The last few weeks, rather months were probably the busiest in my life. Once I saw a picture of an iceberg that represented the game development. The top part, above the waves was what everyone can see, the game itself, some marketing material, happy smiles on the team members' face, etc. Below the water level it could be seen everything else that held up the top, game development, design and planning, infrastructure, hiring the team, marketing, PR, finance... everything that needs to be there and working fine to produce a floating game iceberg.
Since we started the work on Feudums, I never felt any stress just the joy of the work. For the first half a year, when we hammered down the cornerstones of the project and started to stretch the technology over the game idea, it was just a game for us. We were players who played to create and build a game for players. Then we hit the first milestone, finishing the alpha version, and it was a big achievement for us. But from the perspective of a player, it was almost an invisible effort.
'Yeah, some guys put some proof of concept together, but can we play with it? Nooo...? Then turn the page, lets see what else is on the news.'
We've been idealists and optimists, we know that the game we are working on is great. We wanted to believe that when we finish the alpha, we could show off enough materials and articles about it that there would be enough people/players around us who could help us through the remaining phases. Oh, yes... so did I already mention that we've been... hmm... idiots too? Obviously, if you open up the Indiedb or a Facebook group dedicated for game developers, you can see a tons of good ideas, all stuck at some level. For example the guy, who wrote:
'I finished the game, it is playable, I have around 200-300 core players testing and playing. Do you know what channels I can use to spread the words and put the game on the top shelf?'
These developers are working through themselves that iceberg, trying to push up their games above the water line, but you can't leave out a stepping stone or avoid the embedded traps, so it is a hard process. Since we started the work we could see other teams stop working on their games, and it is just a sad thing because we exactly know what they were going through, how they could feel.
For us the iceberg looks now a bit lighter. We still have to work hard to lift up the game, but we found solid ground under our feet and developed the muscles too to do the job. And this is why I've went through a lot of new experiences during the last few weeks and months and to be telling the truth, it was not that joyful period than working on the game previously. Talking about theoretical probabilities using legal language with the potential investors and get stuck with tiny weeny things is definitely not something I want to do frequently. Or finding out that there is such thing as tax residency, and we have to calculate with it if we have an international team also belongs to that cloudy and foggy world of accountancy I never wanted to explore. Where to find a good team is also a hard question. Every corner is full with wannabe game developers with no experience with the singleton pattern or who can't create a proper sprite sheet but want to draw for us. (For me this is/was the hardest part and I started wondering that where the hell do the mob bosses find their gang members so easily... on films at least.)
So yes, it was a busy part of this job, but I see the end of the tunnel. It has happened this week that I was able to work on the code. Fingers crossed that it will happen more frequently and these rounds we had to run will speed up the development. Anyway, we have a strict deadline now and we carved it in stone. Maybe one of the marketing guys will let you know :)
