Posts tagged Programming
Software Piracy and Indie Games
Jan 18th
It is not uncommon to see a thread in the Indiegamer forums regarding software priacy and what, if anything, to do about it. Read through some of the threads and three obvious camps emerge: those who think they need to do whatever they can to deter pirates, those who think that you can’t stop them anyway so why bother, and a middle group that is interested only in preventing casual piracy. I fall in the latter.Casual pirates are an indie game developer’s worst nightmare. These are people who often don’t even realize they are pirating. Sure, many of them know on some level that copying a game and giving it to a friend is wrong. Maybe they just don’t think about it when they do it, or they think that this one instance isn’t going to hurt. Or perhaps they just don’t care. The reason these people are so bad is because they really are potential customers.If Joe Bob downloads a demo of my game, loves it, and buys it, he’s done nothing wrong. He’s no pirate. Jack and Jill come over and he shows them the game. They love it. Being the good friend that he is, Joe Bob burns the install file to two CDs and gives one to Jack and one to Jill along with his registration key. All 3 are now pirates, though the thought likely never crossed their minds. Jack and Jill very well might have gone home and bought the game after trying it out at Joe Bob’s, but now they don’t need to and I just lost two sales. Read the rest of this entry »
Time Management & Game Design
Jan 15th
Phil Steinmeyer talks (with tongue-in-cheek) about the difference between goofing off and designing a game. I like his take on it. It’s something I hear a lot of indies, particularly those who work alone, complain about. Time management, motivation, and discipline are common topics in the Indie Life forum over at Indiegamer.
I’m usually fine with how I spend my time each day. I’ve got a regular schedule I stick to. It helps that I have a large amount of time to direct toward game development outside of my ‘real’ job. There are days when I get caught up reading blogs, forum posts, news, or articles on one subject or another and go well beyond the time I alloted myself to do so. That most often happens when my TODO list is full of items that are complex or just not ‘fun’.
Of course, some days it really helps to just put the project aside and goof off for a day or two. But everyone is different. When working alone and self-funded, particularly from a home office, discipline is hugely important to productivity. You don’t have anyone to answer to but yourself. You aren’t going to get fired or lose your funding if you don’t meet the next milestone. There’s no danger of anyone pulling the plug on your project. There are no immediate consequences. The consequences come down the road and aren’t immediately obvious. Some people have to work at it more than others, but most just don’t have what it takes to get a project completed and released. It’s not all fun and games.
