Journey into making Games at UAT- Part 2

Journey into making Games at UAT- Part 2

To view my first post go here: http://makinggamesatuat.blogspot.com/

 For the last 2 weeks this journey is been nothing more than a frustrating exercise. Anytime I work in a project I usually try to hit the ground running when I work on projects. I try to absorb as much as I can and let me creative juices start flowing. So I had several ideas and I wanted to propose them to the team but they did not seem interested on them.

How to communicate with a slow moving team?

I am not sure I know how to do that since I am used to working alone. I am teacher by training so I am usually the one telling people what to do. Also I am a used to working in fast pace environment because as high school teacher I teach teaching 6 periods a day, and 5 days a week. I have to be ready because there is no time to waste and lots of thing to do. So I have agendas, timetables, due dates, many different things plants to push the student forward, etc.  But the team that I am working seems to be of different breed, the slow kind of breed. It is definitely not the kind of team I am used to work with so it has been frustrating because I feel that we are wasting time.

The team has a good leader and he has done a great job but I feel that they are moving kind of slow. The game is supposed to come out next year I don’t think it will be ready but I could be wrong since I don’t have any experience in this arena. Hope fully they can pick the pace and things start rolling a little faster.

How do you promote and build momentum for a game that is not out yet?

There are many ways to do this. You can create a promotional page in all the different social media outlets: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. You can also create a splash page that captures and helps you sell the product you are making. I got some help on this matter from Emmy Jonassen, a.k.a. the Indie Game Girl, and she has a blog called “IndieGameGirl”, she is one of my twitter followers. I follow her on twitter and read her blog posts. She is marketing pro with ten years of experience in software and technology, specifically promoting video games. She helps indie game developers with free marketing resources and tries to assist help them overcome marketing challenges. She wrote a post that I think is very valuable when it comes to landing pages. You can read it here:

http://www.indiegamegirl.com/landing-page-design-and-how-to-use-it-to-sell-your-indie-game/

Also the article contains an image that is very valuable since it gives an idea how to layout things out: http://www.indiegamegirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/perfect-landing-page-design.jpg

 

What is our game and how to access it?

Mirrored: The Reflective Resolution is a 2.5D thriller and puzzler game that follows the story of a girl named Lily and her mysterious cat companion Logos through several levels that involve dealing with the loss of her parents and fitting in with her new life situation toward the goal of resolution. This requires entry into a mirrored/alternate reality to battle shadow bosses with a defensive mechanic used to survive the battles.

Follows us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mirrored-The-Reflective-Resolution/355975787924756?fref=photo

 

Follows us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MirroredGame

Journey into making Games at UAT- Part 1

Journey into Making Games at UAT

Who makes games? How do you make games? What does it take to make a game? Can anyone make a game? What do you need to learn to make a game?

There are some many questions you can ask when you are talking about the business of making games. The answers can be as diverse as the people making the games and as the games themselves. In other words the answers depend of the person and the game itself because an answer that fits X game and X person is not going to fit or be appropriate for Y person and Y game. One thing I can say for sure is that making games is hard, but it has a layer of entertainment and personal satisfaction. So if you think its all fun and playing games then you got it all wrong. The subject of making games can be approached from different angles but at the end of the day you are creating something that never existed before with an artificial language, using your vision and your imagination. You are harnessing the power of the device you are using to create and run the game. You are in control of what happens, you are responsible for it working the way you want it. It is like magic and only a few people really understand the whole process really well.

One way to look at this subject is to see it from the game producers’ perspective. The book “GameProducer's Handbook” by Dan Irish describes this in great detail.  He draws from his experience as the producer in the Myst franchise to really illuminate the task of making games from the producer’s eyes. In chapter 1 Dan says that the role of the producer “may include all of the responsibilities of a television, movie, or record producer, plus a lot more.” In a review of the book Gamasutra, Brad Kane, said the book is a “...comprehensive, pragmatic guide to the producer's role in game development.” However even though the book focus on the producers it is important to say here that one person can’t make the game happen. It takes a coordinated team to see a game from conception to the final stages and beyond. To me the producer is like the oil that keeps the gears of complex machine working smoothly and without any issues. In this Extra Credit you can hear and see the basics of Game Development illustrated in a comic way. 

Do you need a degree to make a game? Why I am doing a Masters in Game Management & Production at UAT? Why am I making a game now? What I hope to accomplish in the next 5 years?

I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree even though a degree is just a piece of paper that supposedly says that you can do something in theory. I know some companies don’t really care about degrees to a certain extend. They care about the real work, can you do it in the tough times and the easy times. They want to know if you have enough passion to see a game all the way to the end. They care to see if you understand what it takes to complete a game as producer.

But it really doesn’t matter to me since I am not doing this to go work for someone else. I many reasons to embark in this journey but some are deeply personal. By far my experiences here at UAT have been less than perfect. I have gained some skills and I have created some relationship that I hope will be fruitful for my future endeavors. I have made some progress with the game- language app-that I making. I understand the concepts and what it takes to make a game a little better every month. I know what I need to do but I don’t have much time to get done, so it is a slow progress while I am in school. I made great progress in the last couple of months in the journey continues.