Six years ago I gave up a lucrative job as a Business Development Manager with IBM Software - I wanted to start my own software business, my hope was to make some games For my first project I decided to learn some stuff and attempt to remake a game, but make it an authentic remake. I chose the Asteroids game, decompiled the orignal Atari chip* and reverse engineered the vector code.. ########### Today : Helping technology start-ups develop web applications / Facebook games... etc... Still doing my own thing What did you do six years ago?
5.5 years ago I bought BlitzPlus and began writing a Kung Fu platformer in my spare time. Realised I'd never finish it unless I went full time so stopped doing contract programming 6 months later. Then realised the game would never sell in the marketplace (5 years ago remember), and switched to casual games (made some smaller free games first to hone my skill). And you, Tim, of course know the beginning of that story as you came up with the idea for the Xmas Bonus theme and published the first two! Thanks dude.
Six years ago I quit my job to go fulltime indie. Had family to support me though That year I made 5 games: http://www.winterwolves.com/pc_mac_games.htm http://www.winterwolves.com/pc_mac_games2.htm http://www.winterwolves.com/universalboxingmanager.htm http://www.winterwolves.com/quizland.htm http://www.winterwolves.com/thegoalkeeper.htm of which 2 still sells today (not hard to guess which ones). Now I learned is better to hire an external artist and use rapid development languages like python and support linux too
Six years ago I worked in Customer Services/Sales for British Gas. Spent nine hours a day talking to people who just wanted somebody to shout at, got treated like shite by the management, hated every damn second of it. When your morning drive to work is regularly filled with thoughts of piling it into the nearest tree/lamp post to get out of having to do it any more, its time for a career move.
6 years ago...just after the publication of my book, The Indie Game Development Survival Guide...I was invited to speak at the Next Play Festival in Melbourne, Australia, on the topic of indie games. That kicked ass. That same year (2004), I also went to Singapore twice. Once as "foreign press" (a great gig, so long as it's not a war zone) and once as a speaker about indie games. That was a good year. -David
Six years ago, I was still studying and was in the market for my first laptop. I ended up sinking 1700€ on a PowerBook G4 12", which is pretty much the reason I do what I do now.
Six years ago I just left my job at Team17 and started lecturing. I went to the first indie games con in oregon (remember that David?) and I spent the summer travelling around the world.
Six years ago, I was getting tired of being away from my newborn twin daughters all the time due to running my embedded software business, and securing deals that sometimes took a year to close. So, I looked for a micro-business to start from home and how to put an unemployed artist friend to good use. I sold my stock, said goodbye to the VC backed business world, bumped into early casual games, we eventually got lucky and did the titles in my signature. Best regards, Emmanuel
Six years ago I was the CTO of Covalent Software, a small Taunton tech startup, who are now the UK market leaders in public sector performance management software. Wisely left with shares Should be floating or selling in about 2-3 years. Gamewise I seem to recall making Super Dudester. Should have been called Super Dudster. Cas
That's almost exactly when we started Rubicon with a contracts lead from a friend of a friend to develop 12 cellphone games. We did the first four, and then the money started drying up. At one point the pm told me she's walking the invoice in her hand over to the accounts department. This was going the extra mile on account of her being in London and accounts payable being in luxembourg. The contract stated that we were to port what we were given from Java to Brew, complete with milestones for them to deliver the assets. Which as you can imagine didn't arrive as they were already dicking us around with late payments. So, after a while we did what we were contracted to do, writing the other 8 games that showed a placeholder title screen and "press 1 to continue". Pressing 1 quit the app as there was nothing else to port. We supplied and invoiced for all 8 remaining titles like that. And eventually got paid for all 8. Can I have some more of those please?
Six years ago I took on a programming contract with the local council. It was a 3-month contract. I'm still there. Six days ago I gave my notice. From the middle of September I'll be making games full time for Amanda, and for myself in my spare time Finally, I won't be "on the outside, looking in" anymore!
Six years ago I was working as an animator and modeler for the "next big thing!" at a good sized game studio. The game flopped on release. Ten years ago I was working as a sales assistant while hoping to get my big break into the animation industry. And finally got it working on a kids' TV show - along with many straight 32 hour shifts and a major cause of my baldness!
Six years ago I switched from PC to mobile games, released my first game which was meant to be a kind of tiny project to learn Java (well J2ME) and everything required to create a releasable mobile game. Sales were almost zero, released a Brew port on almost all carriers and made quite some serious money Still doing mobile games and have fun doing so. 2*6 years ago I played StarCraft and today I played StarCraft 2
Six years ago I left my job at Digital Illusions to go indie... until I was asked by Scharlo to start working with him at Big Blue Bubble. We were doing Java (ugh), Brew, and Mophun mobile games. About a year and a GBA title later I resumed that "indie" thang. Today I'm porting a casual/mobile game I made to every platform known to man, while winning contests you've never heard of (I WON A CAR ZOMG!), getting used to on-camera interviews (WTF!), in addition to trying to get a "TOTALLY NOT CASUAL TOTALLY FREAKING STRANGE" new game off the ground. I'm having a blast. Dude.
Six years ago, I...... don't really remember what I was doing. Working for "the man" during the day and plotting the course to fame and riches by night. I'm sure a game of some sort was involved but I had no clue what I was doing so it went nowhere. Infact, yes.. now I remember. It was a bowling game where the lane would try to destroy your ball with machine guns and such. Heh... I might resurrect that one some day just for the hell of it. This year I got my first game published and made a whopping 70 some odd sales! Well, I also finished another game (round 3 of QA with the publisher) and am getting ready to start building a demo for the same publisher in the hopes that they'll back the development of a much larger project with some celebrity talent attached. We already recorded the voice tracks in a swanky hollywood recording studio, which made me almost forget I'm still a broke, no name nobody. Wistful sigh..... Am hopeful that game #2 will do better than game #1 did (it'd be hard to do much worse) and getting ready to start a new dayjob closer to home - more time to work on games that way. Someday (I keep telling myself) I'll look back on these last few years and laugh. The question remains however, if said laughter will be from the deck of a luxury sailboat as it heads to exotic ports around the globe or if it will be from the corner of a rubber padded room as I try to wriggle free from my restraints and reach for my crayons. Time will tell, I suppose.
Congrats, Indiepath! Six years ago I was just starting development on Dirk Dashing. And I was still basking in the glow of the 2004 IGF, where my very first game Fashion Cents had been selected as a finalist.
In late April of 2004 we had sold our house in Santa Cruz. It was dinner time on Sunday night and we were due to leave Monday AM for our new life. We decided to skip a drive through Death Valley in the middle of the day and set out that evening. I vividly remember hitting the remote button on the garage door opener, skittering the controller in across the cement floor as it closed and driving off into the night. We spent that Spring and Summer here on the lake (Sacandaga Lake where I am typing this now) and then blasted off for our new life in the Fall. It's been a trip (actually, most years its been a trip back and forth across the country as we go from Terrace, BC, Canada to Sacandaga Lake NY for the summer). We still aren't rich but I have a new perspective on my business this year and it feels like we are slowly getting somewhere while leading a more sane existence. Works for me.
2004? Wage slave for Microsoft in Austin, working on a $10M+ X360 title that would eventually be canned. Ugh. Worked with some talented people, but I don't miss AAA one bit. - andrew