Key To Moving Forward

I’ve been a rather active member in the flash community for some time now. I know a lot of people, I’ve helped a lot of people, and I’ve done it all for the learning experience and because I’m a nice guy like that. I’m not a crazy believer of karma, but there’s definitely a great reward to be had to anyone who maintains a good reputation in any community. Whether it be friends, sponsors, or strangers you help out, the good deeds definitely do come around.

Not too long ago I stopped working with my last partner for a number of reasons, this left me in a place many developers should always try to avoid, alone. Although I continued to work on my own, and have learned  a lot since then, it’s always better to have a partner or partners to work with, it’s just far more productive. Yesterday I was contacted by a friend out of the blue with some very good news, a partnership of sorts that would have me back in a group environment and working on set in stone projects. This isn’t so much a success story as it is a lesson, so let’s take a look at how this happened. I met this particular person many months ago on the FlashGameLicense forums, to my memory the time we first clicked as friends was when I expressed a certain opinion on my reason to switch from AS2 to AS3. Since then we talked a lot, reviewed each other’s games and so on. This is a single contact, but it paid off.  This kind and honest behavior of many months ago has now put me in a much better position than I would have been had I never done such things.

Here’s another example of how a good personality and reputation pays off. My last sponsored game Tower of Greed was through Lars over at King. Aside from business, Lars and I spoke rather casually and got along well. We kept in touch after the game was released and eventually started talking about future titles. The positive nature of these conversations and the games success have lead to a new relationship with a very high up sponsor. Good attitude here has lead to a partnership of sorts that can’t be gained any other way.

In addition to the above, helping random strangers in the flash community can also pay off. As some readers may know from previous posts, I gained my first flash development partner through helping out a complete stranger. He was asking a question in the Newgrounds Forums pertaining to some coding in his new game, and I tossed him the code with an explanation of how it worked. Two weeks later I saw him again asking yet another question, I answered it yet again and we then talked of working on the game together. This eventually lead to many projects and could potentially lead to more down the road.

In the end it’s rather clear how important being a positive member in the community is. There’s always times when you yourself will need help, and you’re much more likely to find that help if you’ve been out there helping others when possible and maintaining a positive image. Benefits include finding a new partner to work with, having connections with sponsors to sell games much quicker, or just having some place to go to chat with people who share common interests. Either way, maintaining a good reputation is definitely worth while and can eventually be key in moving your career forward.