And so the internet becomes home to another blog... you might ask "why?". It's a fair question, and one we've asked ourselves too. As an indie game developer with limited resources and developer bandwidth, we're extremely conscious of where our time, effort and money is invested. We're constantly prioritising and juggling tasks such as:
So when deciding whether to embark on this blogging journey, it was important we felt we were doing it for good reasons that could justify the investment. There are many reasons we considered - everything from a marketing perspective (brand and product exposure for example), to just wanting to share our knowledge and expertise, to using it as a way to discuss ideas and creative solutions with other developers and learn for ourselves.
But primarily it came down to this - we don't just want to make high quality, unique and fun games for people to enjoy playing. We also want to become a respected member of, and valuable contributer to the game development community. We know we are the beneficiary of so many others sharing their thoughts, expertise and solutions, so we feel it is important to make our own meaningful contribution too.
In order to create a blog that we think can contribute in a meaningful way, we intend to use a few different starting points when deciding what to write about.
Across our team we have almost 10 years experience each creating mobile games. We previously worked for many years at Halfbrick Studios (creators of Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride) across a wide range of disciplines, including:
We hope to share the knowledge and expertise we've already picked up across these disciplines, as well as new skills we learn along the way. We'd love to hear if any of these disciplines interest you more than others (you can use the discussion or contact options mentioned at the bottom of this article).
There are a whole heap of common problems that nearly all game developers have to overcome at one stage or another. For many of these issues there are popular solutions available, however it can sometimes be the case that those solutions aren't as feasible given your own circumstances. You might not have the skill, time or budget to use a popular solution, and that can turn the issue you're facing into a major impediment.
But as is often the case across many domains of problem solving, with increased restriction (eg. budget) comes increased creativity and innovation. As an unknown indie developer, being restricted by resources, developer bandwidth and funding creates a situation where it's sometimes necessary for us to think outside the box.
We intend to share creative, effective and low-cost solutions we've come up with to some of the problems you're likely to face. We hope they might save you time, effort and money, allowing you to invest more into creating your awesome game! And in all likelihood, you might be able to share ideas or other solutions you've found or created yourself that are even better!
The gaming market, game dev best practices, technology and software all change at such a rapid pace that it's essential to continually be learning. We think that discussion of new ideas and concepts is an incredibly effective way of staying up to date with industry knowledge and skills.
While we hope to provide insightful, useful and accurate content in our articles, we are certain we'll share ideas or solutions that you or someone else in the community can refine or improve. We look forward to those moments and the resulting threads that discuss improved or alternative ideas.
While in some ways as game developers we all compete with each other for a player's attention, at Silly Galah Games we believe that a stronger game dev community will improve the situation not only for other developers and ourselves, but the players who play our games too.
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