Hello,

I remember the holiday season from last year. 

I had just gone into game development fulltime after finishing my studies and Space Gladiators was just an early prototype.

I had no idea I would still be working on this game one year later. 

Hopefully this can act as a cautionary tale – your game will probably take longer to complete than you think!

Anyway, let’s get into this week’s ideas…

3 Gamedev Ideas

I.

People don’t usually want extremely original games. 

They just want something they already like, but with a twist.

II.

Given unlimited time, ressources and feedback, I believe anyone could make a successful game.

But no one actually has that.

The real challenge of gamedev is knowing where to spend our energy and what we should disregard completely.

III.

It’s really hard to come up with a well executed original idea. Your first game probably won’t be it.

I thought about that because of a new music video that came out recently. 

It’s a whole different field, but I believe there are a lot of parallels between the music and game industries.

I’m talking about Popular Monster from Falling In Reverse. 

After watching a lot of reaction videos, it seems that people are almost unanimously saying it’s a great song – an unique blend of rapping, rock and metal.

It may look like it came out of nowhere if you’re not familiar with the genre. 

But it’s actually the result of more than a decade of work from the band (and from Ronnie Radke, the lead singer). 

They spent years making rock songs before going into rap and now blending it all together.

Your gamedev journey might follow a similar path. 

Don’t beat yourself up if your first projects aren’t masterpieces.

Until next week,

Thomas Gervraud,
Developer of Space Gladiators: Escaping Tartarus