So it's the end of 2013 and what a year it was! Coding, designing, fixing, swearing, coffee, beer and wine and hard liquor, pulling hair out of our heads and hacking phones and things. Ten months of development and things behind, whew! I thought of whipping up a blogpost about this year, some things that remain with me, the rantings of a hippie indie developer in the backwoods of Finland.
Phase one:
I spent most of the year 2012 coding a collectible card game called Zombiary. Took it to a playable stage last christmas with AI and everything. No graphics or design, just basic html coloured squares and text. But you could play the game. Felt quite burned out with the project in January and it seemed we couldn't get graphics for it at all. There are 88 cards in the basic deck and one graphic artist after another failed us. In hindsight, our expectations were quite high for an indie game, we couldn't accept the kind of stuff that is the norm on CCG's that you can play on kongregate or so, we wanted a gritty pulp horror style line drawn look and it just didn't play out at all. So in Jan, I decided to put Zombiary on hold, booked tickets to fly to Kobe to paint, hang around rock n' roll venues and see what happens.
In Kobe, I met an old coder friend Lukasz who worked together with me when we were doing Four Letter Words for iOS. After the staggering non-success of 4LW Lukasz had to get what one might call a real job (one of those things we all know and love, make crappy nonsense for an insurance company and stuff) that produces a paycheck at the end of the month and stomach ulcers after a year of that.
Luke told me that he's working on a car navigation software project and has acquired good knowledge in GPS related things. Immediately I thought of this little idea we'd been toying with, a GPS based game for mobile. Lukasz was interested to jump in and hack around a bit and in a few weeks we had a proto of 'the new game'.
I quite enjoyed the springtime, prepared for my art show, it was really great to just paint and hang around after a winter of endless days and nights of coding. We got a nice venue and did a shared exhibition with a proper painter, Naoko Ogasawara. I went out to the mountains of Kobe and into the city with the proto of Hoodownr, met interesting people and heard interesting things. And learned a lot about gps error spikes and things. =)
After a few months, it was time to head back to Finland. We cooked up a 'Nightspot at Zubb Um Kabir' event with a few great bands in Kobe at this joint that had broken air conditioning. Man it was hot but all of our friends came and played and we even had poetry reading backed up by a world class jazz pianist making funny sounds from a two-penny plastic keyboard. Total artistic success! Packed my bags to head back to Finland, the land of promise.
Second phase:
Doing my thing in Japan for a long time, Finland felt very attractive place to move on with a project. The government is putting money to games development and encouraging small businesses to grow. Instead of the usual thing of going around finding investment, I was under the impression that the government is helping small companies thru the valley of death to make a proto or something to move on with. So I got talking to Tekes, keksintösäätiö, Finnvera and so on and so forth.
It turned out that they only want to help companies that already have a funding or capital of their own. So if you spent the last 10 years of your life abroad, didn't come back with a bunch of money, the govt is not interested to help you at all. I wasted a lot of time with all of aforementioned institutions, having meaningless conversations without nothing moving on. After a lot of wheeling and dealing, I was accepted as a private enterpreneur (co-op's are a swearword in Finland) to get a bit of money to live and try to find funding that would allow to try Tekes etc. again.
After paying the enterpreneur insurances and things the law requires from a private enterpreneur, you are left with less money than the guy who gets his welfare check every month. It would definitely be better to lie to the government at the end of every month that you are unemployed and keep doing what you're doing. Lesson 1 for indie devs: if you haven't got the capital, lie, fabricate, cheat. That's what everybody else is doing.
I think the problem with the starttiraha (small business encouragement package) is that they came up with that kind of arrangement at the time when the only businesses were inns, hairdressing salons and restaurants. Stuff that immediately creates cash flow. So starttiraha is there to help you to build your business that is already creating money. With a project like ours, that is not the case of course. There is no revenue until the game is finished and selling like hotcakes.
Thru the summer we kept coding and talking about the game. Assembly 2013 had a contest for a free presentation booth for the best project at play Finland (Finnish gamedev group on facebook). We got the booth and went there. We made friends and in general people loved what we were doing. Basim flew in from England to see the crowd and discuss the project. Bazzer is well into the new things in the gaming industry and knows what is going on, he told us that what we are doing is exactly the kind of thing that is the future of gaming. Well encouraged there.
The rest of the summer was more coding and running the first iteration of Camp Hastur. The camp was a very welcome distraction, getting to meet and talk to a number of people, youth workers, sculptors, tattoo artists, actors, people from all walks of life. We arranged Hasturock vol 2, a warehouse rock festivus in this abandoned building on the outskirts of Tornio and had a hell of a time doing it.
Autumn came, our game was selected on the top ten of SITRA's health game compo, Gesundheit. We got to participate at Wärkfest, present a demo of the game to the public, join a workshop and all that jazz. The response to Hoodownr was great. I asked sitra to write us a recommendation letter that would help us to move on with the funding. They said no. Lesson 2 for an indie dev: Nobody will stick out his head for you. It's completely up to you man.
Sitra helped us to get a discount on Slush 2013 tickets though. In we went, obsessively coding to present a playable demo that showed all those things people from the previous tests wanted to see. Time ran out however and we decided not to show a buggy build at all. At slush, we talked to a number of people who were interested in the project. The very first person we met told us basically that being a Co-op is spooky communist hippie shit. Gotta be incorporated. Lesson 3: Don't go about as a co-op. You will be immediately tagged as suspicious communist hippie bums. Sharing is not caring. All the guys with big dicks have the word LLC tattooed on those dicks. Get your tat today.
I think the best part of Slush for us was the shadow event, Sludge. It was arranged at this old insane asylum building by people who really cared about games more than CPR's and business jargon. Those boys had something going there, if they keep doing it, it's going to be what Boozembly is to Assembly. More power to Sludge! Great DJ's too =)
Thinking about it after 10 months of developing and promoting and dealing with all these people I felt that the way to do it is to do it yourself completely. The investors that could seriously contribute to your project want to see the finished game and revenue. It's no different from the shark tank. Some want to scam you for a very small amount of money. Lesson number 4: Don't take it. Money is just money, those guys are just as desperate to find something to invest in as you are to make your game. The deal has to make sense. Give in and you will be seriously fucked later. I mean seriously seriously fucked. If you fuck up with your funding deals early on, getting additional funding later will be almost impossible. This actually happens.
So as a small summa summarum after 10 months: Do it yourself if you can. Even when you cannot, do it anyway. Make it possible. Make friends with your players, make the game fun for them and listen to their feedback. I mean seriously listen. If you are producing the game, listen to your team. Your team is the best thing you've got. Be a person. Exert energy. Have passion. Be open to ideas and influences and the energy of people who are different from you. The game you are making is for the people, not for you or for a corporate machine. Stand by your true values. Your standing or falling depends fully on the connection between your game and the people who play it. That is all.
So at the end of the year, we are at a place where we almost have a fully playable beta. We intend to field test the game and make improvements based on player feedback. Can't wait to hit the road with a bunch of friends with the latest build of Hoodownr to see how it plays and how people will feel. Come 2014, come more kick-ass things from us.
Thanks for following our blog everybody. Hope you've enjoyed, hope to see everybody next year, happy holidays and all that!
keep reaching up!
Sami
Hastur
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