The Last and Final Word: Noonat
After some convincing from his friends, Noonat quit his job to join GameClay. Now he faces another challenge: how do you keep the fun in and the grind out of game development when you can’t choose your own hours.
Name?
Nathan Ostgard.
Age?
29.
Location?
Eugene, OR.
Development tool(s) of choice?
HaXe, TextMate, Pixelmator, GraphicsGale, and sfxr.
What do you do?
I’m a programmer at GameClay. I usually spend my day working on Flash games, or doing various other types of programming for contract work. I spend my free time working on a bunch open source projects or personal games.
How did you get into game development?
We had an old Atari when I was growing up, the kind that booted into a BASIC prompt, and you could just start coding. The manual had a print out of the code for a Snake game. Typing that in and playing it was magic. I think that’s what got me hooked. My brother and I did a lot of Quake modding while growing up.
I gave up on game development for a career for a long time, and just did web development. But Flash and Ludum Dare got me back into it again, and now I’m doing it for a living!
What are your goals and aspirations as a game developer and what ultimately inspires you to keep creating?
I don’t have any real goals, other than making enough money from games that I don’t need to do any other work.
Playing with emotions is awesome. I like animation and photography for the same reason, but I think games are far more effective at that than other mediums.
I almost love seeing peoples’ stories about playing games more than playing games myself. It’s cool when players come up with their own story for a world by experiencing it, rather than hitting them over the head with a story. It makes me want to make more games, so I can hear more of their stories.
How did game development go from part-time hobby to full-time gig for you?
It was an on-the-side thing, for a long time. I quit my job last year, and my friends convinced me to join them at GameClay this year. We do contract work to fill the coffers, and work on games as much as we can.
Who else works at GameClay and what successes have you had so far?
GameClay is Pat Wilson, Alex Scarborough, Mark McCoy, and myself. Pat and Alex are programmers and handle the business side of things, Mark is the artist / designer. We all worked together previously at GarageGames. I was doing web development there, but they worked on a bunch of games (Marble Blast Ultra was one of the larger ones). As for successes.. well, we got Blipzkrieg out the door, which was a bit of a painful learning process as a team. Now we just need to keep at it.
Have you managed to do make a comfortable living so far?
Nope, not yet. We still do a lot of non-game contract work to cover the bills. Blipzkrieg is the only game we’ve released so far, and we’re still learning how the whole Flash sponsorship thing works. Hopefully releasing things on iOS will help.
What obstacles do you face on a daily basis that might get in the way of what you want to achieve as a game developer?
Procrastination? I think that’s by far the biggest problem for me. I’m also terrible about taking on too many projects at once, and then getting burned out and not doing anything for months. I get excited about ideas and want to work on ALL THE THINGS.
Now that you’re working for GameClay, have you been forced to adopt a more strict, self-disciplined game development schedule?
Yes, definitely (although our hours are a bit strange). That’s been one of the strangest changes for me. Game dev was always something I did whenever I had time, in short furious coding sessions. Now it’s much more of a job, and I’m trying to figure out how to maintain the fun and creative part of it and not let it turn into a grind. I think you have to be a bit more strict about your schedule whenever you’re collaborating, though, even with part time stuff.
You’ve entered Ludum Dare on a number of occasions. What challenges does such a time-restrictive contest throw at you and what have you learnt from your entries so far?
I love development restrictions on in general. Time restriction is my favorite, though. It’s really hard to procrastinate or get burned out if you’re only working for 48 hours. Resolution restriction is a close second.
The biggest challenge for me is getting an idea that is simple enough, quick enough. I have yet to figure out how to do this… the times I’ve finished games, I had an idea immediately, and started working right away. I’ve failed far more often, though. It’s been a while since I’ve managed to finish a Ludum Dare game, which makes me sad.
I think prototyping teaches you to pay attention to the big picture. It’s far too easy to lose a couple hours working on some stupid feature that you end up cutting. Everything you work on should be advancing gameplay in big ways, until you are happy with it. Then you can spend time tweaking the little things.
Do you enter Ludum Dare in the hopes of winning or do you just enter to get the creative juices flowing and / or finishing a small game?
Finishing something is a reward in itself. I would still do it even if there weren’t ratings. It’s great to get feedback on it so quickly, though, and nothing makes you feel better than a high ranking.
Speaking generally, do you try to come up concepts that are going to push your abilities as a game developer? Do you think its important to explore different territory every time you create something new?
I think I go in the opposite direction, actually. There’s value in re-using peoples’ learned behaviors from previous games. If you see a spaceship on the screen, and rocks flying around, most people know immediately what type of game it will be. You don’t have to explain anything. You can use those expectations to make the game easier or harder for the player.
And I would rather use a simple technology stack that I have experience with. It’s nice to be able to concentrate on telling a story without technical problems constantly getting in the way. Building crazy new things is fun, but I think Processing or openFrameworks are better outlets for prototyping that stuff.
What do you find to be the most enjoyable and tedious parts of the development process?
I love playing with controls and physics. If it’s fun for the player to just run or fly around, I think you’re off to a good start.
I hate making UI. I think this is generally because the game UI toolset is kind of frustrating, coming from a web development background. I am also terrible at level design, though I’m slowly getting better at it.
You mentioned ‘playing with emotions’. Do you think videogames are doing this successfully on the whole?
I think some are, especially in the indie community. Maybe there is something about not having a budget and having to make do with what you have that does it? Sound is a huge part of it for me. The games that affect me the most are often the ones with very minimal graphics but very immersive sounds. Knytt and Canabalt come to mind, for me.
Tools like sfxr have really given indies a way to express themselves. I wish there were more tools like that for other parts of development.
