The holidays always inspire reflection, and after an intense year, I took a quick break from the usual today to write up a little list. I was thinking about the past year, the day to day, the amount of context shifting required when you have a small team trying to make something big. After spending the morning editing a trailer, then coding a new feature, and then rehearsing/prepping our pitch deck, I figured I'd make a quick list. Hopefully this could help inform someone looking to take the leap in the new year. While it all feels overwhelming at times, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Every day is a new adventure and I love it infinitely :)
This is my own personal list of what worked/was required for me. I'm not an evangelist - just taking note of what got us to our current state. Note: the main message was too long - the first comments are the continued message.
Become comfortable with saying I don't know. Feeling lost quite often, but not letting that stop you
Get really good at creating, organizing and maintaining a massive codebase that implements all kinds of different gameplay elements. And using tools, patterns, sdks and architectures that work for you and your team. In my youth I often chased the shiny objects, framework, tools, etc only for them to be abandoned and dead weight. Find your proper mix of pragmatism, functional & future proof, and be totally ok with it if it's not the "trendy" thing
Love making a game. I mean, really love making a game. The act of the thing, not just the dream of success once it’s released. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done creative/work-wise, and the amount of hours required is absurd. But if you love it, it’s soooo worth it
Learn how to pitch. All of it. Making a pitch deck, a concise elevator pitch. How to identify your unique selling points, do competitive analysis. This is way, way harder than it appears, and it’s always ongoing
Listen to the experts, the amazing indie communities & the people willing to help. You can gain so much just by humbling yourself and learning
Find the mindset to allow for intense hours of debugging that feels hopeless at times
Learn how to prioritize huge features that you don't know how to build. Get really good at educating guesses. If story pointing works for you, do it. If not, don't. Cass & I have our own little frankenstein Agile-informed workflow that works great for us
Write hundreds of unit tests - large parts of the NPC behavior happens behind the scenes, and all the scheduling, personality & behavior algorithms, conversation logic, etc would be a nightmare to maintain without the safety net of the tests and all the calculation logic
Use tools like Canva, Google Slides for creating decks, but also prototyping UI. For someone with no artistic ability, these are vital to getting anything going till I can hand it off to an artist
How to edit images/layers in GIMP, import psb's into Unity. Rig animations and use sprite libraries to allow for the level of customization we want for a life sim
How to start a Discord community
How best to capture game footage using OBS Studio
How to edit video footage into a specific time needs for a trailer video, but also specific clips and different timeline resolutions/fps needs for animated GIFs, etc. Learn DaVinci Resolve
Find a lawyer, learn about LLCs (or whatever type you wish to choose). Protect your IP
Track finances - Cass is amazing at managing budget, predictions, all that. Spreadsheets, breakdowns, milestones, cost - needed to learn all this. Maintain a product roadmap/backlog
Lay out some sort of social media plan, or at least how you help your community manager approach it when you hire one
How to write scripts for your videos. And how to at least not sound completely wooden voice acting. Best way to apply effects/mix them into the music/game/etc
Operational tasks. GIT/source control - managing multiple users/security - dealing with builds. Creating stand alone Unity projects for prototyping, sharing prefabs and exporting portions of code as shared libraries
Wix for our fingersonthemoon.com website - manage pushing out new screenshots/trailers/media, keep a news blog with updates and contact management. Domain registration here too
Luminar for photo editing/touch ups
How to build and assemble a booth to allow people to play your game when you bring it to conventions. Collect feedback. Deal with others in constructive ways. Get better at social interactions. Learn how to make an order swag like t-shirts (thanks Max!), stickers, signage
Manage other people & contractors. How to convey creative ideas back and forth and get the help you need. Writing SOW’s for contract workers (thanks Cass!)
Recording music - sound effects. Making repeatable project templates in Logic (or your DAW of choice)
How to filter the noise - how to get better at using this beast that the internet has grown into to find what you need without getting sucked into pointless stuff. Suppose this falls under “maintain focus”
How to do QA without no funding. Getting better at trying to see the game through other people's eyes. Focus grouping friends and finding reasonable solutions to pain points
Prioritize the hundreds of features you'd love to build. Understanding what is vital to the game vs nice to have
Ok, I could go on forever. Gotta get back to editing the trailer. Oh yeah, I'll share that soon too!
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