I just got back from 7 hours of hardcore game development. I can already feel my eyeballs turning to liquid. Haha, in the past two weeks, I think I get a much better picture of the professional environment, where your passion is beckoning you to spend the night at the workplace. And at every single second of that, you have to balance between production speed and quality. Whenever a feature takes too long to develop, cut it out! Compromised the quality in favor of speed? Come up with a new, innovative idea in 5 minutes! Being the leader and game designer of the team, I don't remember how many critical decisions I've made in such a short amount of time. Yes, 7 hours is short. Even with 3 developers working feverishly, simultaneously, we never seem to reach our goals. Well, the goal is to complete more than what's planned, but we usually end up completing only about 80% of that.

What's also very challenging having to continuously encourage the creativity of the entire team, including yourself. At all times, you have to be aware of each person's strengths. Our programmer is also well-versed in level design, but lacks skill in terms of game design and polish. You can also expect our sound artist to come up with very interesting ideas, ranging from the fascinating to the utterly unusable. Not only that, you also have to be aware of your role in the team, despite being the lead. As the game designer, I draw upon the pool of vivid, volatile ideas of the whole team and filter out what's good and bad. That means immediately shooting down your own ideas the moment something better comes up or the second it doesn't seem right (good intuition is important here!). What's great is working with teammates that are equally as passionate (and at certain times, even MORE passionate) about the project. This leads to the occasional ulcer attack from forgetting about food and water, but it's a breathtaking experience that gets better and better as the game nears completion.

We've almost - just almost - finished a new, err... "obstacle" in the game (hey, it's top-secret). This "obstacle" is THE highlight of this project, and I was pondering whether it is better to present it earlier or later. Earlier presentation may lead to a disappointing illusion that the rest of the game is as good. However, presenting it later may lessen the incentive and excitement to continue, due to the lack of that very illusion. I've reached a conclusion that we should present it earlier, where we have less freedom with gameplay, since we've decided to firmly stick to the classic difficulty curve. In other words, it's a graphical thing. :D

I pity those who aren't sharing their wonderful game making experience with reliable, diligent teammates.

All this is a reassurance of my decision to join the gaming industry. Having to spend countless hours working endlessly for an ambitious, long-term goal. Working hard with teammates who are fire-breathing monsters of creativity. Crafting a masterpiece that will be presented to an audience, providing them with fun, excitement and wonder. Receiving feedback from a large group of people - a pat on the back for a job well done, a harsh criticism for flaws in design, development or presentation, or maybe even an occasional amusing insult to laugh at when we look back upon the milestone. And finally, taking it a step further, heading towards the ideal of creating a masterpiece, where it matters not whether we reach it, because the strive for it itself is intrinsically fulfilling.

If I'm not so tired, I'd just dance in my room right now, laughing my head off. Life is good. I'm glad I took it on the right personal path.

Whee~!

On the other hand, lone developers can work under a near-perfect assurance of coherence of the whole, and clarity regarding where evrything is and why, and how it all fits together. The additional development power you gain from having teammates is offset against the necessity for personal development - in other words, starting with the assumption that the final product has to be good, it necessarily falls to you to make that happen with your own hands. There's nothing to pity there, is there?

Pragmatically, perhaps not really, but being part of a passionate group, like being a member of Eo, has spiritual benefits that transcend logical reasoning, I believe. I went "lone wolf" for 3 years and went "groupie" for 2 years. From my experience, it's often a tradeoff between development power and stability. I suffered a huge setback when my previous 12-member team fell apart, but despite the climatic, tragic ending, I must say that working with others is more satisfying than working by yourself.

As for coherence, "keeping it together" is a matter of experience. The key to a successful team is excellent communication, with sessions set aside for sharing ideas and painting a vision of the game with as much clarity as possible.

Besides, when you're working by yourself, it's often difficult to rekindle your passion during the inevitable crummy weeks. With enthusiastic teammates, we can share the fun, amplifying it into unbelievable porportions. Moreover, we can help to bare the burden, should the journey become tough.

Of course, I'm talking about local teams. I have little faith in online teams.

hey, this sounds just like my job.  wait, it is my job  :P
well, except change that 7 hours into 8-12...

i'm glad you're getting to experience this.  i couldn't agree more with nearly everything you've said.  you've done a great job of conveying the experience, save for the inevitable heartaches that come with most professional dev'ing (which i'll spare here, since you all can probably imagine what many of them are).

indeed, life is good.  keep rocking, as i hope you do eventually land your spot in the industry as you strive to do.

 :D

edit

what platform are you cats developing for?

I have to say, you're churning out more blogs than most 64digits members. Good thing they're interesting, or I'd be sad.



I suppose one of the advantages of a local team is that you can give slackers a nice swift kick in the shins.



(Max Char limit is PISSING ME OFF.)

=P

Yaow, a professional! What's your story? Do tell.

Cats? We're mere kittens working with GameMaker, so that's obviously for PC.

I've been looking at SDL and J2ME for a long time though. I think I'm going to buy a book on SDL and finally get upon the professional level.

oh, holy smokes, you get to use game maker for your course to simulate/practice/learn in a structured environ?  consider yourself blessed.  that's too rad.

gm is, my my mind, the single greatest software development toolset in the galaxy.  i've been developing commercial games for over 7 years (console games for 6, and now DS games for just over a year), and still to this day have yet to ever have a toolset at my disposal that was as flexible, versitile, user-friendly, and rapid-creation-focused as gm.  it boggles my mind.  if there were even 1 toolset remotely close to it at the disposal of big commercial devers, i can guarantee you that games as a whole would just be astounding compared to what they are or ever have been (and we all know that there are/have been some truly mind-blowing games over the years).  i dream of the day...

never ever let anyone convince you that gm is not the greatest flipping toolset in existence.  who cares if it can't pump out super-ultra-high-tech 3d visuals.  games don't need them to be amazing games.  not in the least.  but you all already know this :D

Whoa, that is too rad! This is more of a club setting, not a formal course. Mark Overmar's influence is not THAT far-reaching... yet. Sorry about that. XD

Aside from that, that's the second time I've heard that GameMaker is extremely powerful. With the ability to use it for commercial purposes, maybe we can take it even further? Or, is it better to rely on SDL or J2ME, which is the industrial standard for developers in my country (mobile is a popular platform here)?

it all really depends on the audience you are trying to reach.  if you're trying to nail a console crowd, then gm just won't float it for many reasons.  the biggest reason being that apparently it's impossible to make it run on consoles/handhelds (so that really cuts it off at the starting line  :P  but, dangit, that fact is rediculously unfortunate).  also, on console, publishers would never dream of trying to market something that was not rediculously 3d and lavishly budgeted (shoot, they have a hard enough time understanding how to approach marketing for the big productions).

but, if you're shooting for a more broad pc crowd (the more open-minded masses, rather than the tech whores who must only play the latest and highest-tech productions), then gm rocks zee house.

i will myself be exploring a move over to commercial gm development.  you can obviously use "industry standard" code bases - but from my perspective, what is the point?  sure, there are advantages.  but, honestly, does any technical advantage outweigh the sheer power of being able to create so quickly and so fluidly and so unchained and in such an organized manner?  in my mind, not a chance.  if our goal is to create INTERACTIVE experiences, then rapid prototyping and agile development is the greatest weapon that any creator can ever wield.  otherwise, so much time and energy is wasted in making an experience look good - and in many cases just simply work at all - that the FUN and INTERACTIVE part never sees the light of day by the time a project must be wrapped up.

why should creators have to completely re-write the wheel for every single thing that they tackle?  talk about a waste of time...  and who loses in the end?  the players.  the very people who are the most important part of everything that we do.

flash is also a wonderful toolset and code base for pc development.  there a toooons of advantages to being able to create stuff that runs in-browser - and that's just one of the many benefits.

Thanks for the eye-opening insight, CosMind, I appreciate it greatly. :D