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At the Develop Conference in 2011, Sean Murray of Hello Games was the keynote speaker for the Indie Dev Day. One key point he made was that we hear a lot about the successful indie developers, but barely ever hear from those who failed in the pursuit of their dream. This is my story.
It was mid 2013. 2 months after I failed in developing a Heuristic Analysis Engine(My supposed-to-be first business product). I am a guy who wants to try everything out before settling on one thing! I wanted to explore everything possible. In my past, I have tried software development, reverse engineering, web designing, Hacking and many others! I have tried game designing in the past. But the Heuristic analysis engine idea took my eye off the game designing field. After failing in making the Heuristic analysis engine ( the idea is still there, in my mind. I will try making it again sometime later), I decided to peep into the game designing field again. I read many articles and I loved it! I felt a burning desire to build a game on my own! And so, the Work started.
I publicized my work and I publicized myself as a indie game developer with no experience and almost every other fellow indie developer advised me I should start small, perhaps making a puzzle/board/2D game for iOS/Android using Unity engine and building the company from there. Arrogant as I was, I completely ignored this advice and set about building a game of my own on PC, on the basis that I already owned a PC and a copy of Unity and Blender, with zero money. I had a belief at that time that I would have a game prototype by around December that year.
I am no Prodigy. I am no genius. I lacked in many skills. The game design gradually formed as I was working over the first couple of months. I knew that my art skills were greatly lacking.
Things went well. I was writing a lot of code, new features were being added daily and I was learning to use Blender to build the game levels. I was highly motivated, happy to be free from being nothing and getting a lot of satisfaction from the work I was doing. I talked with people about my vision of what the game would (eventually) become, I talked about how I’d built the game from scratch – the physically based lighting, HDR, motion blur, FXAA, etc. I was on a high.
However, the biggest problem I found was TIME. I was a college sophomore at that time and the 3rd semester just got started. With the progress growing steadily, I cannot afford to wait for another time to continue it. I cannot HALT the progress. But, on the other side of the coin, I could not even stop going to college. Even though i wanted to take a break and speed up my works, college staffs and my family won’t let me to. I felt like 12 hours a day in/for college was way too much to spend for. To carry my work on, I stopped attending college frequently and took leave for at least 2 days per week (Sundays are not accounted). That 2 day breaks gave me the time to speed my work up.
I also wanted to apply for crowd-funding programs. Kickstarter was very popular at that time. But I had a feeling that I should concentrate more on the work first than on the funding. I told my class mates and my friends that I’m working on a game and that I am doing it all alone. They called me “ONE MAN ARMY” at the time. It felt really good to be called so but I knew at that time that Even an ONE MAN ARMY can fail if he can’t capitalize on his work. I knew that I still lacked some skills. I can’t even ‘HIRE’ people because my company has no products yet. Because It is not incorporated. Because I cannot afford to pay him too. I had ZERO funding. I continued to do it on my own but I couldn’t capitalize on that because those skills cannot be acquired over-night. It takes time to acquire those skills.
Where I really excel is ridiculous, restless and undying work ethic. The study holidays arrived and I was working. My fellow class mates and school mates invited me to spend some time with them and I was still working. The semester exams were just around the corner and guess what I was doing? As relentless as ever, I was still working on it. The semester exams were happening and that was the only time I took my eye off the project and tried to study. But no. I couldn’t. Finally, the exams got over and YEAH I BEGAN WORKING ON IT AGAIN. Sometime after, I experienced a minor health problem then. I had to rest for a short period and the semester results came. HELL, 6 arrears. A meeting with the HOD, Class in charge and my dad meant the end of that working period.
I wasn’t allowed to work again.
These are the major lessons I learned
- I vastly underestimated the money needed to pay for the project. You need a good source of funding, or a lot of savings to make the indie adventure work. Relying on a crowdfunding campaign is a huge gamble that’s unlikely to pay off unless you can get a lot of press and/or are already well known.
- I was way too ambitious with the game I was trying to build. I was trying to build something the size and complexity of a big game all on my own, when I really should have listened to people and built something small and simple.
- I was sorely missing an artist or level designer – I struggled with Blender and it took me an awfully long time to build the demo level I had. Also, having someone work with me would have been a great way to get feedback on what I was doing.
- I vastly underestimated the time it would take to build the game. My prediction of shipping my first game in December 2013 was, in hindsight, laughable. I actively avoided any detailed scheduling and management of the project, preferring to just get my head down and write code – this was a mistake. In fact, I had no real business plan at all – What to do when the game is out?
How to make money from it?
Today, 8 months later, I stand here as an entrepreneur and a freelance programmer. I’m right now on a rest period for my eye problem and I hope to resume my day-to-day activities soon. I’m loving what I’m doing but I have a feeling that those 4 months were the most interesting and satisfying periods till date. There is surely going to be a game from my company but I think it will not happen any time soon from now. The so called ONE MAN ARMY failed this time!
Never Give Up
Varun Chandrasekhar.
Dude, You didn’t FAIL!
Its just that, Its all about Time and Money that matters!
When people told you to start with something small, you started BIG.
Thats “Your Aim”.
When others were busy doing the aily routine of “College Work”, you Were already “Working”.
When compared to the people, currently working in Core Companies of IT, You are still a far better “Indie Programmer” that many of them don’t even know the “Word”.
Keep in mind,
One Man Army, Never fails.
He can Fail/Fall But Never Be shot.
Glad that you found “Whats Lacking”,
Now that you can Prepare yourself in the right way.
All the Very best for your successful future!
Keep on “#include or whatever” 🙂