You (don’t) need to be a hero: game development recommendations, part I

What do I need?

That’s probably the first question that comes to mind whenever we consider the game development sector as something more than a mere idea: “What do I need? How about the skills required? I am not a great artist. I am not a great programmer. I have no idea about music”, and oh, believe me: you (don’t) need to be a hero, Shinji. If anything, some of your doubts are a natural response that’s based on your fears, as the unknown is always a scary path to take. Let me tell you now: this is not easy.

Understand that this specific line of work is not for everyone. We’re now at a point where there have been so many layoffs across so many studios that some of the companies are seeing it as an opportune time to make some cuts for more specific reasons, knowing that within a couple of days, there’ll be a number of other studios in the spotlight for job losses instead. We keep hearing dramatic stories coming from the industry that involve crunch, low salaries, layoffs, and developers struggling to combat their conditions from the margins. Allow me to repeat myself: It’s not easy. It can be soul-crushing at times, just like any other job. It can also be the most fulfilling thing you’ve ever done in your life, though, as there is nothing that compares to someone playing your creation, enjoying it, and letting you know that it was worth the effort.

“I still do not have the skills”, well, guess what: you don’t need any specific skills. Luckily for us, we live in a time where we can learn literally anything we need to make a game with relative ease. I do feel you, of course: I feel like an impostor myself, too, but despite what you may think, none of this comes from natural talent; we all just pour our hours and passion into getting better at what we do, and these days, that opportunity is more accessible than it ever was. Opportunities have become possibilities — endless ones. Do you want some examples proving this theory? Then please, allow me to open the door granting you access to my mind during for some minutes.

Kentucky Route Zero, Undertale & Thomas Was Alone

The above-mentioned examples are some of my personal favorites, not only due to the quality itself but also because of the underlying connotations connecting these specific creations. Although these are definitely not AAA titles, they all share a common treat: they are damn incredible games. Are you truly worried about not being an incredible artist? Thomas Was Alone is literally made of rectangles, squares… and that’s all. All of it — even the particles. And oh, surprise: these shapes and their inherent minimalism will definitely make you cry as not many other games could. How is that even possible? What truly matters, in this case, is the philosophical commentary on the nature of life, as well as a story charmingly narrated by Danny Wallace. Thomas Was Alone is philosophical, funny, political, sometimes paranoid, sometimes scientific and moral, similar to a cautionary tale. But above all, it is an incredibly remarkable artifact.

With the unquestionable success of video games in the entertainment industry in the last few years, they are more and more recognized for their artistic values, but visual art is not about great graphics only. There has to be something else, and developing an empathy for blocks proves that this “something else” is what truly prevails. Does any of you remember Undertale, for instance? I bet that’s the case, as our dear ❤️ Toby Fox ❤️ managed to create one of the most influential indie games ever. There’s something you might not know about the development process of such an indie milestone, though — and believe me when I say that this phenomenon affects way more games than we could possibly imagine.

Successfully raising 50 thousand dollars on Kickstarter for the game development and eventually selling 500,000 copies on Steam just 3 months after its launch, Undertale was developed by an individual who had little to no experience in development, and it shows. Cover your eyes, programmers: apparently, Undertale’s dialogue lives under a massive 1000+ long switch statement, which is something… terrifying to think about. But that’s not what the player gets to see. The player does not care about the twists and tweaks related to the source code or the development process itself. What made Undertale unique is that it had a singular — and singularly compelling — hook: you didn’t have to battle the monsters to win the game. In fact, you could play through Undertale without dispatching with a single foe. Each monster had a charmingly idiosyncratic personality that you could exploit to talk them out of fighting you, but if you wanted to, you could also go on a bloody rampage, slaughtering every creature in your path. Why would we care about the rest?

Similarly, the creators of Kentucky Route Zero, one of the most impacting and beautiful games ever created, had to face some complicated scenarios due to their backgrounds and limitations as a team. As I reported in a dedicated article of my personal blog:

Putting aside the financial commitment, since there was no full-time programmer on the team, Elliott and Tamas had to split coding duties between them, and given the challenging nature of the project and each member of the studio coming from an artistic background, their unique approach made the game’s code difficult to understand. According to Kemenczy himself, the codebase became so idiosyncratic that some of it was absolutely inscrutable; here, as Elliott made clear throughout several interviews on the matter, some decisions ended up being more conceptual than practical, as if they had always understood their own game as a kind of software art project.

Now, you

What about you? I’d want to kindly ask you to keep the examples we mentioned in mind, and then add some of your favorite ones to your personal list, too.

Think of Thomas Was Alone: You can learn to make particles out of simple shapes, and then keep building on top of that concept. Try to picture Undertale’s OST, for instance; the recurring use of certain melodies that can be seen as a leitmotif, the simplicity and yet coherent situational music it uses. Does it sound way too complicated? There are tons of royalty-free libraries you could use for your background music and sound effects; you could even grab a recorder, use your mouth or tools around your place, and try to put it together. You (don’t) have to be a hero, but you can definitely create a shell of a game that accomplishes the basic goals you’d want to represent and deliver to the world. You can learn programming as you go, which means that you can make a game. You have endless tools around you, hands to clap, and free music at reach, which means that you can make a game. Perhaps you don’t consider yourself the most talented artist ever, but that’s probably your brain telling you that you can’t do something — and that’s not accurate at all.

There are games starring shapes, explosions of colors, and even stick figures. Can you draw a stick or a triangle? Then, you can make a game.

Originally published in Rising Up: Insights from a Junior to Future Seniors.

Part II coming soon!