Hello everyone! Here we are again! 😀
Our last issue was about who and what started their journey with in the industry. Our colleagues shared their working experience, problems, and how they came to game development.
In this issue, we will partially continue this topic, and our developers will also share some life hack on how to make your game 100% interesting for the audience of festivals and exhibitions.
So, let's get it started!
What are the successes and failures of the team in the process of creating a game?
Dmitry: during the development process, we encountered a wide variety of misfaults in our industry. For example, attempts to do a large amount of work of a decent level in a short time. At the planning level, the roadmap looks feasible, but in reality it turns out that in addition to projects “for the soul”, everyone has full-time work, which eats up a lot of time. And then the deadlines pass, everything shifts.
There were problems with "slobs": because of our approach “if a person does at least something for free, then this is already good”, the team faced the fact that some not only scored and did nothing at all, but did not even report that they “abandoned" the idea. We quickly learned to understand that if a person keeps silent and does not get in touch, it is better to part with him.
We can't help mentioning our "heroic" deeds and successes. Despite the planning errors, we are working on the project quite a lot. And usually, after a series of re-plannings and taking into account all the circumstances, we manage to meet the deadlines: hand over the build for the event, provide the team with tools, raise morale when necessary, and the like. In general, the work is structured.
Ilya: I can attribute the process of preparing for STEAM FEST or DevGAMM to our feats. I remember working non-stop for the sake of the final result. And we eventually achieved it.
Regarding the mistakes, I agree with what Dima said above. Well, often the focus is not on those things: having done a lot of unnecessary work that no one saw or understood. For example, for the game build presented at DevGAMM, we made 4 levels, but in fact no one went beyond the second one. We had to concentrate on making level 1 as high quality and rich as possible, but we blurred the focus and did the wrong thing…
In addition, thanks to the trial and error method, we realized that it is better for the whole team to deal with only one level, paramount to perform only the most urgent tasks. For example, a modeler was creating a robot that would not appear anywhere for the next six months. Although, to be honest, there were plans for it, they just cut it out of the final script.
It seems that the team tried their best and worked, but their contribution to the new build is zero. The situation is similar with the narrative, much of which was written to be saved for the future. A lot of unnecessary modeling and concepts at this stage. You can't say if it's a failure or a success, just an interesting experience gained from the workflow.
Igor: I agree with Ilya. For the artists, the amount of work and the time allotted to it is very often unstable. Therefore, they are happy when they get closer to the actual task and go in the same timeline with the whole team. But the main thing is still a balance between what a person wants and what needs to be done. For example, to make interesting art, which, perhaps, will remain an idea without implementation, or to do something that is not so interesting, but will definitely appear in the final product? Based on our experience, the best performers are achieved by the artists who work on something that will definitely make it into the build. And this should be remembered at every art meeting call.
What is happening now? What difficulties are you currently facing?
Igor: Lack of time.
Dmitry: Yes, lack of time, as well as good professional staff. Now programmers and level designers are in great need, not necessarily even very experienced, it will be enough at least responsible and diligent, those who want to work on the project together.
Ilya: There is one more point due to the peculiarity of free development which is “bottleneck”. For example, there is an insignificant task that slows down the entire project, but it is impossible to do it quickly or in some kind of priority mode, since everyone works when they can. And until they can, there is no point in going further, since the future user experience is not clear.
And there are also problems with concept artists: a new person draws a concept, and we understand that it can not only be put for the future usage, but abandoned, because before that, some identical finished work was presented by a specialist before them. Although, you have to redraw when the previous version does not suit you with something. But it is not always possible to surpass the quality of the previous version, one of the works in any case will be thrown out. This must be soberly understood and be prepared to waste some time. However, this is normal for the concept creation process.
Igor: Now one of the main problems is the lack of funding. Investing in the project would help it to shoot through the involvement of new experienced professionals and the full-time employment of the current team.
As an afterword, let us remind you that getting on the path of game development is much easier than it seems! But holding on to it is another story.
What, if not testing, is the best option to start? It is enough to send us an e-mail to get a build and join the wonderful game dev sphere: [email protected].
And we say goodbye until the next Dev Diary 😉