Game development with a full time job

Last night the development team met up for the first time in person, until now we have been communicating via email to get ideas flowing and some initial development under way. We are six people with a passion for gaming and full time jobs. Our love for gaming fuels our aspirations as game developers, meaning we are willing to give our free time to a project even though it is a difficult investment to make. My goal at our first meeting was to not only show why it’s a good idea to do this project but that the project is not a waste of time. I made the mistake of waiting until some of my other commitments were fulfilled before we started, which made my job harder simply because the time spent waiting by the rest of the team degenerated their interest in the project.

To win their favor back, I spent the last week and a half building a new framework for the game and presenting it to the team during the meeting. We also worked out a task list, but since we do not have set schedules in our full time jobs we do not have milestones or deadlines yet. The decision to postpone setting deadlines and milestones in the first meeting may have been a mistake, but I will not know for sure until the next few meetings go by. I will post on that in a later blog I am sure. The general outline for the story has been worked out and I am excited to be making the game. The fact that we have such a tight schedule though may make us work harder on the game because I am sure that everyone in this group would like to own their own game company and do something they enjoy for a living. The only thing that will get this game published from where we are now is motivation by every member of the team. I believe that current we have that, just because we met in person and everyone is on the same page.

As a general rule, when creating a game with a small group of people, be sure to meet at least once in person (if not as many times as you can), and set up message boards online and a version control system (like SVN). This will make the development start and continue much smoother as time passes. Don’t be discouraged by the limited time your group has , as long as you maintain your team’s motivation the game development will continue.

Like always, please post any questions in the comments if you have them.

2 comments:

  1. So are you just working on a game for fun? Or is this supposed to eventually replace the day job?

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  2. We plan on making this a successful business. If it starts pulling in more than my day job then it would replace it, at this point though I am not treating it as such.

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