A FAILED INDIE DEVELOPER

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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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

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