Let me tell you something...
YOU CAN MAKE
VIDEO GAMES
by Richard Perrin
No, really, you can! Well, probably. I hope
so anyway. That’s what I’m going to write
about, so let’s just pretend I’m correct for
the sake of argument. If you’re interested
in making video games and are not doing so already, you’ve probably built up
a bunch of reasons in your head for not
being able to make games.
The obvious one is that requires a lot of
programming and that’s very hard work.
Let me tell you now that I’m a terrible
coder - so if I can somehow put a game
together, so can you. The tools to make
games have become so simple over the
past few years that pretty much anyone
who has a basic grasp of logic can find a
tool that works for them.
Maybe you’re telling yourself that you’re
more an ideas guy. You need to pass the
amazing golden ideas you’re coming up
with to someone else, and they can turn
them into a game for you. So let me tell
you now: if you’re just an ideas guy then
forget it, you’re absolutely nothing. Your
games ideas are almost entirely worthless, because I think I’d be overvaluing
ideas if I said they were a dime a dozen.
Most people who work with games have
a ton of ideas they’d love to get made.
What makes your games unique, what
makes them real is your implementation.
It’s how you take your idea and all the decisions you make along the way as you
turn it into am actual game.
So forget all that. Forget that it’s too
hard, forget that you need other people.
The only thing stopping you from making
games right now is you.
THE 5 NEWBIE TIPS
Let me give you a few key pieces of advice to help you get started:
TIP #1
Don't waste
money
Don’t go out looking for software and
books to buy, thinking that the more stuff
you buy the better equipped you’ll be to
make games. All the software and information you’re going to need to make
games is available on the internet for
free. You don’t need to spend any money - it won’t give you a leg up. All you
need is self-motivation, and money can’t
buy you that.
TIP #2
great - but don’t go on a recruitment
drive. There are ways to cover for all the
skills you’re lacking. That way you can
start learning how to make games before
you have to deal with how much of a bitch
team management can be.
TIP #3
Tiny scope
Don't form
teams
This seems an obvious thing to do and
it’s a path universities will certainly push
you towards. A lot of people get into the
mentality that you need a coder, an artist, a musician and a designer. However,
if you want to get started making games,
you should start with something that
plays to your strengths and doesn’t require a whole team. Sure, if you’ve got a
close mate you want to work with that’s
When you’re starting out, try to focus on
the simplest game idea you can come
up with. A single idea, a single gameplay
mechanic you want to play with or a single scene between a few characters. You
need to be at your most humble and find
the most basic idea that you can still get
excited about experimenting with. Don’t
try to make the next World of Warcraft or
Call of Duty. You need to forget about that
epic project you’ve been mulling over for
You Can Make Video Games
years. I’m sure you’ve got a masterpiece
brewing in your head, but trying to make
that right out of the gate will be a huge
disaster. Even if you finished it, which you
probably wouldn’t, it would be a mess.
You need to come back to that later, once
you’ve got some experience and have a
better idea what you’re doing.
the belief that it has to be brilliant can
stop you from ever making anything.
TIP #5
Ditch the design
document
TIP #4
They’re not all
Braid
Don’t feel under pressure to make your
first game into an amazingly original,
clever, quirky breakthrough in video
game design, or something that nobody
has ever seen before. You can just pick
a game genre that you love and have a
go at it. Whatever you make will be infused with your own style from how you
interpret that genre - and that’s enough.
Agonising over the first step because of
You don’t need a 20 page epic bible all
about how your game is going to work. I
believe the best approach is almost always to try and get something playable
in a rough form as quickly as you possibly can. Once you can start playing your
game and experimenting with how you
can change it you are going to find a lot
more ideas begin to flow. They’ll be better ideas than you’ll come up with staring a word processor trying to imagine in
your head how the game will play.
Iterating over your game through lots of
different builds where you play with ideas and find out what does and doesn’t
work for you is going to teach you more
about game design than any well formatted design document, any number
of lectures or books you can read on the
subject. In fact, let me give you the single
most important lesson in game design
you will ever hear:
GAME DESIGN 101
1. There are no rules
to game design!
It’s definitely worth reading up online to
see what other people have to say about
game design. There are a lot of forums,
articles and video lectures on the topic
and understanding what people have to
say and why they’ve come to their opinions on the topic is helpful in understanding what’s important to you. However you
shouldn’t get it into your head there are
universal principles you need to follow.
Even for some of the most basic design
rules (games should be fun, accessible,
completable or fair) I’ve always found
games that break that rule and are still
amazing works.
I feel the most important thing about
making games is that they’re a way to
express yourself to an audience. If you
can learn to ignore the advice you don’t
agree with and embrace what appeals to
you then you’re going to be able to find
your own voice and the games you make
will be distinctly yours. Don’t make what
other people might want or expect you
to make, make something for yourself. If
you fail... who cares? At least you tried to
do something you wanted.
My advice is no exception to this. They
say all advice is autobiographical. The
stuff I’m telling you are the things I wish
someone had told me back when I was
getting started. It would have saved me
years I threw away on dead end projects.
If you want to ignore what I’ve said and
go your own path then good on ya’! I wish
you all the best and hope you can succeed where I failed many times.
You Can Make Video Games
TOOLS
I mentioned earlier that it’s easy to make games these days so let me tell you
about a few tools you can use to achieve this.
Game Maker
One of the most basic tools and an amazing starting place for many people is
Game Maker. If you download a copy of this and follow the tutorials you’ll be
making games in minutes not hours. It has a simple drag and drop approach to
building the pieces of your game and the logic that powers it.
If you have any doubts about it restricting what you want to make check out
Spelunky to see what it can do once you’ve got a bit of experience. The only
downside right now is this is primarily a Windows tool as the Mac version is a bit
ropey but they are working on that.
http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker
Stencyl
Stencyl is my favorite tool right now for making 2D games. Like game maker is
lets you build game using drag and drop logic blocks. However it run on cross
platforms and the games you make compile out to Flash meaning they’re a lot
easier to share.
The workflow is a little bit more complicated than Game Maker but the results are
great once you’ve learned how to deal with a few idiosyncrasies of how it works.
http://www.stencyl.com/
Ren'Py
If you’re a writer or an artist and are not looking to play around with game mechanics Ren’Py will allow you to make interactive stories with optional graphics.
Although it has a scripting language it’s one of the simplest I’ve ever used and is
close enough to just writing in natural english. I’ve seen a writer produce his first
game in under an hour of being exposed to Ren’Py and I’ve seen artists produce
beautiful visual novels in a weekend.
http://www.renpy.org
Unity
If you want to work with 3D then I can not recommend any other tool than Unity.
The free version is missing only a handful of advanced effects you’re unlikely to
need initially and once you’ve done some initial tutorials it’s the friendliest 3D environment you’re going to find. However unlike Game Maker and Stencyl you are
going to need to do some coding here, it can be very basic javascript but working
with 3D does require a bit more time investment from you to get things working.
http://unity3d.com
Flixel
If you’re more of a programmer than I’ve given you credit for and actually want to
be working with code for your first game then you should check out Flixel. It allows you to use open source tools to compile your code into Flash games. Flixel
itself is a library that will give you all the common features you’re going to want in
a 2D game so you’re not doing everything from scratch. Flixel has a huge community and masses of finished games to demonstrate what it can do.
http://flixel.org
You Can Make Video Games
RESOURCES
I said earlier that you shouldn’t go on a recruitment drive - so you might be worried about how you’re
going to provide the assets for your game if you’re not a good artist or musician. Here’s some advice
and links to free tools and sites you can use.
2D Graphics
If you’re going with 2D graphics and you’re not an artist then my biggest recommendation is for you
to make your own - but keep them simple. Some of the most impressive indie games I’ve played have
had really primitive graphics but they’ve used their limitations to make a distinctive style - whether that
means going with vector lines, crude pixel art, simple geometric shapes or even ASCII art. Just find a
style you can produce quickly without it getting in the way of development. I shouldn’t need to recommend any specific 2D art software to you, there’s tons out there.
If you really don’t want to make your own art, steal it! There are a ton of sites with sprite rips of classic
2D games. You can’t make a career on stolen game sprites but no one is going to be sending you legal
threats for you making your first few simple games that way.
3D Graphics
There are a few tools for doing really easy 3D modeling. SketchUp (http://sketchup.google.com/) is
incredibly easy to use and can have you building levels in minutes. Its only drawback is it draws very
straight geometric shapes. If you want to sculpt more organic shapes then check out Sculptris (http://
www.sculptris.com). For a fully featured free 3D modelling package you have to check out Blender
(http://www.blender.org), historically this was hard to recommend with its very obtuse interface but that’s
all sorted now and it’s a much nicer tool than it’s ever been.
If you’re happy to drop in pre-made 3D assets check out Turbo Squid (http://turbosquid.com) and The
3D Studio (http://www.the3dstudio.com) these sites are full of both free and paid-for models created by
3D artists. There’s a lot of great stuff in there you could just drop right into your game.
Sound
Sorting out sounds isn’t too tricky. If you want to record voice or your own foley sounds then download
Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) or if you want retro chip sound effects there’s SFXR (http://
www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html).
If you want more specific stuff then two great sound directories are Free Sound (http://www.freesound.
org) and Sound Bible (http://soundbible.com). If you go through their archives you should be able to find
anything you need.
Music
When it comes to making music if you’ve got a Mac then GarageBand should come installed on it - this
is one of the easiest music packages I’ve ever come across. On Windows I’d rather not recommend a
specific music package as there thousands of them, including many great free ones. Googling around
should help you find one that suits you.
When it comes to pre-made music you might want to check out Incompetech (http://incompetech.com/
m/c/royalty-free) first. It’s the site of one musician, Kevin McLeod, who has produced an absolutely huge
archive of free music he’s composed across all genres for people to use for free. What a guy. If you want
a wider choice then check out Indie Game Music (http://www.indiegamemusic.com) which has free and
paid-for music from a ton of people.
WRAP UP
So, that’s it. I’ve tried to give you everything you need to get started. Come up with a simple game idea, pick a tool for your skill set,
find content where you need to and just make the game. Don’t talk about making games, don’t argue about it on forums, just MAKE
GAMES. We need more voices to help grow this medium and you can be part of that. I want to play your games - so I need you to
get started!
“We must make the games we wish to play in the world” - anna anthropy