
So, at the very beginning I spent about $5K, $3K of which was the Unity license.

Unity allowed me to expand directly, even working alone.There was no sense of uncertainty as such, like, what if I fail, or what if it just doesn’t work out. Basically, I understood that I would work somewhere in any case. A lot of people are afraid of giving everything they have and charging headlong into a venture — they don’t want to face disappointment, but we only live once, so you really just have to try! Certainly. And how long does it take you to develop a game from scratch? For example, your latest game. We spent about a year developing it with the artist. The game was redesigned because it was based on Defense Zone 3. At some point, we figured that making a carbon copy was a bad idea, and decided to change the game mechanics a little and combine new elements. We were working on one version, then we tried something else, and didn’t work every day —that’s why I say a year. But if I had known what the game should look like from the start, it would take 6 months. That’s plenty of time to get it all done. But you’ve got to take into account that everyone works at different speeds. For example, there are long-term projects that are written over several years. I guess it’s a special kind of person who can drag things out and work like that. I’m the kind of guy who’d rather dive into and do everything in one day than drag it out for a week. It won’t come out well if I drag it out.

The question is not about doing the right things or morality, it’s about money. Publishers will do what’s profitable. Don’t think we’re all so honest.And the second point: if the publisher has never published this genre before, they simply won’t know what to do with the game. They don’t have an audience for this genre. For example, if a developer specializes in match-3 games, and you offer them a Tower Defense game. Half of their audience are middle-aged women, they’re not looking for emotions from my game. People play my game with sweating hands. I see comments like this: Finished the first level, damn, my hands were sweating! And these middle-aged women don’t need that, they play games to relax and calm down. When my wife tried my game she got really nervous: “Enough, I don’t want to play this anymore!” And she opens her match-3 candies, and don’t even think about coming near her for the next half hour until she’s back to normal. And so the thing is that if you give a publisher the wrong genre, you won’t get 100% effectiveness from it. But if he publishes similar games, your game will be a cannibal. This is where you have to compare the games and see just how different they are. Maybe they have different settings, for example, space and fantasy — then the games will complement each other.

Why are you making a game? To make your family or friends happy? They’ll always have something to say. But if you do it for no one but yourself, you will be absolutely unaffected by this.


Come on, what the hell, I did so much work, everyone was shooting at each other, a machine gun on a jeep fired at a rocket shot out of a rocket launcher, it was so awesome — and then suddenly it was all dead in the water.But I had to do something. I had to go back to 2D, even though I spent 1000 bucks on the 3D map (while I could have done it in 2D for 200), and redo everything all over again and stay away from 3D for a while. 2D is there for me, it’s simple and comfortable and gives me everything I want. Maybe it’s just not time for me to get into 3D yet. You always have to be flexible and be looking for alternative ways forward. I didn’t give up game development after all that, as you can see. You should accept failure as a fact and, like water, look for another route. Then you won’t lose sleep over your failures. Just accept everything that doesn’t go right as feedback and as a lesson in what not to do. Let’s talk about volunteering. Have volunteers worked on your project? How do you work together with them? And is it worth it? My musician friend Alexander Yakovlev wrote some tracks for Defense Zone 3 for free, since he was putting together a portfolio at that time. But a lot depends on the individual volunteer. Alexander is already an experienced musician in his genre. And if you are working with a newbie volunteer, you’ll have to teach them, and you’ll probably just end up wasting a lot of time. A case from my experience: when I started developing DZ2, I needed to create new units. I knew a volunteer who could draw them, but he wasn’t experienced enough. In the end, they didn’t fit the final version, they were wrong. But we used his work as sketches for more professional artists. Professionals do their work without unnecessary effort, and tend not to waste time on the creative part. And volunteers work in a much more interesting way. They can bring their own flavor to a project, something new, because they need a good portfolio to impress clients. All right, let’s wrap things up. Can you give some basic advice for future developers? Steps to take at the very beginning. Understand why you are doing this. Some people do projects for money, others for fun. I don’t mean that creativity can’t earn you money, but developers with that kind of view don’t really care about money and how financial turnout.

