Idea Great Developers and Game Designers

Kezarus

Endless Game Maker
Hello everybody!

A friend asked me about references of developers and game designers for me to guide my steps by him/her. I knew some, but many don't have happy stories. I am trying to find an indie developer or designer that I can follow the steps.

Below I (ultra-)sumarized a list of the ones that made games that I loved. I probably made some mistakes, please point it out for me to correct them.

Daniel DiCicco (StarDrive): lawyer, made a great game, the second sell badly and now is trying to launch another.

Introversion (Prison Architect): great guys, made "the last" game before closing the company, but it was a success. They sold the IP of Prison Architect to a bigger company. No other games in the horizon.

Peter Molineaux (Dungeon Keeper / Black & White / Godus): Made some amazing games far back in the past. The last game was a KickStarter controversy and a flop. No other games in the horizon.

Markus "Notch" Persson (Minecraft): developed a great game, but the company was selled to Microsoft and he quit. After some VERY controversial opinions on the Twitter, got the reference of his name removed from the game (it's just on credits now). I don't even know if he develops something nowadays or not.

Eric Baron (Stardew Valley): after 4 year of development, 10 hours a day, he made an amazing game. Publisher Chucklefish helped him a lot. He is now only tending to the game.


That's it. I just want to know if there is someone that I can ultimately, see what they done and try to learn from their success.
 
Are these great designers or they designed great games?

Didn't Eric Baron live off his girlfriend for those 4 years? Happy ending as they got married. What steps would you take there?

I didn't know Introvision closed down. I know they released some article about how their game after Prison Architect sold only 6,000 copies, but then again a VR game where the graphics looking like pin dots like they did would be a tough sell.

Didn't Peter Molineaux sell canned goods before someone mistook his company for a similar named company that made software and suddenly he became a video game developer? Seems like dumb luck, then he bought a bunch of computers and hired the right people.

Weren't the two guys originally behind Blizzard medical students? Then one of their grand mothers loaned them $15k and they made Blizzard, but even after the release of their first game they still had their company do tech support and PC repair to keep money flowing. They too knew nothing, they just hired the right people.

I know Phil Phish of Fez fame went on to have a normal day job. Fez was considered a great game, then he too got opinionated, much like Notch and the crowd turned on him.

Like a lot of developers with big games, Notch has made several games at least in game jam capacity and he made that game "Scrolls," which as you can imagine, didn't have any of the fame that Minecraft did. Even Valve's own card game struggled to go as far as DOTA2.
 

Kezarus

Endless Game Maker
Hi @sitebender! Thanks for sharing that. Maybe I am just looking at it with wrong eyes, those stories doesn't seems all that happy for me specifically. At the end of the day, I am just looking for inspiration. Maybe I just have to look at them in a new light.

Me and my brother love do make games since childhood. From PC to board games. First game I did was in 2 weeks time when I was unemployed many years ago. That was OverKill. It wasn't intended to sell. I am making this one game now and it is scoring Steam on July, Endless RPG. Took me 2 years time (+1000 hours) and, again, it was not intended to sell. I just wanna do it.

We are planning new games and I want to take the right steps. Job-wise, money-wise and game-wise specially. Just do the right steps not to fumble along the way.
 

NightFrost

Member
Peter Molineaux
Peter Molyneux. And I would argue he was more a marketing guy. Things went well when companies he worked for kept him on a short leash, but the more rope he got the more badly he hung himself. Been a while since I read about that stuff, but I recall the problems with promising way too many features and delivering too little started with Black&White, and continued into Fables. And then there's the massive, massive disaster known as Godus, where we're talking about No Man's Sky-level of bu******ng going on.
 
Markus "Notch" Persson (Minecraft): developed a great game, but the company was selled to Microsoft and he quit. After some VERY controversial opinions on the Twitter, got the reference of his name removed from the game (it's just on credits now). I don't even know if he develops something nowadays or not.
I don't really see how that isn't a "happy ending". Notch made millions of dollars, sold his company to Microsoft for two and a half BILLION US dollars and retired at the twilight period of the height of his career. Everybody else on your list and anyone else anybody will ever list can only dream of being half as successful as Notch. At the time he sold Mojang, he was barely even working on Minecraft, if at all. You talk about the removed messages, but it's not as if he's been scrubbed from history. As far as I can tell, most of the messages removed basically refer to Notch as the sole creator of the game. Another refers to Notch's wedding date, and apparently he's divorced now so I doubt he even cares. As you mention, the Minecraft website still credits Notch with creation of the game, so it's not even that big of a deal.

The man was a nobody and is now a billionaire and never has to work another day in his life. That's the definition of a success story. His controversial opinions have nothing to do with his success.
 

Toque

Member
Why not pick games you love or consider “successful” and look at who and how they were made?


I don’t think there is any secret formula. But advice from those that are talented can be helpful.

indi game the movie was pretty inspirational in many ways. Entertaining at least.....
 
Last edited:

Kezarus

Endless Game Maker
Found a great channel with the right amount of inpiration and know-how. I hope you guys like it as well. =]

 
Top