Full-Time Indie (kinda)

[Coyote]

I'll skip the repeat explanation and just point everyone to the blog entry for the long version:

http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2006/04/jay-sells-out-or-maybe-opposite.html

So I find myself in a pretty neat situation. While the pay isn't quite what I'm used to, I find myself in the enviable position of writing games (including indie games, privately funded downloadable stuff) for a living again, plus being encouraged by my employer to continue working on my own indie game business on the side.

In the words of Steve Taylor, the president of Wahoo (AKA NinjaBee (http://www.ninjabee.com)): "I'd like to be the last boss you ever have."

It's a rather unique situation. I'm at once thrilled and baffled by the turn of events, and really crossing my fingers that it all works out. I've pretty much been thrown into the middle of a very cool, exciting, and challenging project that I *WISHED* I could have worked on when I was working for AAA publishers back in the day. It's something that could probably ONLY be done with an indie mentality.

And I gotta give props to the NinjaBee guys for all this. They've been a stand-up bunch for as long as I've known them... which is a big reason I decided to throw in with them.

Now comes the real challenge: Can I spend all day creating games, and then come home in the evening and... create more games?

[Sirrus]

Great situation, thanks for sharing...

Good luck with your work there (and Rampant).

[cliffski]

Now comes the real challenge: Can I spend all day creating games, and then come home in the evening and... create more games?

Yes.
I did this for years. It helps if the projects are different in style or scope. But it can be done, certainly.

[dmikesell]

So NinjaBee is an Indie company? Is there a chance of a merger or partnership with Rampant?

[Coyote]

NinjaBee is the "indie branch" of Wahoo Studios. It's a fairly small company, and so it's really more of a branding than anything else. They are a hybrid, but are seriously committed to making their future based on their self- and independently-funded, self-published titles. They are a bunch of sharp, devoted game developers who have caught the indie vision after being a "guns-for-hire" style game studio for years. Now they are kind of walking in both camps. The cool thing is that they are really committed to downloadable games, which means projects here have a relatively fast turn-around: months instead of years.

As far as a merger - no, I don't see that happening anytime soon. As a partnership though - we've had an informal partnership for years. I don't see the nature of that changing any time soon.

Cliffski - were there any tricks you did to pulling it off? I remember reading how James Cameron was at one point working on the screenplays to three movies (I think they were The Terminator, Aliens, and Rambo, but I can't remember) at once, and ended up doing them at three different desks, listening to different music for each screenplay.

[cliffski]

I employed 3 tricks

1) I went home on time each day (generally) form the day job
2) I reused code where I could
3) I didnt (and dont) watch hardly any TV

If you are distracted by other things at home, buy some seriously good noise cancelling headphones. They make a huge difference.

[wazoo]

Cliffski - were there any tricks you did to pulling it off? I remember reading how James Cameron was at one point working on the screenplays to three movies (I think they were The Terminator, Aliens, and Rambo, but I can't remember) at once, and ended up doing them at three different desks, listening to different music for each screenplay.

JC himself commented on this in the Aliens DVD that I've got. He mentioned that he only had 3 months (or something like that) to get all 3 screenplays written. He calculated how many pages he needed to finish every day, and went through a LOT of coffee...I'm not sure if he "budgeted" for writer's block though..;)

But he doesn't mention anything about different desks (tho it wouldn't surprise me).


If you are distracted by other things at home, buy some seriously good noise cancelling headphones. They make a huge difference.

Great advice Cliffski! Hopefully I can find some that cancels out my kids' refusal to go to bed on time. :)

[Coyote]

I don't have noise-reduction headphones, but I am not afraid to turn up the volume on the ones I have! :)

Otherwise, sounds about the same as how I try to get things done with a regular programming "day job." The biggest trick is when I got home from doing ASP.NET pages (or worse) each day, I was REALLY PUMPED to write games.

My first experiment was last night - and it went pretty well. I ended up doing a lot of website-related and newsletter-related stuff though, and only about 2 hours of coding.