So one of my longstanding projects has been to try to get together with my friends to find out if they are interested in game development at all. This is something that I’ve found fairly difficult to do, I actually thought it might be easy on some but is proving very difficult on all.
The first two are guild mates, neither is likely proficient but could do early work in my development when we are kind of learning the tricks. We could all learn together. One is a programmer who switched out of CS Major but loved it, and one was a graphic artist major who dropped out to take care of his family. Both I think are in prime position to join me, and between the three of us we would have one in each field.
This would be great early when I am building the company, learning, and making more simple games. However, these two are stuck up on the “we don’t have time or experience” and “we can’t make games so far from each other” mantra. For these two especially, none of this is true. The simple games can easily be made online with various calloboration tools, early in the company’s development we wouldn’t need anyone to provide a ton of time, maybe 5-10 hours a week, and the early games would be simple by design and would allow the three of us to grow into true developers.
Yes eventually we would start making more serious games and at that point we would need to consider looking at getting together in a single place, and at this point we would have issues. But really this wouldn’t happen for at least a year and at that point if the two are still interested in developing the larger games, or can, then we would talk about how to move forward.
The third was a network programmer for MCI and thus would be an invaluable asset for any online games that would be made. In fact, I think her especially I could widdle into doing, she was laid off when all the telcom mergers were occuring, and is currently a housewife. I had gotten a commitment of “if you need a little help here there I would help, but I’m not sure if I wanna do it full time.” Which was great, I got some sort of commitment, and I think I could continue to work her and get her full in. Again I think here we would run into moving issues as she had a family and it is hard to uproot families, so this again would be an issue a year down the road (but she was a very likely candidate for lead network programmer). Her problem is though that she left the game and has been totally out of contact with everyone for about 7 or 8 months, this makes convincing her extremely difficult.
My forth is an old guildmate in AC2, and shadowbane. He is currently a database programmer who may be going back to school soon for his master’s. He, I think, would be a really hard sell, he left gaming behind, and is happy with his current job. Especially if he goes back to school, the gaming development community can rarely pay for masters students, but I still have hope that I can pique his interest to help part time.
I think there are a couple of other friends I’ve had that may be interested in this type of thing, but I can’t recall who they are at all. I think that it is surprising the number of people out there you may already know who may have interest. The main thing I think I need to do though, is figure out a way to convince these people that the first year at least will not require much time or experience and that we can try to work out long term plans later if they are still interested.
The first year is really like a trial, to see if they like it, to see if they think they can do it, to see if we work well together, and to learn the field. It’d be a great experience for all, and I think for some who are unhappy with their living situations, it may be a good way to get out of a tough area.