The Still of the Night Causes a Storm in the Mind

So E3 has come and gone once again leaving gamers everywhere in awe of all the cool new tech and gameplay concepts developers have come up with over the last year. This year’s E3 was actually a bit of a let down in comparison with last year’s. For the most part the final marketing push for the new products we saw last year are just now getting underway and that’s what this year’s E3 was all about. Microsoft announced the formal name for Natal (Kinect) and Sony’s motion controller is now officially titled “Move”. Nintendo is the only company to announce something new and truly revolutionary with its 3DS portable console that allows users to play 3D games without the need for any gaudy glasses. This would have been truly amazing had this information not been leaked 2 months prior to E3.

The biggest thing I personally took away from E3 is that the gaming industry is finally getting too big for me to purchase every cool new thing that comes out or even experience everything period. The industry has been supporting 3 big consoles for two generations, mobile phone gaming is now huge and growing, social games and sites like Facebook now have a piece of the pie, and that’s not to mention the old PC crowd or the new streaming services like OnLive and Gaikai. The game industry is F-ing HUGE!

It’s no surprise that I personally like the mobile space (particularly when a phone is involved). I’ve always favored on-the-go gaming because it’s so easy to share these experiences as an indie developer trying to show people my work. As a gamer I’m not much different. Portable experiences are the easiest to share and hook up with other people. I also used to really enjoy the arcades due to the social nature. After that I prefer social experiences like the Wii, then multiplayer titles like Halo, followed by single player console games, single player PC games, and finally real-time multiplayer online titles of any sort.

Considering the fact that I’m more of a social gamer it may seem strange that I’m not too big into online games. I’ve always been keen on multiplayer programming having developed several Internet networked titles myself but when it comes down to it, if I’m going to play games with other folks I’d rather do it in person. Either that or it’s just a phase since I haven’t renewed my Xbox Live subscription in two years

With the industry growing at such an alarming rate it’s going to be difficult to choose where to spend hard earned gaming bucks. Mobile is cheap and easy. For me it’s a no-brainer that I’ll be buying some more iPhone games this year. Chances are as well that Nintendo will get some money from me for the new Zelda and 3DS console. Beyond that it’s a tough call. Surely, I’ll pick up a few Xbox 360 games and perhaps a PS3 game like Little Big Planet 2 finally (after having the system for 3 years the only game I ever purchased was MGS4).

Anyway, it’s time to go. I’m busy programming something great but wanted to drop down some words about E3 2010. For the most part I was a lot more impressed by last year’s show but of course I’m ever excited for our industry. Ta ta for now!

So the summer is here again (almost). It’s been a busy couple of months. My last post was about Crash for Cash getting popular and boy has it ever gotten popular. In 2 months the game has been played 2 million times. Furthermore my estimates for daily profits were accurate. The first week that advertising kicked in I started kicking myself for not adding it sooner. Beyond getting played 2 million times, Crash for Cash also took the #1 spot in the racing category for about 3-4 days in April. The day it occurred was truly magical. My wife and I were in San Francisco on her Spring Break vacation. During the day we visited Alcatraz, walked from Fisherman’s Wharf to Crissy Beach, checked out the Exploratorium, and then finally walked the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge to and fro. After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on the way back was the first time I noticed Crash for Cash in the #1 spot. That was a good day!

Of course Crash for Cash isn’t the only cool thing going on. I also completed the new book iPhone 3D Game Programming All in One, which is currently being printed. This great new 400 page book is published by Cengage and should hit your local Barnes and Noble sometime during the first week of July. In the book I show new iPhone developers how to create a casual flight simulator for the iPhone using Unity. A pre-release version of the game accidentally went out onto the App Store (I forgot to pull it once I uploaded it for book screen shots, that Apple wouldn’t give me permission to use anyway). Long story short though the game actually pushed the book into Amazon’s Top 100 Game Development, 3D, and Apple books in various countries (US included). I ended up leaving the rough cut of the game up for a while since it was promoting sales. I now have a slightly more user friendly version coming out to coincide with the release of the book. A big goal of mine is not to change the game much from what the book covers. Originally, I was looking for 1 : 1 parity but I’ve since decided that a few more play tests and minor minor tweaks aren’t a crime so long as I stay within the realm of the book’s lessons any user should be able to replicate my minor tweaks in a few minutes. In due time I would like to release a fully polished product using the engine from this book. The flight model is really pretty cool and allows for loops and barrel rolls using a fairly accurate and sophisticated method of force and friction applications to the body of the aircraft. It’s not a dead ringer for X-Plane but it’s pretty close in my opinion.

Still in other news I began working at L3 Communications doing some serious games work in February. The work I’m doing there has been very fulfilling. I work with a fantastic team of individuals who love this stuff as much as I do (and GASP … I didn’t have to move to the West coast to find them, although one of them is from San Francisco). Through this job I’ve gotten to attend some really great conferences I might otherwise not have gone to and I’ve gotten to polish my skills even further all while working on projects that have a real world impact (something that I often find hollow in the traditional games industry). At some point I hope I can share more about my work in serious games but for now I’m just happy for the opportunity to apply my skills and communicate with a slew of talented people in this new (to me) arena.

There will be some more game information soon. I haven’t actually released a new game for the iPhone since last year. The funny thing is that by focusing on marketing I’ve been able to increase income from the App Store tremendously without releasing anything new. I plan to reinvest all that I’ve earned through the App Store although it may not be in the traditional sense. Keep reading to find out how all of this will grow (hopefully) into part of a larger plan

This past week the remnants of my family (my sister and I) got together to watch The Boondock Saints 2. After the movie she criticized it rather harshly which spawned a conversation about what makes a good piece of entertainment.  My sister and I are both writing books.  The difference being that I’m writing a tech book on iPhone development and she’s writing a fiction novel.  Inevitably we talk about each other’s projects.

On this particular night she tells me that she’s scrapping the 46 pages of single spaced 10 point font she’s written thus far.  Her reasoning is that she wants to differentiate herself from other female writers.  The specifics of her decision revolve around shifting the focus of the story from relationships to losing one’s mind.

A large part of the conversation involved a debate about the relevance of Twilight which shared some aspects with her original story.  Being the older brother I am I had to point out the fact that Twilight has been hugely successful as have love/relationship stories throughout time.  I also pointed out the fact that there haven’t been too many successful stories about the erosion of one’s mind (though A Beautiful Mind was fantastic).  The end result of the conversation was that I shook my sister’s confidence and at Thanksgiving dinner the next night she reminded me several times.

As a creative person I’ve learned throughout the years that you largely need to ignore other people in your pursuit of that perfect piece of work. The honest truth is that the only person who knows your vision is you. What you create for other’s to see may only be a crude representation of what you actually envision.  If that’s the case then it’s simply a matter of improving your skills to match your vision.  No matter what it’s important to remember that.

Many creative individuals are also insecure which is why most entertainment industries are run by opportunistic moguls instead of the creatives that actually power our culture’s best works of art.  If you’re creative, forget the insecurity.  This is what I told my sister.  I explained to her that it doesn’t matter what anyone, not even me sees in her creation. She’s the only one who knows what her creative spark is capable of.

At the end of the day this is the point of creativity.  It’s the challenge to get what’s on the inside to make sense as it comes out.  There are many ways to communicate these creative thoughts and sometimes other people can help you clarify what you’re trying to communicate but they’ll never be the source of what you’re trying to communicate.

A week or so ago I wrote about The Human Compiler which is an important component of game development.  As a game designer you need to watch other people’s reactions to your creation closely to see if you’re communicating properly with the player.  This is different than relying on someone else to communicate your creative vision for you.  As I stated earlier, you need to grow your skills to match your creative vision and this is no different.  It takes a certain type of skill to siphon out the difference between someone else’s creative vision infringing on your own and an error in the communication of your creative vision.

So there you have it, isolate your creative spark.  You are the only one who knows what’s on the inside and it’s your job to find the best way to showcase it on the outside.  Don’t bow to anyone in this process but don’t get hurt if people don’t “get it” either. People aren’t mind readers, they’re creators, which means it’s your job to communicate not others’ to magically comprehend your inner most thoughts.

In 1997 I came up with a game concept. That concept was a fun and simple 2D building demolition game where players would plant charges and try to level a cityscape. I developed this concept about a year after learning some BASIC programming on my TI-85 calculator and before I entered college. At the time it’s safe to say I didn’t really have the skills to do the concept justice.

Fast forward to 2006. I sit down at my computer one evening and I finally prototype this concept now calling it Debris. I develop a working sim with blocks, bombs, and a caution tape line. The premise is simple, plant the bombs in such a way that upon detonation all the blocks fit below the caution tape line.

I work on this prototype for a few months (mainly tweaking the physics) and eventually show the concept to a company who’d published my earlier work. They write me back and tell me they don’t see any promise in this concept. They tell me they can’t suggest even a single bit of advice in order to make the concept more fun for them.

Their feedback of course stood in stark contrast with my vision as well as the feedback I’d received from several other people who I’d actually gotten to show the game in person. As with anything communication is key when unleashing a brand new game concept. I’m sure something was lost without myself involved to fill in the blanks as someone played this game for the first time. Such is the potential fate of any unfinished prototype.

In October 2007 I attempted once again to show off this concept.  This time at the Indie Games Con. Again, it’s turned down for publication by this company that had worked so closely with me in the past.  To add insult to injury, I’m told by someone I’d once considered a mentor that it “sucked”.  I went home dejected and dropped the development of Debris to work on Full Contact Debate another idea I’d had banging around my brain for years.

Of course there was one redeeming event which took place at IGC that year. The morning after I was told the game sucked I walked in an there was a group of 6 other developers standing around a computer laughing. As I walked up I realized they were playing Debris and they’d just realized you could take the helicopter out if you planted the bombs correctly. In the PC/Mac version of Debris the helicopter would go spastic and bounce around the screen taking everything out in its path. As they left a few of the guys told me it was a great game concept. Seeing their reaction to the title renewed my belief that eventually this would be a hit game.

Now we move on to October 2008. At this point I’d long given up the idea of pitching ideas to publishers with lesser vision than myself. Throughout the years I’d pitched concepts to a plethora of publishers and I was always disappointed with the results. Finally though, the iPhone and the App Store had arrived and there would no longer be a difference of creative opinions to stop the publication of any title. I jumped onto the iPhone development wagon as quickly as possible and I knew exactly what my first title would be.

Debris appeared on the App Store by December 5th 2008 and to my knowledge was the first 2D casual building demolition game created. When I originally developed the prototype I searched for other controlled demolition games and the only thing I found was an obscure PS2 game released in Europe but it was a more serious 3D simulation instead of a casual physics game. My prediction circa 2006 was that the most popular casual games were going to be physics based as opposed to the match-3 titles that dominated the early-mid part of the decade. Looking at the iPhone market today I was absolutely correct and I’m proud to say that I not only made an accurate prediction but I took part in the market with a handful of causal physics sims which I developed.

Now it’s the end of 2009 and it’s been the roughest year of my life. It hasn’t all been bad but it has been a roller coaster. As most people who read this blog know, I lost my dear mother to suicide on March 23rd. I have been depressed since then although certain events have been overwhelmingly positive this year, the loss of my mother casts a shadow over those events. To further add to my pain this year a title called Implode! landed on the App Store about a week ago and since then has risen up the charts into the top 5 best selling iPhone games. Implode! is Debris, it’s a casual 2D controlled demolition game and it arrived almost exactly 1 year after Debris on the iPhone.

Considering that I developed this concept sooo long ago I’m heart broken that I wasn’t the one to fully capitalize on the concept. When I developed it in 2006 I knew it had the potential to rise straight to the top. Unfortunately, being first isn’t always best and in fact some people would say it’s detrimental. This is one of those cases.

I rushed Debris out on the iPhone trying to take advantage of the devices unique abilities such as pinch/zoom, swipe momentum, and the accelerometer tilt. Unfortunately, using these special capabilities of the iPhone was ultimately a distraction from the core experience. Implode! for the iPhone is actually much closer to what Debris was originally for the PC/Mac. Plant bombs, detonate, and try to get the blocks below a line. The version of Debris I ended up putting out for the iPhone wasn’t received particularly well because the core was watered down in an attempt to make it iPhone-centric. Granted, some components of Debris are great fun but overall I let the core suffer in favor of design diversions such as tilt, zoom, and killing aliens with the blocks.

Still, I’m not jaded or angry (OK, just a little). Debris was after all the title that allowed me to develop my own concepts as my sole source of income. Without Debris I wouldn’t be where I am today. Furthermore, there’s no law against sequels and while Debris may not ultimately get recognized as the title that brought the casual controlled demolition genre into the limelight perhaps its sequel can utilize the success Implode! is currently enjoying to be an even bigger success.

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!

When you’re developing games it can hurt when you spend a few weeks or months on something only to have other people scoff at your creation. In my early years this really hurt my feelings. Actually, even today it doesn’t “feel good” when other people don’t get what you’re trying to communicate with a game. I often feel like a screaming infant whose parents just don’t comprehend what I’m trying to communicate with my goo-goo-gah-gah’s. It can make you feel quite disconnected from the rest of the world when you think something’s cool and no one else agrees.

The way that I deal with this is to consider play testers what I call “The Human Compiler”. The point of this is that you don’t get your feelings hurt when a programming compiler throws an error. No, instead you simply go to line N and change the code so that it works. When you get people playing your game for the first time there are going to be “Human Compiler Errors”. As with any other compiler the solution is simple, go to the figurative line N and fix it.

The biggest issue is that human beings aren’t discreet like a machine language compiler so you have to use your human judgment and read between the lines a little. Once you get past the “hurt feelings” part though it becomes pretty easy to read people’s feedback and trace the true root of the “Human Compiler Error”. The realization that people play testing your game is just another compiler is the most important piece of the puzzle here. Don’t get disheartened just take it all in, get a gut reading on everyone’s combined input, and then get back to work!

Back in March Christian Nutt of Gamasutra posed the question “Can The Industry Make a B-game?”

I think I’ve done just that with a little stupid ass title called Kube Killer.  I initially created this game out of frustration.  I was frustrated and angry over my mother’s death (hence this being one of the few violent games I’ve made) and I was also but to a much lesser degree frustrated over the apparent lack of logic within the App Store eco system.

My last post was about making easy games.  I purposely created Kube Killer to be challenge-less and a time waster that would roll as many ads as possible on the business end.  I was analyzing some of the popular games on the iPhone that my younger cousin was playing and they all had something in common, ZERO challenge but plenty of time consumption. When I released Kube Killer I put it out at $0.99 (no ads) at my wife’s request.  In truth though the game was always supposed to be free.  I thought people might play it and actually get caught up challenging each other to see who could in fact kill the most kubes which would be optimal for an ad based title.  It was also created to be somewhat of a satirical poke at the App Store in general, dumb games getting attention they don’t deserve was part of the inspiration for Kube Killer.

At $0.99 the game was mostly ignored.  It sold a few copies but never made any real impact.  Fast forward to this past Friday when I changed the game to free.  Somehow, the game started climbing the charts regardless of the terrible graphics, poor description, and even worse reviews.  Nearly everything about this game signaled people to avoid it at all costs (the icon is even black like the plague) and yet in true App Store fashion the title started climbing the charts extending its figurative middle finger to logic the whole way.

As of right now the game has been downloaded nearly 10,000 times since Friday.  Some of the players have even taken to competing for the most kills via the online leaderboards.  The title is hovering in the Top 30 Adventure games and the Top 20 RPG games and with each iTunes update the rank climbs while the reviews get worse and yet people even started a thread to talk about this waste of time on Touch Arcade!

As I watched this all unfold I was initially ashamed.  If any game was supposed to do well this weekend it was supposed to be my new title Ragduck Hunt which was logically created to appeal to the App Store crowd while actually being a pretty good game with solid production values.  Kube Killer, the red headed step child of my portfolio though is now the most “popular” iPhone game I’ve made.  This game is terrible both purposefully and accidentally (simultaneously) and for some reason people are downloading the crap out of it … stranger still some people are playing the crap out of it.  I think that constitutes a legitimate B-game.

10 years ago yesterday I was a college student enrolled in a computer science program.  I spent most of my time programming games on my TI-85 calculator during class but still managed to take something away from the experience.  I was also a gamer and September 9th, 1999 was a big day.  Anticipation grew throughout the day as I waited for classes to end.  The afternoon and evening couldn’t fly by quick enough. The moment I was waiting for was midnight, when I could finally wrap my arms around my very own Dreamcast at the local EB.

Finally, the night was getting long in the tooth.  At around 10PM a friend and I headed out to Lynnhaven Mall stopping at Wendy’s for some late night spicy chicken sandwiches (a favorite during the college years). Then we finally landed in line for the hotly anticipated Dreamcast.  The line was long but people were stoked.  Everyone and their brother wanted to support Sega after the dismal failure of the Saturn.  There was a hint of nostalgia in the air.  Older gamers didn’t want Sony to put Sega out of commission even if they liked the Playstation.  Thus, the calvary lined up at the stroke of midnight to put Sega back on the map.

The line was exciting initially but it was nothing in comparison to the first time they pulled out a working Dreamcast running Soul Calibur for everyone to try.  The next thing you knew there was a line embedded within the first line as people tried their hand at this new game with the most amazing graphics ever witnessed on a home console.  Remarkably, Soul Calibur played as good as it looked.

The crew at EB was extremely cool and efficient that night.  Dreamcast systems, games and accessories had all been bundled up according to customer pre-orders prior to the big launch.  As such we really didn’t have to wait too long.  After finally getting our systems we returned to my place and continued playing all our new games into the wee hours of the morning.  It’s hard to believe it was a decade ago!

Last night I had to do it, I had to pull the Dreamcast and co out of their bin and hook it up alongside my 360 and PS3.  Much to my surprise Soul Calibur has held up really well.  It’s still graphically impressive and the control and collision is super tight.  I never understood why Sega gave up. In my idealists eyes the Dreamcast could be a competitor today.  After reading the Gamasutra article with interviews of all the major executives involved I think the demise of the Dreamcast was pretty fishy.  But what’s done is done.  At least we got to enjoy the system for a while.

Of course I can’t just recap that launch night without explaining how it had some profound effect on me. Back then I was a college student who had programmed a few games on his calculator.  Now it’s a decade later and I’ve become the game developer I had dreamed of.  The largest effect that night had on me was a new found love for midnight launches and the excitement involved.  The studio title Midnight Status is a direct result of that launch night (which as far as I can remember was the first midnight video game launch I took part in).  Midnight Status is the excitement people feel for their entertainment.  It’s what happens when people wait in line in the middle of the night with strangers who share a passion.  It’s what runs through your mind when you didn’t pre-order an XBox and you’re running from store to store in the middle of the night trying to find a location with a short enough line to guarantee you a system.  Midnight Status came from a seed that was planted in my mind 10 years ago when the Dreamcast arrived.  It seems the name was quite suitable now doesn’t it?

Well, summer’s over and it is time to go back to work full time.  This year has been a wild roller coaster of ups and downs.  It kicked off with me having just turned 30 and finally getting to become a full time game developer thanks to the iPhone.  This was just about my biggest dream come true … finally after years and years of work.  Not all has been well though, during the month of March I lost my dear mother who I loved very much.  Losing a parent has been, up to this point, one of if not my biggest nightmares.  As such the year suddenly seemed to come right back to neutral if not go completely negative for me.  In the months after that though friends and family gathered around me to help me through the toughest thing I’ve ever faced in my life and they helped me stay on track.  Also, my wife and I got a new golden retriever puppy named Maeby which didn’t hurt (so long as she wasn’t peeing inside).

Not coincidentally, the puppy was our 1st year anniversary gift to each other.  Again, things were looking somewhat positive … even if a bit of depression was lingering from my mother’s passing.  Of course what goes up must come down as I found out that a friend of mine lost his wife.  Again, I felt that negativity.  Life is short and sometimes it’s very painful for you and those around you.  It’s all we can do sometimes just to hold each other up.

Of course that was the beginning of the summer and I knew that better things (like the beach) were just on the horizon.  Since my mother passed I haven’t done too much work.  I hit a deadline for the book I’m writing, created Disco Pool, and also put out a little game called Kube Killer.  All in all it was really nice to live off the work I had done earlier in the year with Skyline Blade which has been my most successful game.  As I’ve written before, it’s not a crazy amount of money but it does pay the rent and when you don’t have to worry about that it helps … a lot.  I got to do a lot of swimming, sunning, and puppy watching which has been therapeutic.  I can now swim a kilometer (~0.6 of a mile) which is pretty cool considering that a month ago I could barely swim 50 meters or 1 lap in an Olympic size swimming pool.

Anyway, now that September’s here I’m back to work and I’m thinking ambitious again.  Over the summer I put something secret together but realized it was too ambitious.  I then proceeded to put that project on hold for a short while longer to pursue another project.  As it turns out I don’t do simple.  It just doesn’t happen, at least not well.  My new project which started out simple has now become a mini-epic.  It’s still not as ambitious as my secret project so that’s good but it’s going to take longer than the few weeks I had hoped to invest.

This brings me to what’s really been on my mind lately.  Is it wise to really invest myself in a game again? In 2002 and 2003 I created 2 large games which took about a year each to complete.  Aerial Antics is the game I’m probably still most well known for although my iPhone games have sold many more copies.  Ever since Aerial Antics flopped I cannot will myself to develop something with a lot of care.  That’s not to say I haven’t worked hard.  I have worked hard this past year and I really pushed myself on Full Contact Debate as well but I haven’t committed myself to a project like I did with Aerial Antics.  At least it doesn’t feel that way.  It’s very hard to fully commit yourself when every time you do your project flops.  Then it gets to the point where you start going for the quick and easy project instead of something you’re truly proud of.

I feel like I’m making myself sound really lazy here.  Anyone who knows me also knows this isn’t true.  The point is though, if you push yourself will anyone really notice or care?  Well, I think they well.  The iPhone games I’ve developed actually seem to sell in direct proportion to how much time and money I invested in them and of course money is really just tangible condensed time.  In the end I suppose I’m answering my own question.  If you make it they will come and they will notice that you worked your ass off.  However, if you waiver even for a split second people will identify the chinks in your armor.  Don’t waiver, be obsessive, create something you think is perfect and even if someone thinks they’ve found a weakness you’ll be able to deflect them because you’ll know in your own heart that you did absolutely all you can.

So here I am after years of time, a better coder, a better artist, with better tools ready to commit myself to a truly ambitious (yet not overly so like FCD) project once again.  Wish me luck!

Although I don’t consider myself to be particularly successful (I’m probably behind the curve considering how much time I’ve spent developing games). I do have a few techniques which I’ve learned along the way that I think aid in the quest for success in game development.

1 - If you’re having trouble with motivation tackle a technical problem.  The creative aspects of game development are great but usually the great creative sparks come when you least expect them.  I don’t believe you can control the creative juices per se, only nurture them.  What you can control though are technical hang-ups.  Next time you’re stuck trying to come up with a game concept engage in a technical activity you hadn’t previously conquered and you’ll find yourself in awe of the creative possibilities your knew found technical knowledge provides.

2 - Always think in terms of IP, just scope it right.  Massive IP’s like Star Wars are fantastic.  The idea of creating an imaginary universe that generates a cult-like following is the creator’s dream.  The only problem with big IP’s is that they are often too ambitious to complete correctly. Every now and then someone like George Lucas comes along and does it but situations like his are the exception.  Still, any concept you come up with can contain cross platform/medium functionality.  For instance I’m working on an iPhone game/concept which I can sell, create an article about, and include in a book I’m writing.  In this sense I’m still creating and leveraging an intellectual property just not on the epic scale we all usually think of as it relates to IP.

3 - Don’t ever give up and don’t listen to anyone or anything but your gut instinct.  I’ve been through it all.  People in high school told me I wasn’t intelligent enough to develop games, game reviewers have thrashed my work as have publishers, mentors, and friends … heck even my own mother told me I wasn’t good enough at math to make them.  I couldn’t care less what anyone ever said because I knew in my gut that I was going to do this no matter what anyone ever said.  Shigeru Miyamoto himself could tell me to hang it up and I would do nothing short of consider him an amateur with no vision and continue on my merry way.  No one, and I mean NO ONE can tell you it’s impossible to succeed except yourself.

I wrote a while back about The Craft, that desire to fully master the art of developing games. I’m proud to say that since I’ve gone full time as an iPhone developer it’s been getting easier and easier with each game to perfect that art. Debris was a prototype that I had sitting around for years and years. I could never quite get the concept implemented correctly but I had this feeling that I just had to get it out there. For some reason I’m always in a rush to get the “working idea” out as if that matters at all.

Pretty much everyone knows that execution is the key to success when it comes to making games but I have always felt that it’s a combination of timing and execution. With Debris iPhone I decided it needed to be the best game I could make in a month while simultaneously learning a new engine and platform. As it turns out, most people “Don’t get it”. The up side though is that I learned a lot and Debris was the first game to sell a reasonable number of copies for me. While it’s not the best game, it was the best game I could make at the time.

Sometimes the most important thing with game development is “shipping” the game. It might sell, it might not but I can guarantee you from experience that a title which sells well but receives poor reviews is a better motivating force than a title that gets good reviews and poor sales. In the case of Aerial Antics years ago I spent over a year developing a game to fit within a publisher’s lineup, I contracted an artist, and was late to my “real” job many times. The end result was a lot of pats on the back and no money which meant that I had to keep working a job that had nothing to do with games and I lost all motivation because I didn’t know what went wrong.

Fast forward to November 2008. I had almost no money, I experienced my worst year in business in 5 years, and I only spent 1 month developing my game. As it turns out this game made enough money during the month of January to convince me that it was worth pursuing full time. The early reviews were pretty good but then as time went on it was apparent that only a small percentage of the population understood the game. But … that was OK, because I didn’t spend that much time on it and it was making me enough money to think about this stuff FULL TIME. With a poorly reviewed but decent selling game you know what went wrong and you also get the opportunity to fix it.

Since the beginning of 2009 I have created 4 more iPhone games; Cosmosis, SkylineBlade, Disco Pool, and Kube Killer. Each game has become more and more polished and the reviews continually get better. There’s no substitute for time. When you get the chance to think about something like game development full time you have to jump at it no matter how risky it seems.

I read this Gamasutra Interview with Tim Sweeney and he outlined his career from the beginning. He knew that he was going to be doing it full time when his first game started brining in just $100 a day. He acknowledged that it wasn’t much but that it was an income, something you could technically live on. From that point on is when things began to take off for him in a seemingly exponential fashion.

Since I posted about my iSales I’ve gotten a few “concerned” sounding emails. No, I’m not making a lot of money … yet. The important thing though is that I can afford my bills and I can afford to spend all of my working hours on game development resulting in a better game every 2 months. Considering the fact that we work in a “hit driven” industry this is a great strategy.