Porter's World

Becoming A Game Developer

Becoming a game developer is hard work, really hard work. There are however a few advantages to becoming a game developer that other careers in the world just can’t offer. In order to become a lawyer, you have to go to school, lots of school. In order to become a doctor, you have to do the same. To become a game developer however, you just have to be passionate, have an internet connection, and have the occasional motivation boost.

In the previous chapters of becoming a game developer, I spoke of what abilities will help you excel as a game designer, as well as gave some tips on how to analyze games to further yourself as a game developer. By now you may be wondering what it takes to actually get the job, to actually enter the industry and get a paycheck for your hard work. Sure you can make games, but how do you sell them? How do you get hired? When it comes to flash games, you’re good to go from the start. Unlike other careers, you don’t need credentials, you simply need to know how to make games, and do it well. Anyone in the world can start creating games in flash, selling them, and earning some very nice cash. It takes a lot of work, and I mean a lot, but it is within every single person’s grasp to do so if they choose. I started by making games for fun, but I soon found out that I could get paid for what I was doing. Bottom line is this, you don’t need a college degree, you don’t need to find a boss to hire you, you can self teach yourself and become your own boss overnight.

As I said, I began creating and selling games when I was 18 years old, back in the days of living in my first apartment away from home. One of the greatest things about entering the flash game industry is that you can do it at any age. You can be 13 years old, have a passion for games, take the time out to teach yourself, and instantly hop into making games. You won’t succeed with your first game, at least not on the level you would like to, but practice really does make perfect, especially in the flash gaming industry. I really do wish I had been into this when I was younger, I can’t imagine how evolved my skills would be had I started doing this at the age of 14 or so. Granted I was messing around with flash 4, getting an understanding of the time line and flash IDE, but I never actually touched code until much later. If you’re a younger reader and interested, don’t get discouraged, keep trying and I assure you time and patience will bring you to a very nice place once you get things down. In fact, if you’re a younger reader, I encourage you to start your career early, even if just as a hobby. One of the hardest things I find in trying to make this a full time job, is the inconsistency of pay. Start while you’re living at home, or at the very least get a few thousand dollars to sit on before you go and pour yourself into the job, it may take longer to pay off than you anticipate.

Alright, so you don’t need credentials, your age doesn’t really matter, so how do you actually get started? Adobe Flash is a rather expensive product itself, a great tool, but a bit expensive. I suggest using FlashDevelop if the price of Flash it too high, it’s an amazing program that is better suited for your programming needs than flash itself, not meant for animating, but that can be done in other programs. If you read up on the FlashDevelop page, you’ll find instructions for downloading Flex and other programs in order to compile your projects, in the end, creating a completely free set up. Once compiled, you can either play the swf in the browser, or you can download the flash debug player. All in all, that’s about all you’ll need to get started.

There you have it, you’re ready to start programming games. You don’t need to be any specific age, you don’t need a $600 program, and you don’t need to go to school and earn a fancy degree in order to secure your position. You will need determination, more common sense than the average human seems to carry these days, and a lot of free time, but if you’re reading this I have confidence that you can pass the above prerequisites. Enjoying your job and becoming financially stable doesn’t come easy in this world, and most of the time your caught within the system of going to college and following the rest of the cycle. In the flash industry the opportunity is up to you, you choose how far to go. If you really want this to be your future, get to work and make it a reality, it really is entirely up to you.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Becoming A Game Developer

As we’re all aware, or should be aware of, the path to becoming a game developer is not one that can be completed over night. Not only must you have certain mental abilities, but the skills that you must posses can not only exist, but must be refined. For example, I myself have a good eye for what elements in a game make the game more fun, and the elements that just make a game annoying. Despite my keen eye for this, I have a lot to learn, as all developers do. Certain activities should be done on a regular basis to refine the skills needed to be a successful developer, whether you’re a professional or just starting out. Playing games of all types on a regular basis is one of them.

It’s no mystery that playing games is something that all game developers should do. If you don’t play games that are successful, as well as unsuccessful, how can you possibly make a game that will come close to doing great itself? This may be common sense, but it goes a bit deeper. A common misconception floating around game developers and game testers is that when we play games, we’re just playing games. It’s not exactly like that, and if you think it is, I urge you to read on. When a developer or tester is playing games, they’re doing far more than laying back and enjoying some awesome games. As a developer, you must constantly analyze various aspects of games while playing them. Some of these include the length of the game, the fun factor, bugs, pacing, what’s annoying, difficulty, how easy is it to understand, and so on. Each of these aspects is just a main category as well, all can contain sub categories making the list larger than you would expect. It’s these game aspects that you need to pay attention to when playing a game.

Let’s take a deeper look into a specific game genre. Let’s go with any generic “Beat em up” game, Streets of rage, Captain Commando, Turtles in Time, take your pick. When thinking of these games, what important characteristics of the genre come to mind? First off, I would look into the move speed of the character. If the character is moving too slow, then those scrolling backgrounds better be damn pretty or the player is going to get bored fast. Second off, the amount of enemies the game throws at you per each area needs to be carefully thought out. If a game has too many enemies per small checkpoint, it may do one of two things. First off, it may be too hard. These games often aren’t too hard, that is, until one or more enemies decides to attack you at once like the little punks they usually are. Second off, it may make the pacing of the game drag, so it’s important that the number of enemies is too few rather than too many. Next, what makes this game stand out from the others? Almost every game out there has another game like it, if not many, so it’s important to have a few original features. In these games, that usually consisted of special moves (such as the cop car in streets of rage, or the different abilities for the 4 characters in Captain Commando). Although walking around and beating guys up is fun, the occasional destructible terrain such as boxes or phone booths is a very welcome addition. Looking back to difficulty, it’s important that there are enough items laying around to replenish your health (such as the infamous piece of meat on a place), but it’s also important not to have too many as this would decrease the difficulty dramatically. As far as level design goes, it’s important to keep the visuals new, and the way the level progresses interesting. For instance, most levels move left to right, the end resulting in a boss fight. It’s important that this isn’t the case in all levels. Elevators leading to new floors, holes in the floor to drop down into, getting on trains, hopping onto moving trucks, and many other forms of level navigation add to level design greatly and help mix things up. As you can see, I’ve gone into some pretty deep detail as to what should be examined in a “Beat em up” game. That said, there’s plenty more that could be examined; this is only a start, a nice start, but a start none the less.

Playing games doesn’t sound so fun now does it? Well it is, so don’t let the above get you down. Playing games as a developer is definitely hard work, but it’s one of the best activities you can do to get yourself to become a better game developer. In addition, a true game developer can analyze a game while enjoying it simultaneously. That said, if you’re a game developer in the works, or someone who’s just forgotten about how important it is to analyze games, make sure you really tear what makes a game what is apart next time you play.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Becoming A Game Developer

There’s a lot of work needed in order to become a game developer. People often feel that if they have an artist who can animate, and a programmer who knows the language, that they’ve got a team ready to produce quality  games. In reality, those skills are just the tip of the iceberg. A team ready to produce games may be true, but nothing at all says those games are going to be of quality. It takes a lot more than knowing the coding language you’re using, or being an excellent artist; game design itself should be thought of as the third skill required along side programming and art.

I myself excel in my ability in game design. I admittedly lack in programming skills greatly in comparison to what I wish I knew, but I make up for that with my ability to both detect what makes a great game, and how to build one. I find it odd that most teams don’t feel they need a project manager of sorts, someone who understands how games work, what games are good, and what it takes to make them. The team doesn’t necessarily need someone dedicated specifically to this, but one of the artists or preferably programmers should have this skill.

The reason I give this position so much credit, other than the fact that it’s my strong point and I’m proud of it, is that it truly is a concept that I hope more teams embrace. We’ve all come to accept that average art won’t do, if you get higher quality art you’ll see your game value multiply by at least two-three times, if not significantly more. That being the artist’s job, we can look at the programmer now. The programmer is supposed to know what the game needs, then program it. They simply look at a set of instructions and bring the game to life. The last position, again in my opinion usually the secondary skill of the programmer, if not both members, is to know what it takes to make a great game. This however does not mean that the artist cannot have the mind set of a programmer and contain these skills as well, I simply imply that I believe them to be more common among programmers. They need to get over the hype of the game idea and analyze if the game will actually be quality fun; far too many games work as far as functionality, but when it comes to fun they’re simply a bore.

You may be wondering why I suggest that the programmer is the one who holds the magic of the third skill, the answer is simple. The programmer generally knows how the game works from the ground up. They must know how the ideas suggested will co-exist with ideas currently out there, and leave room for ideas to come. That being said, the programmer really shouldn’t be some guy reading an instruction manual on how to build the game, he should be deciding how the game itself is built. This can be done with a firm knowledge of programming, however it’s significantly easier if you possess the skill of understanding how games are built, as well as what makes them fun.

If you’ve already got these skills present within your team, you’re in great condition. If you lack these skills however, I highly suggest you look into partnering with somebody who has experience and understands the above concepts. They may seem like common sense at first, but it’s things like this that make the difference between the average games on the net and the big hits. I’ll continue on these thoughts with follow-up articles elaborating on how you can gain such skills yourself or refine what skills already exist. In the mean time, check out some other useful articles such as, The Importance of Plot and Game Inspiration, to help get yourself prepared for becoming a better game developer.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3