The first Norwich Game Expo showcasing the work of local games developers was held on October 11th and 12th at Epic Studios in Norwich. We were lucky enough to be invited to show our games and had a great time talking to people and seeing all the amazing games and talented individuals from the local area.
What is apparent is that there is a huge interest in computer games development, across all age ranges. More and more people are having a go at turning their game ideas into reality, aided by an explosion in great tools such as Unity. It feels very similar to the boom in the games industry that happened in the eighties.
My advice for an aspiring developer who wants to write a game is to do something small and do it well. Don't underestimate the work involved in finishing a game. A finished game is a lot different to a prototype. I had the core game of Plasma Duel done in June, but have only just got all the essential features and bug fixes done where I'm happy to do a beta release, and there's still quite a few of features I need to add before I can publish a full release.
Plasma Duel is about twice the size of my slot machine games in terms of complexity but has taken about four times as much work to finish. It seems like the time it takes to finish a game is roughly equal to the size of it squared. It's obvious to me now why very large games by indie teams very rarely get finished, or are released in an unfinished state.
The big advantage we have as indie developers is that we are fans of our own games. That means we have the enthusiasm to play our own games over and over until we've found most of the the bugs and glitches. Players can tell the difference between a game written by someone working on their own game as opposed to games written by someone being paid to do a job. That's why indie games have a popularity that is out of proportion with their budgets.
What is apparent is that there is a huge interest in computer games development, across all age ranges. More and more people are having a go at turning their game ideas into reality, aided by an explosion in great tools such as Unity. It feels very similar to the boom in the games industry that happened in the eighties.
My advice for an aspiring developer who wants to write a game is to do something small and do it well. Don't underestimate the work involved in finishing a game. A finished game is a lot different to a prototype. I had the core game of Plasma Duel done in June, but have only just got all the essential features and bug fixes done where I'm happy to do a beta release, and there's still quite a few of features I need to add before I can publish a full release.
Plasma Duel is about twice the size of my slot machine games in terms of complexity but has taken about four times as much work to finish. It seems like the time it takes to finish a game is roughly equal to the size of it squared. It's obvious to me now why very large games by indie teams very rarely get finished, or are released in an unfinished state.
The big advantage we have as indie developers is that we are fans of our own games. That means we have the enthusiasm to play our own games over and over until we've found most of the the bugs and glitches. Players can tell the difference between a game written by someone working on their own game as opposed to games written by someone being paid to do a job. That's why indie games have a popularity that is out of proportion with their budgets.
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