1. By Chris Sanyk

3. About Me First exposure to computers c. 1980 Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Apple ][ Game concepts on paper at age 6 10 + years in various IT roles

4. Programmers… Great ( Me ) f(x) = Greatness++ ∞ 0

6. Christmas 1981

7. (Bad?) Influences

11. Sadly, most of those original conceptual docs no longer survive… …if they had, this slide would have been a really awesome collage… :( Early Paper Designs

12. BunnyBots, c.1982

13. I have no idea what architects really did with this… I used mine to make video games.

14. Pixel Dreams

15. College

16. 1993…

17. 1990’s… Game Industry “maturing” =

18. Fizzle As a result, I questioned whether the game industry had a future for me that I still wanted. I put programming aside… …graduated… …thought about grad school… Played around with computers instead, until I ended up with a career in IT.

21. ~2005: Independent Devs

22. The Dream Lives 2006: IT took me back into software development. 2007: Tried, failed. 2010: Tried again…

23. 30 years in the making…

24. Better late than never

25. Boobie Teeth!

26. Concept

30. Game Maker

31. Pros Cons Cheap (Free/$25). Quick to build simple things. Easy learning curve. Its capabilities grow with you. Developer community is relatively strong. Slow script interpretation. Object-based rather than Object-oriented. All variables are public. Weak on debugging. Weird data typing.

32. sfxr

33. Paint.NET

34. How I happen to do what I do

35. My Development Process Vague list of ideas Pick one Build it Test, Tweak Freeze Document Build Release

37. Stuff I learned You are ready. You are not ready. Now is the best time. Take small steps, make many of them, start right away.

38. Stuff I learned Programming is harder and easier than I thought.

39. Making games is more than programming

40. Unsure how to proceed? The best thing to do if you’re not confident about how to proceed is to DO ANYTHING and watch. Do the smallest/simplest part of what you think you need to do that might possibly work. Run it. Learn. Iterate.

41. Heed your calling. Do what you were meant to do.

42. Be a development fiend Read like a fiend. Code like a fiend. Test like a fiend.

43. Document Everything

44. Make mistakes!

45. Game craft is the art of fakery

46. Refactor at every opportunity!

47. Learn to ask for help

48. Talk to People

49. Money… so what? Stop worrying about whether and how it can make you money. Do something cool first, figure out how to monetize it later.

50. Do things that you would happily do for free.

51. Try to do everything at least once.

52. Your obsession is you.

53. Questions? chris@csanyk.com http://csanyk.com/rants/releases Hands-on demo after this talk Playtesting feedback desired Looking for: designers, programmers, artists, sound/music people to collaborate with on this or other projects.