Hey everyone! With the steadily increasing exposure the TK crew, we have been getting more fanmail both through our site and venues like YouTube. Some of these are requests along the lines of wanting to meet us (already had a few business meetings–and our first fan meeting is set to go down in 2 weeks!!), but there is a group I want to address today:

More and more, people have been asking me, “How do I make it in the game industry?” Kind of a hard question to answer in one sense, I am still trying to make it myself–and, while TK has a good map forward and we are on a good course towards making it, the reality is we are still in the process. However, I hope to be of some assistance so here is my rundown of important things:

For General Game Design

A) This first one is important for any member of a game design studio! Grab a notepad (or keep tabs mentally, if you think you can retain it) and draw a line down the middle. On one side, write, “What I like” and on the other write, “What I don’t like”. Play as many games as possible (each game having a different sheet or group of sheets). Whenever you are struck by something enough to write it down, don’t just write it! Look at it after you wrote it and ask yourself the questions most people don’t, “Why did I like it?”, “Why did I hate it?”, “Why did it resonate with me the way it did?” If you liked something, try to break it down as much as possible and get to the basic building blocks that built the experience you liked–then think how you can make it your own when designing your own game (through additional gameplay, art and story elements created by you). If you hated something, don’t just say, “It sucks”, sit for a while and try to figure out what exactly bugged you about the element. Then, try to figure out how you would turn it around and turn it into a positive element if you were in the game designer’s shoes. What would you change to turn a frustrating, repetitive or boring element into a blockbuster set-piece worthy of showing off in the commercial? Thinking this way will be hard at first, but over time you will slowly begin to develop your own style and critical thinking skills that are important to creating unique and exciting experiences in games.

B) Talk with as many different people as possible. By this, I mean develop relationships with Programmers, Concept Artists, 3D Artists, Animators, Game Designers, Marketers, Business People, Average Gamers and anyone else you can possibly meet. The more you understand human behavior, the more you can work fluidly in a team. Also, if you are planning on creating a project with a group of people it will help immensely when trying to get new talent to join you if you ’speak their language’ a little bit. For instance, a lot of Programmers have a hard time joining indy projects because, 9 times out of 10, they end up being one of the few hard workers committed to the project. However, if you are proposing to one that he/she join your team and you are upfront about the work done so far, the work in progress and the map ahead, you just told them that you understand their concern and have worked towards making sure they aren’t the only worker. Developing this empathy and ability to see the situation from someone else’s shoes will give you an important advantage in moving your indy project forward. People are far more willing to work (for payment and/or sweat equity aka free work) for someone they know cares about them, so this is absolutely critical.

C) Be humble—don’t take it offensively if someone gives you constructive criticism. They are just trying to help. If they give immature criticism–just listen then walk away. Later, after the initial sting wears off, try to remove the insult from what they said and see if anything is usable–if there is use it, if not then move on.

D) It isn’t just your art anymore: you may have the most awesome idea for a game, but here is reality: the moment you form a team to bring it to fruition it isn’t just your art anymore. Team members need to feel that they have a voice–there can and should be 1 leader who has the end-word, but if you are that leader don’t let the power go to your head—the swing vote of the leader should only be used once in a while. At the end of the day, everyone is putting in their blood, sweat and tears, so it isn’t just your art anymore!

E) Get resources! www.udk.com is one great one (free Unreal 3 engine to dev in). On Epic’s site (which is linked on www.udk.com), they have tutorials on how to create games in Unreal 3. Study them, a lot of the design ideals convey over to development on any engine or platform–and the free current-gen-grade engine is a great place to jump in. Play a little bit with all sorts of fields. 3D art, Animation, Texture Work, Programming, Overall Game Design, Writing—try them all until you find the one that resonates with you the best! Then, use sites like the Unreal one (plus any others you can Google up) and train yourself. If you are about to go to college–look closely at colleges like Full Sail, The Art Institute and many others that can offer you classes–what you learn in your free time will help you understand your classes easier and grow faster as an artist (and the classes will hone your indy skills!).

F) Got an idea? Commit it to paper! Writing it down (either digitally–and if you do digitally, print it off and save a hard copy!, or on traditional pen-and-paper) will garner you (under US law) a basic Copyright (for a full blown Copyright, you have to apply to the Copyright office and pay a fee–but the idea will still be yours since you committed it to paper). This is important, and is a vital step in motivating yourself and your team in turning that idea in your head into a playable reality!

G) Network! Search out indy development websites and indy teams. Ask if you can so sweat equity for indy teams in return for the learning and experience (plus getting your name out on completed projects—portfolio WIN!). Even if they say no, try to stay in contact (if they are interested, don’t be a stalker!) and be friends–you can learn as much from friends as you can co-workers! Plus, if you are trying to form your own team, being friends with other indy studios can provide important information and contacts that can assist in bolstering your team’s numbers and reach online.

If You Want to Start A Studio

A) First and foremost, like I said in F of the last section, commit your ideas to paper!!!!!!!!!

B) Pick up Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, a sage book that will teach you some of the basics investors will look for. If you plan on pitching to a publisher (like EA, Activision, Sony, MS or Nintendo), realize they will look for a slightly different pitch (they aren’t as worried about projections, they know those numbers better than you, they are more interested in what you want to do in a game and if you are capable of pulling it off), realize some of the info doesn’t carry directly over (for instance, Guy says your plan shouldn’t be over 25 pages, our pitch to Sony last year was 77 pages and they read every word–most of it was info and art on Shattered Soul)—but still, amazing advice none the less.

C) Contact your local SBDC (Small Business Development Center)! Usually, if you Google your city/town with SBDC you should pull it up (ours, for instance, is www.gfdevelopment.org). If you can’t find it that way, try looking up your area’s chamber of commerce in the phone book and giving them a ring–they’ll be able to hook you up with the right people! SBDC’s are awesome–ask for a time to meet with them and tell them what you want to do and ask (politely I might add) for their assistance. They will be a necessary ally in your rise to domination!

D) Network! Look, I posted Networking a second time! Because, in this day and age, it is the lifeblood that will pump through your veins. Pony up the cash to have a website made. Make a MySpace, Facebook and Twitter account (and link them as needed). Seek out people in your industry to follow and become friends with. Seek out people in your community of ALL walks and follow/friend them on these sites. Go around town and ask for opportunities to create presentations for community groups to show what you want to do for your region through your team and business. Most of this stuff is free or low-cost to do, and it will get your community on your side and start the ripple in the pond that will grow to the tsunami you want! Realize that you ARE going to be doing a lot of running around, answering emails, talking on social networking sites and other guerrilla marketing techniques for which you will not be paid: while you can most likely make money down the road a lot of the set up work for a business is done for the bigger picture and passion, not the quick and easy payout!

E) Make a tech demo: once you get a team and concept going, make a 1-level tech demo that shows what you want to do gameplay wise and, to a degree, art wise. This can be made either on PC or through solutions like Xbox’s Indy Developer Program (even if you intend to pitch to someone other than Microsoft)—the people a tech demo is meant to pitch to won’t care about what platform the demo is on, they are looking for ability to create an idea and execute it in a fun, playable way. This is where we are at with TK right now–working on our tech demo! It’s very important and an absolute for your studio.

Hope this helps! If you need more info, please head over to the Contact Us section and drop us a line, I’d be happy to chat more!

Josh