How to Make it Big in Games

By: Derek Yu

On: September 15th, 2006

Just discovered a blog by Jeff Tunnell, who co-founded Dynamix back in the day (whoa, I didn’t know that!) and also Garage Games (the Torque Engine). The blog, Make it Big in Games, looks like a really great read for independent game developers or anyone interested in an insider’s look at the industry. I’m going to have to spend a night just going through the archives…

Posted in Business, Community, Developers

Sergio

So informative… sadly its pretty much decimated all my ambition as a professional game maker. You ‘need’ to know C++ or how to make 3D models? I loathe both 3D and programming, though I have some knowledge of both…

Tell me this isn’t necessarily true, Derek. You haven’t needed those skills much making Aquaria, have you?
NO!

Didn’t know this was ‘a good read’ sarcastically speaking.

‘Yes boy, you need to learn C++ to make REAL games, that or our $100 Torque Engine, buy now!’, ‘Ditch your freeass Milkshape and get 3D Studio Max for $3500’

So according this dweeb a tool defines how pro your work is, I wonder what he suggests you to use for pixelart, maybe Photoshop?

What made me close his stupid blog in anger was his lifeless assertion that ‘games are art’. Fuck that geek. gameproducer.net is a way better read IMHO.
mushu

Any kind of one-path-only philosophy to a goal is going to be seriously flawed.

There are unlimited ways to make good games… but even more ways to make bad ones. :D
Sergio

Making games intentionally terrible is also faster and funner. What a pity.
Sum Yun Guy

I guess I’m in the minority here. I found Jeff Tunnell’s advice helpful and inspiring. A lot of it is applicable to fields other than game development, too.

And I don’t think he’s saying his way is the only way. He’s just offering up what he’s learned from his experience.

A good find — thanks Derek!
takane

“gameproducer.net is a way better read IMHO”

Oh, USED to be a better read. But now recently the only thing that he’s blogged about is how to make money online by selling text link ads.

And somehow, he argues that selling links is related to making money, and that’s related to being a game producer.

Jeff Tunnell does provide useful advice every once in awhile. At least he isn’t shoving $50 membership fees in our faces. :)
http://www.joy90.co.uk Moschops

While it’s great what the guy has achieved and the more unconventional ‘hobbiest'(sik) :p route he’s taken but I can’t help feeling he’s got a big chip on his shoulder about people with degrees and working in the main stream. People like me. He’s made broad generalisations about the quality of staff and what it is really like to work for a large mainstream company. Some of what he says is true but when you find yourself in that situation, you move on.

While I also agree that having a university education doesn’t make you a good games developer (or even good programmer for that matter), I learnt some seriously useful software engineering practices at uni that have made me a better programmer. Many of the self taught coders (and I really don’t mean to put anyone off doing it) tend to hack things together. Sure they get it working, but things usually start to fall apart when the project gets bigger than one coder can deal with.

NO! – you don’t *need* to learn c++ to make games, many indie developers out there use all sorts of tools and languages to build stuff, and I’m glad they do … writing from scratch in c++ is time consuming.

You don’t need to spend a great deal of money on tools, c/c++ compilers are freely available, graphics and sound library are freely available. As for making assets, milkshape is fine until you need better animation control, the plug-in sdk is a piece of cake to use. And who needs photoshop when the gimp works well enough for the job, despite being a bit weird to use.

Hmmm, I seem to do nothing but rant these days …… go indie developers! make cool stuff! I need you to, I’m so lazy it’ll be years before you see what I’m up to :p
Herpe

It’s more like ‘How to Make it Big Taking Advantage of People Without the Talent to Make Games’ isn’t it?