Let’s get the party started!
I’ve been thinking about the game dev industry for a while and finally decided that it was the time to pursue the dream. One morning I woke up (preceded by months of thinking) and made my mind up — I have 3 months to package demo of my first game and a year to enter an industry as a game producer.
I already have 10+ years of project and program management but it felt like a right thing to do — to become well-equipped before starting networking and searching for new aspiration in the unknown territory. As Link in Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
BTW, it was exactly BOTW that inspired me to come back to childhood hobby. The game resonated with me to the core and after completing the final quest all I wanted to do was to climb on the highest mountain and see the horizon change as the days went by. Also, I picked Unity as a tool for me. My friend Maria went to the VR conference and was really excited about the tool — so it was decided I want to be as passionate and excited as she was.
I decided to think about the game development life cycle and outlined the main steps (from my point of view), where I should focus to get the basics.
Creating game concept, analysis and analysis document as an early stage of my education seemed to be prematurely without knowledge of the Unity platform and its can’s and cannot’s, so I decided to skip it and start the exploration with the assets.
This was a weighted decision because I wanted to understand what assets could be created by me (to suit my purpose) and whether I was capable of creating them by myself, at all. And to see what’s available in Unity Assets Store and Blend Swap!
The next step would be to get familiar with environments — both 3D and 2D. In my mind, once you have assets you need to start thinking how to put them in space as a milestone for further exploration with the world.
After that I would need to put a character in this world and animate them, define rules for interaction, behaviors, and abilities. This comes side by side with AI — NPCs and enemies to make the life of explorer easier or harder. Physics, logic, and interactions go, kinda, side by side with this process (hello, advancing of C# scripting).
The most important part of the game for me has always been the atmosphere and how it tells the story with fewer words and more feelings. I would put a special emphasis on ambiance, sounds, and FX. (I just thought that all I want in reality is to be able to create beautiful realistic montane landscapes and shadows that make a heart feel faster and provide for the full immersion and emotions close to when you travel the world).
The last step would be peculiarities of building and QA’ing the game before I create my first concept and start implementing the capstone project.
And because I want to be a games producer, I will spend a lot of time learning about tools and best practices in the industry for project management and planning, version control, repository management, collaboration, and life-cycle management.
So…
Wish me luck!
