Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that 2009 holds good things in store for you.

I’m back at work today after being off for over a week. The break has been great. I had expected to work quite a bit over the holidays, but I didn’t end up doing any work. I think it was good for me to get away from the game for a while and hopefully I’ll be able to come back to it fresh. The next month is going to be extremely busy and tiring, so I’m glad I took the time to relax a bit before the big crunch.

Seeing as how we’ve entered into 2009 (that sounds like we’re living in the future, doesn’t it?) I thought now would be a good time to go over some of the lessons I’ve learned so far about indie development:

• If at all possible, separate your “work space” from your “life space”. I’ve been working from home for 6 months now and I love it. However, my wife and I live in a tiny (under 600 sq feet) apartment so my office is in the same room as the living room and dining area (the whole room is only 12 x 12 feet). While this didn’t bother me at first, the longer I work here the more I find it difficult to separate work from not-work. When I’m on the couch watching TV, my computer is almost right next to me and I often end up thinking about work when I should be relaxing. When we can afford to move into a bigger place, my main requirement will be that I have a separate room for my office.
• The idea is easy, the implementation is not. This is not a new lesson for me, this is something you learn very quickly when you start working in the industry. However, when you’re doing everything on your own, it becomes even more apparent. I spent nearly the first two months of the project just prototyping. I had what I knew to be a great idea for a game, but it took me two months of trying different implementations to find something that was really fun to play. I’ll admit it: that surprised me. I was convinced that the original idea I had would be fun, but it wasn’t. The game I have now uses the same core mechanic (mixing paint colours), but the game is totally different from what it started as.
• Game development is expensive. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s not. Granted, start-up costs for a business like this are significantly lower than a business that requires retail space, inventory, employees, etc, but it still costs money. However, I did have hardware and software costs, contractors to pay, etc. I also realise that my budget is minuscule compared to a 10-30 million dollar blockbuster title. However, it’s my money that I’m putting up for this. Maybe I should have looked for investors at the start, I don’t know the answer to that. I like that I have complete control over the product I’m developing. For better or for worse, the game is mine. When the game is released I’ll provide some budget numbers (don’t expect a detailed breakdown, it’ll be very high level), but for now it’ll have to wait.
• Ideas generate ideas. Several months ago I posted an entry stating that every day I was going to try to write down an idea for a gameplay concept, a game mechanic, an environment. The idea was to build up a massive document of ideas that I could draw from. This worked really well for a few weeks. Forcing myself to come up with ideas grew new ideas. It was a great cycle to get into. However, as the game development gathered momentum, I stopped writing in the ideas document. Without forcing myself to come up with new ideas, fewer ideas were being formed. I had an idea this morning that I wrote in the book and noticed that my last entry was Oct 30th. I need to get back into the habit of doing this. It will be very important as I finish Dapple and get ready to move on to my next game.
• Don’t try to do it all yourself. This is really about knowing your limitations. I’m not trying to be egotistical, but I’m a pretty damn good programmer. I’ve been doing it a long time and I feel like I know what I’m doing. I’m confident in my abilities to solve problems of a programming nature and that I can learn the things that I need to learn. However, I’m not a professional artist. I’m not a musician. I’m not a sound designer. I think a lot of indie developers are tempted to do it all themselves. It’s that attitude of “I know how to use Photoshop; I took an online course,” or “I took an art class in high school that I was pretty good at” that gets people into trouble. When I started I was tempted to do the artwork for my game myself because, yes, I am fairly proficient with Photoshop, and yes, I did take a lot of art courses in high school and university. However, I realised that by doing so, I wasn’t playing to my strengths. I realised that my time would be better spent programming and paying someone whose job it is to create art, to create the artwork for my game. I think this was the correct decision. I’m extremely happy with the artwork, sound design and music I got from the people I worked with. While it cost me money instead of just time, I think I’ve got a much high quality game with a lot more polish out of it.
• Have fun! It seems like an odd one to have to state, but at the heart of things, I’m doing this because I love doing it. There are times where it feels overwhelming, like it’s not worth it, that it’s just too much work and too much risk. Those are the times where you need to step away from the development and remember why you started doing this in the first place: I’m doing this because I love making games and I want to make the best game I possibly can. What’s better than that?

Happy 2009 everyone!

Owen