The Illinois of Art, Chicago	Programming for the Artist
	Instructor: Lindsay Grace

 

Postmortem: 2007 Indie Games Summit - Small Arms (Video 30 minutes)

2 "Software programmers" create a successful downloadable indie game:

Highlights:

• Small developers have to cover "everything" - marketing, producing, concept, etc
• Small teams have specific concerns: simple "safe" code helps prevent QA issues
• Art Assets "over achieved"
• Design from scratch for downloadable games (that's what you are doing)
• Code reuse and scale
• How to create "chatter"/interest in your game - climb the ranks
• Outsource audio (sync meeting - common producers activity)

What went wrong:

• Overly ambitious (listen, listen, listen to this)
• Unique boss battles add little but take lots of effort
• Testing during development is complicated and tricky (throw a party instead !)
• Art Intervention always required programmer intervention
• Level design was too complicated for level designers - too much software
• CRUNCH TIME ("look out for the all important demo")
• Know the environment where you will demo

Tip:

• Internal "producer" position can be useful (esp for paperwork)