And So It Begins

2001: A Gambrinous Odyssey

Two programmers with no game development experience, no designer, no pile of funding, no fancy offices, and only what free time we find outside our full time jobs.

We are going to make a game company and talk all about it here. Let's just step through a few of the things you can expect:

Technical stuff

Hard core nerdy stuff about the languages/platforms/tools we will be using. Number one on that list is Flex (Adobe's 'programmer-friendly' framework that compiles into flash .swfs) but soon enough we'll be knee-deep in Django (and hence Python). Seeing as we've never used either we will have a plentiful supply of painful, hilarious mistakes to write about.

Game makin' stuff

Possibly even more nerdy, somehow. We'll be talking about how to develop games, from laying out tiles for isometric maps to programming AI to deciding when and how the player gets his greedy hands on the magical Huge Two-Handed Sword of Overcompensation +4.

Business stuff

We're approaching this as a business venture, not just a hobby! The games we develop are going to make actual money through ads, sponsorship/licensing, or subscriptions. We're going to talk all about the process here and share our results, including revenue numbers. We'll also be talking about stuff like sourcing artists for design and music and how that works out for us.

Next time I post I'll talk about the game we're going to be making and our long term plans. Meanwhile Peter is going to talk about how we used crowdsourcing to get an amazing logo for a knockdown price.

Thanks for reading! Now check out Guild of Dungeoneering, a game I'm making where you build the dungeon instead of controlling the hero! \o/