Being a game developer in an indie studio is definitely both fun and challenging. There is never a boring moment, and you always feel like you should have slept more. Always! It's not uncommon for a person to fill several roles and I guess that is part of what makes it so intriguing, at least to me. I would definitely recommend everyone to at least once in their life, even just for a short while, to be part of a small team of likeminded people doing their own thing. Doesn't even need to be in games.
My typical workday goes something like this:
Not always in the same order, especially the ‘wake up' part.
- Wake up, make coffee, check and answer emails and social media while drinking coffee and talking with the rest of the team working remotely.
- Get my kid ready for school.
- Drink more coffee.
- Continue chugging through development tickets. This involves game & system design, and lots of testing to make sure everything works as intended. I hate bugs. I hate the excuses from big triple-A studios when they release games that are so buggy they should have been classified as alpha builds.
- Drink more coffee.
- Manage tickets for the rest of the team and follow up. Do some research.
- Drink more coffee.
- Deal with other management stuff, like marketing, investor outreach, reaching out to publishers, applying for grants and participation in competitions, reading through contracts and NDAs (you might not believe how much of this there is for anything you do, and law speak is just not fun, at least in my book).
- Management stuff requires a lot of coffee.
- Eat some when I remember. Usually happens around dinner time when the smells of spicy food from the kitchen tickles my nose.
- Watch an episode from a tv-series or a whole movie whilst enjoying late dinner with the family. Maybe play a board game together after. Continue working till my eyes fall shut. If not close to a release, play some games instead, exercise and spend time with family or friends. Try not drinking more coffee. Bad for sleep. Bad!
Anyone else with similar experiences out there?
