Since this is my second week at being a full-time game developer, I figured I should post what I've been doing, mostly to prove that I haven't become a slovenly, unshowered hermit, eating Cheetohs and watching Love Connection reruns all day.
- Set up web hosting with Dreamhost. The 1TB traffic allowance made it an easy decision. So far, apart from a couple of outages, it's been great, but I'll find out for sure when I get some real traffic. I got the first year for about $20 through one of their promotions.
- Registered domains with GoDaddy. I had to go with a longer domain than I wanted, which also influenced my decision on the company name. It should work out okay, though.
- Designed the corporate web site (mostly). I departed from some of my usual design crutches, so this hasn't been easy. There will very likely be a separate web site for the actual game once it is released.
- Designed company logo. I probably spent too much time on this, but after *cough*61*cough* iterations, it kinda works. I still need to do some cleanup on it. Hmm, maybe just a couple more iterations...
- Filed my Doing Business As (DBA). Cost: $29 (cheap!) and 2 hours waiting at the Alameda County Clerk-Recorder's office, counting all of the little pieces in the mosaic floor. I think I lost count around 1,500. I still need to publish the DBA in a local newspaper.
- Backup system. Well, for now I'm just mirroring important files on a second drive, but I need to figure out an offsite scheme. Since I have CVS running on my web host server, that might actually be good enough.
- Market research. Been downloading game demos from other developers in this space to see what the general quality level is and how they handle "Buy" links, etc. Also checking out developer/portal websites.
- Email and Scheduling. Started using Pegasus mail as a local client -- the UI sucks, but it works for now. I'm also forwarding my spam account mail to gmail to give that a try. Started using Google Calendar, which is quite handy.
- Miscellaneous. I got rid of some of my clutter via donations and selling stuff on craigslist. My apartment has never been cleaner! I even own a plant now. It's a "Zizi" plant from Ikea that I bought because, naturally, it reminded me of ZZ Top. I've also been running, lifting weights, or playing the drumset pretty much every day.
- Game design. My first game is based on a proof-of-concept I built a few months ago, which has received some good reaction from other developers, and the concept is quite marketable. Expanding it into a complete game has not been easy, though. I've since moved from designing on paper to actually building on the prototype. All the code is going to be rewritten, but it has helped significantly.
Q: When do we find out the company name, etc?I've been keeping all of the details "secret" because I'm still sorting everything out and there are a lot of interdependencies. It's just a lot easier for me to change my mind (as I've done many times already) when I don't have to explain the reasoning behind each change. I'd also rather present everything in the same context that normal users will be exposed to it.
Anyway, once the overall game design is done, I'll be putting together a schedule, but right now I'm aiming to get the company site launched with in-progress screenshots in
about 3 weeks. First game launch will hopefully be
mid-November.
Joe
