SAE Magazine 12-2

When you’re working for another company you go in, you do your job and you can go home. Some- times you have to stay late occasionally. When you’re working by yourself as an independent you have to work around the clock, seven days a week and there’s always stuff to do so you are maybe programming one day, doing business another day, marketing another day and it can be exciting but also very stressful and very draining. I recommend that most people who want to develop independent- ly should do it on evenings and weekends in their spare time and work on smaller games, because if you work on a small game that you can finish it on a reasonable time; if you release it on PC or iPhone you can make a good amount of money if you work hard, put a lot of care into it to make sure it’s polished, and market it very well. There are a lot of pros to working for a studio and I do recommend that if people can find a studio that’s hiring, to apply for a job because even if you do want to go independent, learning from a studio is the best way to learn far more stuff than you’ll ever learn if you start independently from the outset. Which is the first step to becoming indie? It depends, I recommend that all people who want to go indie start by working in a studio, some people work at a studio and they enjoy it, and they will have long careers in the studio; but other people are more focused on their own idea, whether you’re working for a studio, if you’re a programmer you may be programming other people’s designs, if you’re a de- signer you may be designing the publisher’s charac- ters so being independent gives you creative control. Minimum staff a production requires Well,youcandevelopanentirevideogamebyyour- self; I recommend that people get a the crew with at least one programmer or one artist and poten- tially one designer. Game design is a big talent, a big skill that is underestimated and a lot of people who play games think that they play games a lot so they can design well, but learning to be a good game designer is just as much work as learning to become a good programmer or a good artist, and as a programmer or artist you can put in the work, teach yourself or go to school and become a good game designer but it is a lot of work and it some- times may be a good idea to bring a game designer on to your team to help out. Should the designer take part in the whole process, or just pre-production? The game designer should be involved in the whole process because designing a good video game, a large portion of the design is actually not the ini- tial idea, the initial concept, most of it is actually adjusting, tuning, playing through the game. For example if you are programming a Super Mario Brothers’game the designer might think “ok jump- ing would work approximately like this”, but then as they play it they may find it may work a little bit more like that or so forth and so as the design- er you’re constantly playing your game, testing it, adjusting things and the hours and hours and ➤ Retro City Rampage Screen Shot 67 People & Business // Videogame Creators Index

SAE Magazine 12-2

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