..I’ve learnt to use that feeling of inferiority to strive to improve my games.
Anthony Case on ways to improve yourself as a videogame developer. [February 9th, 2013] (via TIGSource forums).
Every game I make, I’m always astonished at how much I’ve learned since the last game I’ve made. It makes me smile.
Damian Sommer on continued learning of videogame development. [February 6th, 2013] (via twitter).
I’m Jeremy Penner, a 30-year-old programmer from rural Manitoba, currently living in Ottawa, ON in Canada. I’ve been making videogames more or less since I learned how to read. I founded Glorious Trainwrecks in 2007, started an online monthly 2-hour game jam called the Klik of the Month Klub, and organized the first Pirate Karts, where people are encouraged to make as many games as possible in a single weekend.
I play the guitar badly, the accordion atrociously, the piano fairly well, and I’m currently employed making audio tour apps for museums.
When I was six, we got our first computer at home. It was one of those giant IBM 386’s with MS-DOS on a floppy drive. It had no such thing as a hard drive, so it had to load the operating system into RAM before it would boot, but after it had booted, you could switch the floppy for another one. I always switched it for a floppy that said ‘GORILLAS’ – a small file full of code that ran a game with gorillas throwing explosive bananas at each other.
Being curious but not understanding a word of English, I started changing things in the code, which led to things in the game changing too. I was fascinated by how changing simple characters led to the game changing in some way. That fascination never let go. Thus, I started programming. My fascination with systems and optimal solutions evolved through many, many things – I did some space art for a while, teaching myself Photoshop (and a general abuse of filters), I did some web design at some point, I did interface design and for a while, I did marketing and business for a commercial studio on the side.
At some point in your life, you have to decide what it is you really want to do. I had been working on failed projects continuously for a decade by the time high school wrapped up, but I’d been involved in a few successful ones too. I decided to enroll into a game design university. I’d love to say it was a mistake, because schools are generally terrible at teaching you anything related to creativity, but school did introduce me to a lot of people - amongst them Jan Willem Nijman, with whom I dropped out of university to start Vlambeer almost 2.5 years ago.
Vlambeer opened my eyes to a side of game development I had not encountered before: the indie game community. More than just inspired, I was amazed by how accepting, diverse and co-operative this scene was – and through it, slowly but surely I fell for the less obvious charms of our medium. My fascination shifted from just how I can optimize the logical system behind games to how we can use, explore and apply those systems to games.
In the past two years, I learned so much about who I am, what I do and what I can do – by making games, by discussing with people far smarter than I am. Last year, I spoke at events around the globe about game development, business and marketing. Between those talks, I spent a lot of my year traveling around the world to meet with such people, to talk with them and learn from them. I learned that I have a knack for marketing and tried to figure out how I could give that back to the indie scene, which cumulated in me developing presskit(), a free framework that helps indies market their games. In Austin, I met Mexico-based developer Fernando Ramallo, with whom I conceived Fuck This Jam.
In the meanwhile, Jan Willem and I released 16 games as Vlambeer. We are involved in organizing local indie meetups, events, game jams, workshops & seminars to students that aspire to become game developers.
My name is Rami Ismail, age 24, and I’m the business & developer guy at Vlambeer, a two-man independent studio in the Netherlands best known for Super Crate Box, Radical Fishing, GUN GODZ and our upcoming game LUFTRAUSERS.
I was always a gamer at heart but I never thought I’d become a game developer..
Roger Hicks on not knowing what was to come. [July 5th, 2011] (via examiner).
The one downside to digipen. No time for game jams.
Logan Fieth on Digipen’s hectic schedule. [September 16th, 2012] (via twitter).
My name is Renaud Bédard. I’m a 27 years old tall, skinny guy from Montréal, Québec, now living in Toronto. I’m mainly a C# programmer but will use other languages if forced to do so. I’ve been working with XNA a lot in the past few years, but FEZ, the project I’m known for, was my first project using XNA. Before that I was using an engine called TrueVision3D, and now I’m into Unity when doing game jams and personal projects.
I’m part of a jam group called Les Collégiennes, which has a varying roster but usually implies me and Aliceffekt. We’re working on-and-off on a game called Waiting For Horus, a frantic multi-player third person shooter with small robots and a flat shaded art style.
I’m currently employed as a programmer at Capy Games in Toronto with plenty of awesome dudes.
Otherwise I enjoy petting my chinchilla and listening to new music all the time.
Something about adding a titlescreen with a menu to a game makes it feel more real.
Zachary Johnson on titlescreens and menus. [October 29th, 2012] (via twitter).
