A game developer I am…. am I?

My last post was about my best try to get into the games development business (as an employee). That specific try didn’t work, as no one in Mind Candy contacted me or replied to any of my emails. I was really tired of developing apps and I wanted to, finally, fulfil my childhood dream of becoming a game developer.

Don’t get me wrong, I did games in the past with good enough success to be able to call myself a game developer, but the fact is I still wasn’t comfortable calling myself that. During the days I was creating Light Asylum Escape episodes 1 and 2 I had left my job and was living from some savings and my fiancée was also supporting me and the quest for my dream. But the fact is, I wasn’t doing it that well. Although I finished those two games, and some other collab, I wasn’t really making the amount of money I needed. That was due to the fact that I wasn’t being able to work at the pace I needed. I was procrastinating my dream away!

From the outside you could probably think I was living the life! Not going to work every day, chill out at home. I watched a lot of Buffy episodes, and even Angel. But in fact I was in pain every day for not working. For not being with other people. For procrastinating the stuff I loved. That also ended with the demise of my relationship. After that I got a job at a music website and put my games aside for a while (a big while).

Then the opportunity to come to London made me move to a whole new reality. I came to London to work on a company that develops a CMS (Content Management System). As soon as I got here I started registering to lots of meetup groups and found out that there was a big indie developers movement in London. I met so many interesting people working on their own cool and crazy projects. They were getting together in pubs and showing their stuff. I never felt so much at home among them, but at the same time, so much empty for not having my own project to speak about.

One of the people I met ended up hinting me to try and get a job at the company he worked on. It was social casino games, which is not something really exciting, but at the same time he said the company was an awesome place to work in.

After a very hard interview process, I got in. I’ve been working there for a year now and I can say it’s the best place I’ve ever worked in. The company culture is amazing and I’m surrounded by geek gamers! It feels like home every day. And I’m always learning so much.

But still, there’s a hole inside me. This itch I can’t scratch. I got a clue about it more then a year ago. My girlfriend was working in a company that had science events for kids. She needed something about space and something about solar energy. I started working on 2 ideas.

For the solar energy one I took a basic idea I had years ago about a solar panel where people would team up to get some energy by using mirrors to reflect the sun into the panel. That worked well and the kids loved it (even if the sun was just a light projector).

For the space activity I thought about something I saw in the Edinburgh’s science museum. They had this space rover that was controlled by buttons. I thought I could make a game where kids would have to program the Mars rover to get to a certain point by entering a sequence of commands. It’s the perfect scenario, since the real Mars rover takes at least 30 minutes to get any message from earth, so you better tell him everything you want in one go or you’ll have to wait.

For a whole weak I was working on it, and I was really working on it. My girlfriend had already committed to present those 2 activities, and I wasn’t going to let her down. I took 2 days off from work before that weekend, just to finalize the game. The first day I decided to go and work where I knew indie devs were in London. First I went to the Scenario Bar pub in Dalston, where a lot of the indie community spends the days working on their games. But it was empty, since most indies were in a San Francisco (IGF if I remember). I was still there working while the bar owner, a very cool indie developer/gamer girl, kept me company. On the afternoon I went to Google Campus where anyone can go and grab a seat and work on their projects. The room was filled with people working on stuff and they were introducing themselves, talking about their stuff. You could see on their screens the initial steps of start-up companies and websites and stuff. It was really exciting and motivating!

I finished the game, I finished a custom game controller to play the game, and the day was a success. Kids loved both the solar activity and the game. You can see images here.

At that moment I felt something I haven’t felt since I released Light Asylum Escape. This sense of accomplishment and pride. Something I did was out there and people liked it. It hit me hard that I wanted more of that. Not necessarily a big success, but having an idea come to life and having some people resonating with it.

Now I’m working as a game developer as a day job. That is awesome! But I still want to make some ideas come to life! I’m starting to work on some, and I hope this post will be the first of many, revealing those ideas.