Indy / Full Time Software Engineer I started off sort of lucky. I was a freshman in highschool when my school first introduced a C++ course. It was the first computer related course in the school. My school was a bit behind the times as this was only back in 1999. Everything went from there. Went to college at RIT and got my bachelors. Been doing mostly web development since college. I'm currently a software engineer at a large hospital software corporation and have been there for three years. I've never worked on anything really exciting or cutting edge. Everything has been mainly corporate for me. I've been doing iOS development for about a year now. I initially got started doing stuff on my own back when the iPadDevCamp came around to New York City. I was one of the developers of a Quiji board for the iPad and had great fun. Been doing iOS games ever since. It's great to do exciting programming. I've been losing my excitement in coding over the past two years as everything in the industry in my area has been moving to corporate financial or health care.
I started out working as a contract application/web developer after graduating from university. I then moved into working for mainstream game development companies releasing titles on PC, Xbox 360 and iPhone. I decided to leave there to start my own consulting company focussing on web development. This was perfect timing as within a year of leaving mainstream game development most of the large development studios in my home town (Brisbane, Australia) shut down. After a year of running my own application/web development company I felt the pull to get back into games as it is my true passion. Earlier this year I formed an independent studio with some friends I worked with in mainstream games and we've been working on our first title for the past few months. We are developing an iPad/iPhone game in Unity and are looking to release later in the year. I also blog about my experiences in the games industry (both mainstream and now independent) at doolwind.com.
Technically, I started developing in 5th/6th grade with HTML and javascript. But when I recieved a TI-83+ for high school, I started to code BASIC programs and games daily. I was that kid who was never too far from his calculator... lol. By the time I had finished high school, I had taught myself assembly programming for TI-83+ in addition to picking up java and visual basic from school classes. I eventually went to a university that offered a BA for Video Game Development which turned out to be the hardest/best decision of my life (at the time). The school was accelerated so classes where normally only a month long and they were intense. I ended up graduating 22 months after I started and learned more than I ever needed to know about programming and game development. After college, I couldn't land a job I wanted (stupid economy) and ended up taking a year long break (bad idea) but eventually got back in touch with a college buddy who started his own studio and moved out to work for him. Now I'm here
First computer was the Vic 20, but I was a kid. I wrote a few print statements and goto loops, but I only wanted to play the games, and I have played a ton of them. I got a BS in Computer Science and started down my path of being a Microsoft developer writing all kinds of boring business applications. VB, ASP, .NET, C#. After 13 years of sitting in cubes working for companies that could care less about you I am making some changes. I love the movie Office Space! It is all too familiar. I always wanted to do game development, but it didn't seem possible. I live in Nashville and like living here. That industry doesn't exist here. Also game development has turned into huge teams spending millions of dollars to develop titles. Thank God Apple broke down the barriers for indie devs to get back into the game. My first game came out a few weeks ago, and I plan on making many more.
I am not early starter in game development.I was so much confused what will I do in the life . I guess I played first game (tetris )at the age of 22 or may be more.but since then I just wanted to make games. I searched for direction to where to start, and someone advice me to learn j2me for mobile games.I started learning and got a job. then not satisfied with work I left job. then I got into a game studio in Goa. I was very happy with the job we have a small but good team of developers and artist. and as every story goes, we also hit by recession. Then I took software development job as there were not many jobs in game development in India.but I wanted to develop games so start learning iphone and shipped my first game.
Thank you all for your stories! I'm currently working on my PhD, and my theme is independent developers in App Store environment. Your stories have inspired me in my research. I have opened a new thread, where I recruit informants to my study. Have a look, if you think you could help me by working on five tasks each taking less than an hour of your time (or actually four tasks, since the fifth one isn't ready yet, and it might take some time before I can launch it). Best wishes Sunaitis (Irmeli Pietilä)
Like a lot here, I've been a huge gamer since the NES 8-bit era. Took a computer programming class on a whim in high school, found out I was really good at it. Went on to college and majored in computer science. From there I got in the web development business. Not completely satisfied with my day job I started dabbling in Flash in my free time. I actually didn't even get into Flash at first to make games. I saw that "Napster Bad" cartoon that made fun of my favorite band Metallica and wanted to know how I could make cartoons like that. Hence, Razoric.com was born way back in June of 2000. Some of the more popular cartoons I made are spoofs based on established video game franchises such as Mario and Final Fantasy. Also made a KoRn video that was featured on KoRn.com for a bit as well. My first attempt at a Flash game ended up being a huge hit. Jumping in on the whole Newgrounds.com making fun of celebrities trend I made a game called Feed Lindsay. A couple other games I made include Burger Defense and Text 4 Dead While making these games I knew that I would probably never make a living off of them. I was doing them in my already very limited free time and the return on investment barely covered the costs of making them. But that didn't really matter as I always treated it as a hobby. After getting my first iPhone (3G) and messing around with the AppStore I knew I had to make a game for this thing. Both for the hobby and the small chance of actually selling enough to elevate it above hobby status. The first game I made (using cocos2d) was actually rejected by Apple. I quickly reworked it into a Flash game just for fun: Skinny Hollywood. As you can see the art assets it was made for the iPhone (low res). Anyway, after getting rejected a few times I decided to consider it a lost cause. It was never ment to be a huge game anyway. I ended up gutting that game and reusing a lot of the code for my first iPhone game: Boom Boat I'm currently working on a huge update for Boom Boat based off of tons of good user feedback. Sales have been decent, not career changing yet but still good enough to continue investment into the game. I feel like it has a lot of potential. I also have a google doc that has no less than 3 more game designs I'm currently batting around in my head. IMO there has never been a better time to be an indie game designer.
I never actually played video games until when I was about 9. For my 14th birthday my parents gave me some cash and coincidentally my neighbor happened to be selling his iPhone 2G. I had just enough cash to buy it and thought that, with the programming experience I already had, I could learn to develop apps for it. about a year later I released my first game "Police Chase." it wasn't an immediate success but a few months later when the iPhone 4 was released, sales skyrocketed above the 1500's a day ranking it at #23 in the top 25 paid apps and #1 in racing. The free version also made it to #2 in the top 25 free apps. It made me so proud, it was like a dream come true.
Sooooo, I started in the games industry nearly ten years ago as an Environment Artist. Cut my teeth at Rebellion, and have since worked at EA, Criterion, and Codemasters on things like Tiger Woods, From Russia With Love, and the Burnout series of games. Everyone I know says they can do a better job than their bosses at making games. So, I decided to put my money where my mouth was. Last year, I got together with three friends from the industry, quit our jobs and started "Rodeo Games". We've been working day and night for the past six months on our debut title "Hunters", which comes out next week on the iPhone and iPad. You can check out screenshots and trailers here: www.rodeogames.co.uk Would love to get people's reactions, but I think that should probably be saved for another thread!
Really, you should start posting a new thread and start talking about your game NOW!!! What are you waitting for? BTW, I use to leave in Guildford when I was working for Lionhead. Small world. JC
Just wanted to let you know, you're story just made me cry laughing. Awesomely put. My boyfriend started laughing too, since his story has a pretty similar end result.
Wrote some simple games when I was about 12 on my Commodore 64, and then pretty much stopped programming. Went to university to study Chemistry, but didn't like it much, so got back into programming. I've worked in database companies, microelectronic companies, at a university, but decided to get into games programming when I saw a local job advert. Worked on quite a few PS1/PS2 games, and eventually ended up working for Sony programming PS3 games (I've worked on Wipeout HD, Formula 1 2006, MotorStorm : Pacific Rift). I was then made redundant early in 2010, and decided to set up on my own making iPhone games!
Their loss. As for me, 4th grade. Click N play software. Made a game at that tender age...also had my first copyright infringement run-in at that tender age. "Barney Blasters" was never destined to sell well, I guess...
I guess I've come full circle in many ways to be an actual iPhone developer part time, with a 3 month old kid, and a full time career teaching at a high school. As I kid I was a games nut and came 3rd in Australia at a Nintendo competition in the early nineties. I have worked as a drafter, kitchen designer, computer tech, website designer and along the way completed an Animation Diploma and a Multimedia course. It never eventuated into anything despite coming 3rd in the Quest 3D competition many years back making a basic game with some friends (Quest 3D is similar to Unity but has developed into a 3D visualization tool these days). Job opportunities in Brisbane are pretty tough (they are still pretty rocky) and I was not prepared to up and move. I started iPhone development ironically because my day job is too intense and I wanted an option of better income, AND I've always wanted to make games. There actually was a conversation with the "other dude" Dean, that went along the line of "most iPhone games are crap, but see how much money they are making", "Yeah I bet we could make a better iPhone game". And the rest as they say is history. Only we didn't appreciate exactly how difficult it could be to make an app, or have a decent understanding of marketing an iPhone app. So I guess I haven't reached our goal to cut back at work and make the incredible gaming opus I will be remembered for, but at least I have had the experience of putting out a game. And I never thought I could learn so much in 6 months.
