous wave of energy, I set a long term time budget and made my goal "working on the game every single day" for some period of time. I've found that these adventures end if they require a wave of enthusiasm, because like romantic infatuation, it disintegrates pretty quickly. So I spent a few years working on a complicated mod first to learn how to code (I'm not a natural coder or mathematician). Then, once I'd earned some notoriety and reputation with the kind of people I was going to be marketing my game to (and more importantly, I'd learned to code) I bootstrapped all of those factors into my own stand alone project. I've found that what really matters is less about great ideas and more about infusing your life with the work habits that will help you build your game. Anyway, I'd love to chat with you some more or even perhaps do an interview for my project, The Noob Game Developer. Sorry that things didn't turn out well for you THIS time, but I am incredibly envious of your talent, and I know you'll find your way.
I deeply appreciated this comment, and I can't thank you enough for it. I agree with you on all fronts. Your approach to making a game, as in infusing it with your daily life, is exactly what I'm doing now with my channel and my journalistic work. Things seem to make a lot more sense doing that for me. Also, yes, please feel free to reach out anytime: kurtindovina@gmail.com
Alright Kurt, sent you an e-mail. Also, you can swing by my community Discord if you'd like and we can chat at some point. I'm interested in hearing your experiences. discord.gg/3MfshFE
HOLY HELL @the noob game developer I agree with you 100% such excellent insight and wisdom here. I have hundreds of projects people would call impossible from robotics to game development to inventions etc and I can do them ALL because I chip away at them little by little like they are a sculpture hidden in a giant rock and I have a tiny pick and hammer to slowly uncover them working at it every day. You can have a project rotation and time management system that GUARANTEES all of your dreams become a reality but you need to be willing to wait decades and make money somehow in the mean time as these project will not make money until they are done.
This “failure” is also a success. Without it you wouldn’t have been able to learn and share these lessons on this video! Thank you dude, here’s to many failures ahead🍾
I respect your honesty and self-reflection man. I think a lot of people try and start projects like a game / kickstarter due to frustration over their current circumstances - like this game is going to fix everything! It's a good thing you realised that before launching, if you go back and try again you'll be more likely to succeed now. Thanks for posting.
Amazing and meaningful video. Going for a simple game with realistic expectations is one of the best tips I've ever heard. Good luck with your projects and hopefully the best is yet to come.
The sentence at 12:27 will be stuck in my head for centuries, thank you! All the best for your future endeavour Kurt. It is disheartened whatever has happened but it is also lucky that it occur while you're still young. I wish you all the best and be proud of what you've done! Anyway, here's some questions from the newbie: 1) Was your team developing the game full time or part time? 2) Did you guys have a target audience in mind? If so, who are they? 3) How much did you showcase your game? (Such as posting online or showing it to others) And what are their responses in general? 4) How long was the development period? How did you guys sustain yourselves? 5) What happened after momentum began to fade? Or rather, how did the call for cease production happened? Are you guys still in good relationship? 6) Has anyone on your team has experience making video games before?
Thank you endlessly! Now for the questions: 1. It was part-time as a group. When we weren't together, I was getting up early in the morning learning how to animate, studying marketing, researching other projects, and so on. We'd meet up a couple times a week to show what we learned, what we had worked on, and try to set goals. 2. Generally, yes. I was primarily focusing on folks who liked games that'd influenced Windham like 'The Dream Machine,' 'Machinarium,' 'Kentucky Route Zero,' and 'Grim Fandano.' It's a niche audience, but I knew that going in. 3. Not much. I managed our social presence, and deliberately started with a mysterious facade for the game. I posted character portraits, settings, and made a fake postcard from Windham. I did, however, showcase a lot of the game to friends and family, all of which were tremendously supportive and excited about the project. 4. (This is where I want to punch myself in the face.) No more than 5-6 months. This is where I learned my most valuable lesson (and the most obvious), and it's that game development takes so long. I knew this going in, but I didn't take it as seriously as I should have. However, I don't regret stopping production on the game. As for sustainability, we all had day jobs. 5. It sort of just fizzled out over time. As the leader of the group, this is first-and-foremost my fault. My team members got jobs and started concentrating on other things, and I didn't do anything to pull them back in. There was no definitive moment when I declared it was over--enthusiasm just wore out. And yes, we're still all on good terms. 6. No.
You're absolutely welcome! And really, I don't see any of this as a harsh moment in my life. It's absolutely a misstep, but I felt as though I learned so so much from it. So I embrace it fully.
Fellow Rochesterian here, about to release a game on Steam March 12th. Great video, and made me wonder a bit about the game we made. We even presented a panel at Retrogamecon in Syracuse titled "anyone can make a game". There are some fundamental differences in how we approached it though. For one, we never really considered crowd funding at all. We made the game because it was a game we wanted to play. We also only considered the possibility of selling it when we made it to the point that it was fully playable and a proof of concept existed.
Evan, that's fantastic! I want to play your game. Email me: kurtindovina@gmail.com Also, are you still in Rochester? Are you aware of the ROC Game Dev community? Dem some cool cats.
Thanks Kurt! I just sent you an email. One thing I forgot to mention is that we had originally started work on our game in 2010... only to stop for about 7 years and pick it back up around a year ago. Sometimes these things come full circle. I am still in Rochester btw.
As someone who has to animate, program, write music on occasion, and actually design the games we make, I 100% sympathize with you. A lot of people don't understand what actually goes into making a game. I'm on the verge of finishing up a project we started about 3 years ago, and have the ground work laid out for another project in the future. It's not an easy thing to do.
I deeply DEEPLY appreciate your ability to relate to this. But unlike me, it's remarkable you've come this far! I can't wait to play what you've been making. Be sure to share it when it's done. And again, thanks for this comment.
Man, thank you so much for this. I’m so glad i clicked on this video from the recommended videos. I wish you good luck and motivation! p.s. what is the title of that music on your outro? Thanks!
Man, I'm so thankful you clicked on the video! Thank you for watching and commenting. And best of luck to you. As for the outro music... I made it. It doesn't have a title. Maybe I'll name it "Chessur."
First off, I just wanted to say that I really liked the video and thank you for sharing your experience. It sounded like a tough thing to go through and probably even tougher to come to terms with it and move on. Good for you on that though! Also, I really like your drawing style! I do have to say though, I think that everyone creates something with some sort of expectations in mind. I don't think that creating something and hoping people think it's cool is a bad thing and no one creates anything for the public and doesn't expect something. In my experience, keeping your expectations low is a good way to go. "Hey I hope my friends dig this" or maybe even "I hope to learn how to animate better from this project" are very reasonable things to expect. I notice many developers and creators now shoot for the stars or expect to make millions on their first project, which I think is self-sabotaging yourself. Of course, not saying you did this but you understand what I mean. I do agree 100% about failures though. You HAVE to fail to learn, but you can't fail or succeed unless you put yourself out there and try. You might've bit off more than you could chew on this project but you're on the right path and will get there some day! =)
I need to state that you are incredibly talented. You have great ideas. You deserve a chance in the spotlight and to get great respect for your visions. I hope you keep doing your best. Keep building things, even if its not in games. Keep up the good work. 👍
This video was very inspiring, and very accurate when it comes to indie dev. I too am on the journey of making my own game (my 5th released game). It requires lots of commitment, and one of the hardest things to grasp is that you can't work on it forever. Sometimes you'll be happy with it sometimes you won't, but you must ship eventually.
Thank you so much, Toby. And I'm glad this was relatable even for you, as someone who has clearly gotten further down the development chain than me. Appreciate your time and watching. Keep developing!
Very insightful! As your friends suggested, always start small. I remember starting out with game maker making simple games with their old drag-n-drop features and slowly graduated to the more advanced stuff involving actual coding. I suggest anyone thinking of getting into game dev to try making a few super simple 2D games of their own before moving on to the bigger stuff.
Totally awesome, I'm doing indie dev right now and a lot of this really connects with me. Thanks for getting emotional about the project failing, and showing all your notes on it. Gotta say, I think you're half right and only giving yourself a little bit of credit for how awesome it is to "fail" the way you did. Sure, an actual game did not get created. But it looks like you fleshed out a lot of artistic style with all that and I'm sure you'll be taking into anymore creative work you do. A benefit of trying to tackle it solo over and over again is that you get to see just how many moving parts there are. So as you said, now you know that you were missing vital components, such as game play lol. But honestly, that story and theme looked like it was headed in a good direction. Maybe you're not a failed game dev... I'd look forward to seeing you work on something again in the future when you feel like you're ready.
For what its worth. You made a pretty great video here. Regardless of what you can and can't do with games at the moment. So you got that going for ya. You're editing and style and all that is pretty cool.
Thank you, Ryan! My take away from making attempting to make this game has sorta inadvertently directed me towards endeavors that make more sense for me personally. It's allowed me to really hone in and triple down on my already existing strengths.
Even though your failures your an inspiration to me I’m glad I found your channel I hope to see way more videos from you. I’m binging all your videos tonight
Kurt, seems like you tried to make a game rather eccentrically skipping over actual game development. You don't talk about your experience of coding or how far you got with development. If you were inexperienced in that area, did you collaborate with a programmer? I think you had the seed of something good with your design and I hope you can revisit this project if the PTSD isn't too bad. My approach is to prioritise gameplay, coding with simple place-holder artwork to hone the gameplay first. If you labour over narrative, have gorgeous artwork and sound but the mechanics are clunky/unengaging, you simply don't have a game. Wishing you every success as a games journalist, you edit with thought and humour and I think you will go from strength to strength.
Two of the four members on the team were programmers. I am not a programmer -- or at least not at this stage in my life. The game got as far as the opening sequence, and that's where everything fizzled out. That was my fault as a team leader. Admittedly, this project was not priority in my other team member's lives. But it should have been me to keep everyone involved. Thankfully the PTSD isn't bad at all actually. All the assets still exist, and if the stars align, I'd be more than willing to revisit the project. But until I do that, I have to first do what I didn't: start small. Really appreciate you taking the time to watch this and comment. And thanks for the kind words.
Hi Kurt, you're welcome. I like how you are candid about what happened and take responsibility. A team of 4 is a pretty ideal size for a first game, with 2 programmers I think you could have got a good prototype built. One approach, is rather than concentrating on perfecting a scene, is to build a vertical slice of the game showing a little of all gameplay elements, thus making an MVP which is good for finding problems and demoing. Even if it didn't work out, that you assembled a team to get on board with your game is a good indicator of it's potential and IMAO the style and idea are great. Most importantly you sound like you are organised about the lessons you have learned going forwards. I look forward to hearing more from you.
Thanks for your comment Dan. It really depends on the type of game and how you like to work. All games are iterative so whichever way you work you can get round to doing the other bits. Generally you design on paper first, (love Kurt's notebooks), however; I don't think it is a good idea to labour on a lots of design assets, animations, etc. if the core gameplay hasn't been developed.. For a simple point + click, I'd agree with, you can accomplish that with little coding and even some templates in game engines. I'm currently making a 3D game; although I am *dying* to make some luscious artwork for it, I know I can prototype the game and test it with cubes as placeholders for characters etc. to ensure the gameplay works. If the gameplay is working well, then I can spend time on more very time intensive artwork. My comments re: Kurt's game are because it is a very common story for people to labour on ideas and concept art without being involved in *actual gamedev* ; also common for these people to suddenly give up when faced with the work of development. I think it's best to put out a 'minimal viable product' and get some feedback. Not with friends and family, but actual gamers who can give you feedback you may not like, but can highlight aspects that you thought were great, but may be problematic to some players. I was at a conference recently, where I spoke to one indieDev who shared my feeling, 'gameplay first' he had a simple game but with smooth mechanics. At another booth, I played a game that was really buggy and said to the developer - "You have spent so much time and money on your booth and design (they had large cardboard cut-outs of their characters, merchandise etc) but your game doesn't work. They replied that they had done shows with prototypes before but because they had no visuals no one visited their booth, now they were generating a lot more interest in their game, even though there was not much of a game yet. They may have been ahead on interest than the guy with the playable game. So really it is a bit chicken and egg, nowadays the marketing has to be done concurrently with development, once a game is finished it is almost too late to market it. There are good arguments for putting a lot of work into visuals up front. So Dan I wouldn't disagree with you, I guess it depends a lot on your personality and how you like to work as well. My current approach is here: fiendishdevices.net/start-here I am not going to share my game widely until I have some visuals to make it look appealing, but still will feel more confident if I have the basic gameplay down first.
Your an artist, One thing we lack on our team, an artist. Art comes last though, and you being a artist put it first. The first thing is prototype the basic core mechanics with boxes if you have to and get your drink station running and make sure it's fun. Then, you put in the nice models, art, music whatever. The core gameplay has to be first, and this kills a lot of story tellers and artist who want a game, but can't code and prototype. However, like you said, something simple you can code and hunt forums for pieces of code. Get your basic gameplay going, then present it to others to help polish and you already got the art part down. Thank you for the video, it was good. don't give up, I like those cafe games and a good story behind it while being challenged to serve everyone sounds great.
I really appreciate that, and though I've dabbled and day dreamed about it, I don't think now is the time. Since this pursuit, I've changed gears and really tripled down on what I know I'm good at and capable of doing. So, for now, those are my focuses. But again, your encouragement means a lot.
I have 5-6 game projects that i abandoned (not as big as your project, but big enough to stumble a solo dev who barely started coding and need to do everything alone), but each time i throw a project i learn more about coding and about what to expect from yourself and then I start a smaller project. Until i finally managed to have an actual game, nothing commercial, just a tiny free gamejolt game that is actually playable. And now because of it i started and finished another game (nothing commercial yet) but it was way begger than the previous one. And now i think i can start to go back to the games i left behind or rather the ideas inside them, and not the actual codes and arts, because it is easier to remove bad old codes than to try to make them good. Thanks for the video as it even sheds more light and explanation to the developer journey 😊👍
I absolutely love your insight... I lean in the direction of unchecked ambition myself... if nothing else I will take your video as a reminder that being realistic is extraordinarily important when starting out making video games. One thing you said that absolutely resonated with me was that "perfectionism and expectation are creative killers." It makes a lot of sense. I learned something stumbling across this video that I couldn't have elsewhere. Thank you!
Hey Kurt, just wanted you to know this video is just what I needed before making my game. Thank you for sharing your insight and experience. I hope to send you a demo if you’re still playing games!
No game is stupid. But to everyone eyes, the first one is. It is such a huge juicy self steem when you finish the first one, that you're prone to get married, take a bigger project that you cannot deal with, or just crash the car like Luke Skywalker. But finish one game is not by any means success. Is very hard to conpete out there. But first things first: Be a finished game. Good playability. Good but safe grafics. Safe to do within a limites budget and energy. The vision...now: How much I have to the next Step. One step at time.
I freaking love "jumping in the deep end" when I do new things. The failures are actually really funny to me even in the moment since I go in knowing I don't know wtf I'm doing. I once hopped in my car and drove 18 hours from Kentucky to Montreal because I'd never been there and they were having a Global Game Jam event and I'd never done one of those either...could I have gone to one in my own city? Sure....but I'd never driven that far either so I wanted the adventure. Oh and I did that trip in winter when that event runs lol. My car got trapped in snow and ice a few times. Fun times...
Such a great insight and deffo shows at the least that you learnt lessons from what you did. Have you considered turning it into an animated short instead of a game maybe? Deffo sounds as though it would have been interesting. Great video again Kurt.
Great video!! Very well articulated. Thank you for sharing your story. This video is very well done and is very inspiring!! Thank you! Many blessings to you
Thanks a lot for this video. Glad this was on my recommendations. I'm having a similar problem you had. I've got this world in my head that I want to create, it's not even a game, just an idea. But I know that it's just too ambitious to finish. All the skills I need are there, I can code, make art, write a story, make music. Maybe not very good, I don't even have something to show. Maybe I just think that I can. But I can't make games. I always start making a prototype, but it never gets finished. I'll admit that I learned a lot from making these prototypes, but not how to finish a project, since that's the only thing I have never done before. But that is a problem many developers have. Again, thanks for making this video. I think I now know better what to expect from trying to make a game that's too big for one person. Best of luck to you, I hope you can finish your game someday :)
It's good that you own up to your mistakes. Someone else might have just talked about how everyone else on the project failed instead. I recoded Gauntlet on my little Coco decades ago, and since then I knew I wanted to get into game dev. I tried to put together a demo in '98 and got an interview at a few places, but I realized I wasn't ready to pick up and move across the country in a short time frame (having no connections to find a place to live was a real damper). Recently I stepped away from a position to build up my game dev skills again in the hopes of kickstarting a new path, but I kept to myself and didn't research where I wanted to work or get with other devs at all, and I can see where that would have at least given me some insight and maybe established some connections. Still forging forward.
The first 20 seconds sound like you were talking about me. I planned a Kickstarter but in the end didn't set it up. That game is currently on hold and I'm not sure whethere I want to continue working on it (I have 4 binders for it...). I actually released a demo (it's called Disobey Me!, in case anyone is interested). The reception wasn't all that good. But I now have a new idea that really motivates me. I need to do more planning and focus more on what people might want to play and not just I myself. I have experience with software structuring and I began with using that knowledge today. I have worked on two Unity games so I now also know how Unity works. I can pull it off. I have to believe in it. My personal life has gone downhill big times over the last two years (health can be a bitch) so it also gives me something to cling on.
I’m working on churning my first title. Like all aspiring indie dev’s I thought I could make this amazing game and get this massive wave of people to play it. I quickly was reminded by friends and past experiences that you need to walk before you can run. That means going through mediocre days where you spend all of that day trying to learn a part of the basics. Everything in life is like working out, incremental build but you will one day get there with focus and time.
It's amazing that you can admit you mistakes and learn from them. Keep trying to make a game and eventualy, you will have your dream project. It might take one year or a decade, but don't give up :).
I feel so much that comment you made about how you "just needed" someone to help you program and make the game. I started tinkering with the idea of an indie game over a year ago, and I decided that I would do the art and find someone to help me program it. I worked with a couple of friends who were just as inexperienced as myself, and I wasn't even really that satisfied with a lot of the assets I was making. I chose to do a pixel art style cause "hey I love pixel art in video games!" even though it wasn't really anything I had experience with, made a lot of assets over a period of several months and.. well.. yeah. We all sort of got fatigued, not much really ever happened and we started to avoid each other - very much like what happened with your game. Fast forward a year, and I decided that I would just try to learn Unity a bit, and now I may not be an expert programmer or an expert with Unity, but I can get by, and I am working within my own art style that I'm comfortable with... And I also accept that I have no idea if my game will even be at all successful, but I am enjoying working on it. I've learned that managing expectations is one of the most important things in game development, along with not being afraid to jump in on something that intimidates you and trying to learn about it and experiment with it. Actually, the irony is I always fancied myself an artist, but I enjoy the programming more than the art sometimes, I think! Anyway, I don't expect anyone to care about my story, but it seems fitting to share it here. But hey, if any fledgling devs like myself read this, if it resonates with you, all I have to say is stick to what feels right for you and don't be afraid to get your feet wet, I've found learning and experimenting to be loads of fun. :)
I think there’s something very valuable in what you described as the opening for your game. Disturbingly I’ve had a similar idea for writing/depicting visually a story of one who escapes their own life by drawing within oneself. I had specifically in mind as well the character washing ashore by a nearby city as well. It’s a little Jungian perhaps? In any case, I hope you revisit storytelling by whatever means you see suitable as somethings are important to make known even if few come to know it. Good luck with your channel man
I am a perfectionist with grandiose ambitions who has been working on doing the R&D for the productivity boosting tools that I know that I need to have in order to attempt to complete my game within my lifetime. It is a hobby project that I have been doing to keep me from getting bored and depressed. The game is an intergalactic asynchronous MMORTSFPSRPG and I have been working on it for 22 years. I have had no formal training in computer programming, or programming language design. All that I know is self taught. I have no collaborators and no deadline. Just recently I accidentally formatted the wrong external HDD and wiped all of my R&D. I worked through the night and the next day and wrote the core of the language design from my most recent recollections of it. I have finished the design of my language and just need to implement its hybrid modular interpreter-compiler. This by itself may take a year, but the time I will save through the use of this productivity boosting tool will more than make up for my substantial time investment as I will be using it to create the middleware tools that I then make my largely procedurally generated game with. At this point I have no protagonist, story, or underlying theme in mind. I don’t know where or when it is set. Just because it is intergalactic does not mean that it needs to involve futuristic space travel. It just requires the broadest possible canvas of a Universe where any possible story may be set. It is first person and I am considering making it so it can be adapted to work in VR but the issue there is that VR can be fatiguing for long play sessions, limiting my game from being able to have deeper narratives unfold. It is no good having something appear to be more immersive, even tactile, if the experience is more superficial as a result and never gets the time during a play session to establish events of meaningful consequence. So it could be that VR is a fun, sideshow, gimmick that I won’t bother with. I need future headsets that are comfortable to wear for at least four hours at a time, and my PSVR doesn’t support that duration of extended engagement. At many times I have thought about failure and how I would feel were I to not finish my game after decades of work, but I remind myself that I have enjoyed the process, and it has been immensely rewarding to challenge my intellect to learn new things, whilst successfully avoiding getting depressed through having nothing else to do with my time.
Truly moving video, it's so inspiring to see how your mistakes paved out a path to success for you. I do think that everyone is overly ambitious during the first time they try to make a video game though, it's an inevitability.
That means a lot, Warrenaterz. Failure can be a very valuable tool! And yes, I agree with you on being overly ambitious at first. It really is inevitable. What matters is what you do afterwards. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for sharing that! I think it's better to fail ambitiously then never being ambitious at all. I've messed up a bunch of times trying to make games and think this current project could actually pan out because of what I've learned from my other attempts. Just have to keep pushing. It's only around 10% or so people on Steam ever put out a 2nd game... this isn't an easy thing at all and successful solo Devs are unicorns. One thing I wish I'd see stop in indie dev is people making solo dev out to be easy or even the normal approach... no. Takes a small village.
I don't know you at all, and I rarely actually leave comments on videos. Interestingly, I sat through this entire thing and I found it very introspective and reflective, not only from a game development point-of-view, but just in a general life stance. I really liked your views about luck and being in the right place at the right time, and failure. It's very akin to a lecture I watched a long time ago about a billionaire about his success: he attributed his wealth to extraordinary luck. He happened to be at the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. I like the idea that if there's failure, there's a "missing step" somewhere. Anyway, thanks for making this. I don't think you'll be so unlucky in your next endeavor. :D You have a cool brain.
Whatever the outcome of your attempt, I admire that you are brave and generous enough to share your experience with others. Please keep pursuing a fulfilling and happy life.
I worked at a cafe too. Was super depressed there , actually I enjoyed the job and was nice stress free job. The thing that makes you depressed working in a low lvl type job is how people treat you.
Thank you for sharing your story. Mostyn's explanation is totally correct: Start making games with something small, like frogger or tic-tac-toe. Another thing to watch out for is scope creep (which I'm still trying to master). Right now I'm making a text-based game, and I still need to reign myself in once in a while
I really wish this game would've become a thing! The concept and idea sounds amazing! Especially since I use to work at a coffee shop and I, too could relate with the whole depression and stress of being a batista still daydreaming and figuring out what do do in life. The whole idea 💡 of struggling with serving coffees and the complicated orders coming up. . .and being washed away from giant waves DDAMN that hit close to home. Thank you for this, sometimes I feel like I also have no idea what I'm fucking doing. But I am adamant about making my game stand out. I hope you reconsider to someday try again!
Make sure you have experience with the type of game you want to make; for example lets say you want to make an online FPS, have you ever set up a server before? have you made other games that have required related mechanics before? Do you have the artist/s that will be able to deliver the visuals for your game? Planning, Experience, Time and Communication are all vital. Experience has helped us so much and now at least 3 years has past since we last attempted on making a game, we have the experience and above to create an online shooter game and the results speak for them self, 7 weeks into dev we've got the game fully working with online servers, no not all the art is complete and yes there are more things to add to it in terms of coding but these are easier than what we've completed in 7 weeks, in other words if we were to fail we've passed that stage as fast as we could (you don't want to work on the easy bits that take tons of time to find out when you get to the hard parts such as creating servers that you have no clue or experience in doing that). You don't want to over-plan, I wrote a few things i wanted in the map and made it as i went along, we didn't have any concept art just a rough idea of the style we wanted and we took inspirations from other art that fit our style but yeah depending on the artistic complexity you might wanna do a bit of concept art. But only with the experience we've gained from these 3 years would we be able to do this. I have now more than doubled my experience I had before with art and my brother now has been coding for over 8 years now, yes it really requires this much time and experience. I gained mine through working on my art portfolio and experimenting, my brother through making various mobile games (hes made at least 8 simple games since) but he's applied knowledge from all these little games into our current game. Cheers for sharing your story.
Because of this video -this is the first and only video that I've watched from your channel-, I subscribed to your channel because you gave me a true and precious advice. One fail story is better than 10x success story. Because fail story is more valuable and you can really learn from it than success stories. Thanks for your time and your honest advice :)
Rob Mouston had some great advice. One of the first things I made in class was Pong and then Brick Break. I agree with you that failures are vital, not just in design but in life. Success confirms what you already know, but failure teaches new things. I'm glad I caught your video on recommended and look forward to watching that interview and other things on your channel.
I'm bummed I didn't know Mostyn at the time I was developing, nor was there a community in my town like there is now. But, I'm glad everything happened the way it did. Thanks for watching and understanding!
Good post mortem. Your mistake is the most common one. Look at it this way. Thera lots of kickstarters that succeeded but no game was made. Those devs are a bigger failure for taking that money.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I am a Game Designer as well, and I can only work on my games, because I live at my mothers house. It is tough to compete with all the other companies. I wish you all the best for the future and I hope one day you will have some better results from your ideas than the failed game-idea.
I think you really nailed it dude. I don't know what made you realize it was a bad idea at the end, but I can name about 1000 people who really could have used your insight.
thanks dude, working on an indie game here, some valuable info in here. In some way I am lucky because i have been making games for many years, I feel like I can finally make the game I want, but it is still tough and I have daily fears and worries, but I think I am getting there.
Do not be afraid to start again, even if you fail, you will learn a lot on the way, do not be afraid to do this, just give one step a day, just one step, even if you can give two to ten steps, give only one, and AFTER A YEAR SEE WHERE YOU ARRIVED BE PATIENT, ERROR ENOUGH AND LEARN WHERE ERROR
Just found this channel, subscribed.you gave me feels in the whole "wtf do i do with my life" part.I love doing game dev as a hobby.messing around and experimenting with stuff.but damn does life get in the way of what we want.even our own limitations sometimes.
The abrupt loss of such an amazing sounding concept for a game truly is tragic. However, it's good that you found success in your failure. I wish you luck on future endeavor you may have. P.S. I wanted to ask, If you could go back in time and try again with the knowledge you have now, would you?
That's an excellent question, and the answer is no. After all, I know this all now, so I could technically get trudging on making a game right now if I really wanted to. And unlike then, I'm also much more heavily involved with small indies due to my position as a games journalist. But still, the answer is no. I find what I'm doing now to be extremely rewarding and validating. Thanks for asking.
Hey man, this is the first video I have watched on your channel and the first I have ever heard of you. In my honest opinion, this is a great vlog/video about your experience. It makes me hope for your success, Kurt. It's not much but if it helps; plus one sub!
Where you went wrong, is you never designed a game, never made a game, never put in 1 line of anything that actually counts towards a game. You can write design documents, kickstarter campaigns, videos.... all of that crap... and it still isn't game development. Game development starts with code and ends with code - art is not code, and if you can't code, then you should find a system that doesn't rely on it. You never mentioned who would actually develop the game, design is not development.... All you need is the magic code :D - Basically, if you can't code, you can't develop a game, you can't designate what is necessary, you can't even give decent guidelines to programmers. The person coding the game needs to be an intrinsic part of the design process, assuming you actually want to finish the project. I am a solo developer, I do code, art, design.... everything, and its the only way I can work. I can't stand to write code to flimsy designs, or have a less experienced person make demands... it simply does not work. Game designers ALL need to understand the basics of every single aspect... how is art made, how is music made, how is game logic made, how are models made... you shouldn't even consider designing a game until you understand these things - you will either have to learn them, or find people who have the skills, then direct them - either way you need that knowledge. Having unique ideas is not enough, you need to be able to fulfil them, you need to be in a position where you don't rely on people.
stunthumb omg, people like you still exist? No you do not need to know how to code to make a game. It's 2018. You can literally build A Link to the Past from start to finish without typing a single line of code today. I fucking hate when programmers act like they are the lifeline of game development. Is it important? Yes, but it's not the be all end all. Let me put it this way. A great artist can certainly make a successful game without any programming knowledge whatsoever, but a great programmer will have a substantially harder time releasing a successful game without a great artist.
Interesting video, thanks! I think that as an artist you could now use visual tools such as Unreal Blueprints to create something that demonstrates the game play and basically design your game functionality. Then you could work with a programmer to produce the code. Also, there is the concept of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to get something done quickly as a starting point to improve upon.
You blabbering fool you. Great to hear about people's creative struggles. They're always motivational! Good narrative framing. QUESTIONS TIME! - What was your con experience like trying to promote your game? Or were you doing con work for R&D - How big was your team outside of you and your gf? - Did you have stumbling blocks before the big "this isn't gonna work" if so what pushed you to keep going? - Are your videos scripted, do you use bullet-ed ideas and talk around them, or do you just flow and edit it down to what you like?
I'm just going to answer these right down the list: - I'm having a little trouble understanding this question. I'm assuming you're referring to conventions? In that case, we never ended up going to a con to promote the game. I had reached out to quite a few, and were making plans for attendance, but the project dissolved before hand. It was mostly for down the road R&D work. I hope that answers the question. - The team consisted of four people total. Juliana was color and environment art, I was game design and concept art, and then the other members were programmers and designers as well. - The major stumbling blocks came from a lack of commitment in the rest of the team (and quiet honestly, myself). Now let me make it clear I'm not trying to pinpoint blame, but in the most respectful way, everyone has their own life and goals. This game filled a gap in our lives at that specific moment. If anything, this was a fault on my end as the team leader. I could have kept pushing forward, and picked everyone else up, but there was an unspoken moment where momentum began to fade, and I took a big step back and realized that I was a little in over my head. May not be an uplifting answer, but it's the truth. I will say this: this experience has tremendously affected how I execute ALL of my projects. THIS was a stumbling block in a much bigger picture of my life. - That's a good question, and it's a little bit of both. I tried a script once, and it was a fucking disaster. It just didn't feel natural, I wasn't speaking how I actually do. So I scrapped the video and re-shot it without one, and it felt tremendously better. BUT, I've found that it's good for me to at least write general bullets -- which helps structure my thoughts. Otherwise, I run wild and cut it down in editing. PHEW that was a lot. I sincerely apologize for that massive essay. Hope it properly answered all your questions.
- Yes you answered, I was assuming you had gone to conventions to promote when you mentioned conventions in the video. - 4 ppl is good team size.. also good DnD game size x.x - I feel you big time. I have had the same and i could talk much more on this with you. That's for another time. - I'm jealous of how smooth your videos are. i need a script so hard. I collapse when i improv infront of a camera. Keep up your awesome work. I come here to hear you talk so the more you give me the more :) on my face. MORE KURT MORE!
This is my first time viewing your channel and I have to say this is one hell of a first impression. Being able to look at your failure head on like this is truly admirable. As a game development myself (Mostly an Environmental Artist) I try to keep in mind that my ideas will always fall below my expectations considering as an artist, we always like to shoot for the stars. It's a continuous mentally battle to manage those exceptions and come back to reality. Making a game is a very challenging task and it's not for the faint of heart. However, for you to even attempted it still cool in my eyes. I wish you the best on your future endeavors though.
Im a starting game dev (been studying a little more than a year, got some practice content on my channel if you look at my mkst recent uploads - basically just animation blueprint, some apex cloth physics - definitely not any final assets) and thanks to Unreal and blueprints makes it a lot easier to make a game, unless it's a large art and animation/2d story experience like yours. You don't have to start with frogger. Im making a simple gameplay 3rd person shooter (but fantasy weapons) and all I need are a lot more environment assets made and getting better with AI and particles, which the latter I'm just really new with. But for shooters and 3d stuff, blender and Unreal seems to have made the entry into making a game much easier. Now as for that advertising and stuff, that is something I'll definitely need to research but down the road. I imagine I'll have a workable demo in a year, maybe less. Just one level and killing stuff. I do have a larger story in mind though.
This story does not qualify as a failed career. It is just one failed project. Which is coincidentally a common first step in this career: failing because you don't have enough understanding of how to deliver, and accumulating this experience for next attempts. Now it is of course up to you to decide if you want to try again at some point or give up for ever, I am no one to judge or tell you what to do. But "The Story of a Failed Game Dev" sounds to me over-dramatic and more importantly misleading. This video is about "The Story of a Failed Game". It's not so terrible. Sad, yeah, but ... just ask any successful game dev how many aborted projects lie in their graveyard. All that being said, I salute respectfuly your intention to help others and especially your courage for sharing this painful story, it is not an easy thing to do.
Hey, David! Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment, and I'm sorry if the title mislead you in anyway. (Wasn't intentionally going for anything clickbaity.) But I appreciate you letting me know! All that said, thank you for the salute. Means a great deal. Have a good one.
No worries, I was not even blaming you. Just trying to encourage your viewers: one project failed is not a failure, it is one step forward :) What is very interesting (and brave, again) with your approach is that there is usually a lot of focus on success stories, and that, now, is misleading. Sharing feedback on failure is useful because when someone begins and fails they are often ashamed and think they are the only one in that situation. It is important to know that success comes from trying, but more than once ;)
You are awesome, dude. I would never be this brave to talk about my failures in front of audience, never & come on, you are not a fool. Love your honesty and definitely going to consider the points when i am gonna make a game. Have a nice day.
