Learning

[ggambett]

I've been a fulltime indie for almost 4 years now, I don't regret it, and I love my life.

There is one thing which I haven't been able to figure out, though. Before going indie I had the opportunity to work near the top of a very tech-savvy company, with people 20 years my senior, from whom I learned a lot.

The thing is, now I'm the most senior developer at Mystery - I'm the lead developer and CTO, so people learn from me - I'm the guy with the answers. Which is fine and all, but I'm left in a position where I don't have anyone to learn from on a day-to-day basis.

How do you handle this? I'd love to have someone to learn from. I feel this is important both for me (I want to learn new things) and for the company (I don't want to be a limiting factor)

When I say "learning" I'm not talking about this week's fad technology - I'm talking about the kind of things you may learn from co-workers 20 years older than you.

[zoombapup]

Good question and one I'm up against right now.

Basically I'm limited right now on what I can learn technology wise (in terms of practical implementation and not academic theory) because essentially I'm on my own in terms of programming.

I'm afraid I dont know the answer. I dont find the kind of learning youre talking about works very well virtually. It really needs to be face to face.

I guess you just have to learn to be the guy at the top. Obviously the people you learnt from had the same problem.

I do think forums can supplement this a bit too, but I worry about that because of the longevity of forum posts in the scheme of things. Let me illustrate:

Say I post a forum entry about a specific technology asking a relatively simple question. Now that doesnt necassarily imply I dont know the answer, it could be I'm asking something very specific in order to verify my own understanding.

Now what if, a few years later, I go for a job at some developer and they decide to google about me and a forum entry pops up where I've asked what looks like a fundamental question?

See my point? I'm wary of posting on the internet because there is often a lack of context. I suppose the only counter to that phenomenon is to try and create a body of work that is so compelling that google wouldnt turn up anything but the good work in a search :)

[zoombapup]

Oh just remembered. One thing you COULD do, is find a local trade show, or event, like an IGDA meeting, or a business link event, or any one of a billion other things like that and build up a peer network that way.

There are always people in a similar position. Ok, its often not as frequent as you'd like, but if you become better friends and partners, then often things like that can work.

I go to quite a few of these meetings, although I'm usually in a different position to others so dont often have deals to make. But I can see the usefulness.

I used to go to indiegamescon and that was a great event.

[Applewood]

I think the short answer is "learn to live with it" tbh.

I worked from home for several years and after the novelty wore off I grew to hate it. Now I work in an small office environment where there's the usual banter and buffoonery and it's great. I'm still pretty much the goto guy, but there are enough people to get a conversation started and I think that's the key thing.

If there aren't enough people in your office (yourself included) to be able to deduce the right answers, you're not going to make it longer term and should hire some expertise in. Doesn't sound like that's your problem though, so I wouldn't worry too much.

Companies our size couldn't compete with the big studios anyway even if we were all programming gods, so as long as you have the basic skills down then you're golden.

[Ricardo Vladimiro]

I was doing well at my work before going indie especially because everywhere I worked I had that older knowledge available. Coaching is important everywhere and I was blessed with it for many years.

Right now I have no one to speak or learn with, considering my own work. I still learn a lot about game development, maybe because I'm the least knowledgeable of my team, but considering the actual work I do and I'm experienced with (business, production, design, moping, cleaning dishes :D), I wonder how can I keep my ideas and knowledge fresh. I have no answer to this but to be honest I didn't think of it until I read your post.

It happens to everyone, sooner or later. There's this time when you become the person to talk to, not the other way around. Don't know if it helps, but I always keep in touch with everyone I worked it and discuss a lot of stuff with the ones that were closer to me.

[chanon]

I understand the feeling as I've also been (am) in that position.

In terms of technical topics, learning from doing is probably the best way to learn. So I don't see a problem there. You just have to accept that if your company needs anything new technical-wise you just need to learn it on your own and create that tech for your company. Some people have lots of fun with that role. For example, John Carmack .. he gets to have all the fun writing the latest tech while the rest of the company has to do the grunt work of finishing the games.

If you don't like having to learn things on your own, then you could try hiring someone who does and learn from them instead. But being in a country which the game industry isn't that advanced yet (same here) it can be hard (and expensive) to find that person though.

In terms of business and marketing topcis .. it could be helpful if you can find a mentor or at least someone to bounce ideas off of. If you have a business partner, then at least you've got one person there. Otherwise, maybe going to a trade fair or business link event to try to meet people like zoombapup mentioned could help. Another great way to keep learning is to read lots of books and listen to lots of audioprograms (Try audible.com).

In terms of game design and best practices .. well for me I learn at the same time as everyone else in the company since we're all new to it. Having a design process where everyone can take part also helps a lot since you get lots of new ideas from everyone.