I spent last week testing our game, Beastie Burgers, and working on the release plan. I’ve really enjoyed playing it and can’t wait to get on with the launch. I’ve written my first ever press release, with a little help from Google, I’m hoping it hits the mark. I’d love to pay someone to do it as I’m great believer in giving work to people with the right skills but we’re trying to save expediture where possible; so for now, the PR hat is on my head.
I missed out on a lot of the main development of Beasties so all the little details and quirks were a briliant surprise and made me chuckle frequently. I love it, but then I would. My input on it so far has been a little bit of animation, a few graphic fixes and a lot of testing, I love that I get to play games and call it work.
I’m a newbie to the games world, I guess I fit in to the demographic of the new casual gaming revolution. I’ve always been remotley interested in computer games but until very recently nowhere near the level of say Tim or Kyle. With the advent of the Playstation Eyetoy and Singstar it’s like games started to speak to me in a way I could understand and then we got a Wii. I can easily say I play it as much, if not more than Tim does. In very general terms I think it’s interesting the male/female divde on the way we think about, react to, and interact with games. I love the dress up style games that are all over Facebook at the moment, I especically love my farm in Farmville. We’re talking through ideas for our next game project and I keep steering things in that direction. To work as part of this industry is, currently, much fun.
However Beastie Burgers is so very close to being finished it’s frustrating. We’re constantly fighting the battle of when to take time working on our own things and when to take on client work. Unfortunately we’re not quite at the point yet where we feel safe enough to turn work down, but feel that if we could just get this finished then we’d have an excellent showcase for our talents. The nature of working for agencies is that we’re often tied by confidentiality clauses so our best work is not up for discussion when I’m trying to promote us and get us new clients.
We are starting to learn that being in buisness for yourselves is a big balancing act. A lot of the decision making feels very chicken and egg; Do we have enough work to take on another developer? How are we going to take on more work unless we’ve got the bums on seats to get it done? Do we say no to client work this month to get our own projects finished so we can use them to get more work in?
There doesn’t seem to be a magic pill and in most cases we’ve just taken a deep breath and done what feels best for us. So far it seems to be working.