Re: Prototyping

Christopher Koppler wrote: 
On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 10:20:20 -0700, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:


This discussion is becoming tiring. I very much feel it's like teaching your grandma to suck eggs. Part of the reason I'm so poor is I've gone through this "prototyping" thing before, with C++. 


Just a thought: maybe part of the reason you're so poor is you don't do
anything all day but post to newsgroups complaining instead of coding
something useful?

Well, considering that I just went out for an hour to gather signatures, and got skunked, and that I'm eating lunch before going to the office to turn in what I've got, and I worked 6.5 hours to make $25 yesterday, and I didn't do so well in Marysville on Saturday + lost $20..$40 worth of signature boards while changing buses, and etc. and so forth and so on as I've struggled to barely make ends meet and stay one step ahead of my landlord, because at least the job is/was a bird in the hand, I can very safely say...

No, that is not the problem. The problem is that signature gathering often looks like it's going to pay, but often doesn't actually deliver. It is a high risk industry. Every season I've learned more about what I should have done. But the problem is, when the season ends in one state, you have to travel to another state if you want to keep going. I didn't make enough money to do that. Also, when I went down to LA last winter to "turn pro," I got skunked, made $0, and a Korean lady totalled my car for me too. So I have bad feelings about hitting the road. There have to be a lot more initiatives available than the paltry 1..2 I've been carrying up here, and I figure I need at least $1000 before even considering hitting the road.

Signature gathering reminds me of open source software. Usually not working.

Well, I'm quitting today. This went past the point of being a waste of time awhile ago. I was just hanging on to work the Marysville parade, and to make enough money to keep my landlord ever so barely placated for maybe 2 more weeks. I would have made some real money in Marysville if I had had a car. Never say never, but I probably won't do signature gathering in the future if I don't have a car. Not unless I tried it out and found it was a really easy measure to move. Show Me The Money.

The thing that continues to bug me about my various critics, is that I know for fact they are not walking in my shoes, and I have my doubts that they could. I'm never getting these criticisms from fellow struggling indie game developers. Probably they know how hard everything is, or are busy finding out, and really wouldn't think it's their place to rag on somebody about all the bombs going off. The truly brave have even written postmortems about how they failed, so that others can maybe learn from their mistakes.

For instance,
http://www.bookofhook.com/Article/GameDevelopment/APyrogonPostmortem.html

Brian Hook was a contemporary of mine once upon a time. We used to argue about low-level rendering stuff in comp.graphics.api.opengl, and we had this huge excruciating technical debate that lasted a month and ended in a draw. So I know he wasn't any smarter than I was. But he went "full hog" into a 3D device driver career and I didn't. I didn't like device drivers that much, I wanted something more creatively fulfilling. Then Brian worked with ID Software for awhile. He made good money, then started his own game studio with a very solid funding base.

He bombed. He pursued derivative work, i.e. things like "Bejeweled" clones that everyone and their brother was trying to cash in on. He never did the tough thing of pursuing a more distinctive vision, despite a nebulous intent to do so. And, who knows, maybe device drivers and ID Software wasn't the right background for doing terribly original work. Quake has never been none for being innovative in terms of game desgin, it's always a technology showcase. Anyways, whatever the reasons, more skilled and better financed game developers than myself have fallen flat on their faces.

I'd just love, for once, to be criticized by a successful *indie game designer*. Just once. I might actually learn something, instead of seeing the usual predictable primate posturing psychology.

--
Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
                          - anonymous entrepreneur
.

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