![]() What is your opinion of the mobile games market for indies right now? Being proud of what you make, enjoying the making process, and doing well enough financially so that you can continue to make things you enjoy. Patrick McAvena: For me personally, true success is a few things. We started to experiment with ways to incorporate free-to-play into Dodo Peak, ultimately to find out that it just didn't make sense for our game Patrick McAvena There's no standard you can look at or test you can run to know you're doing the right thing. Most of the early months of a project are just figuring out what your game is. The hardest part of starting a company in a creative field is that you don't really know what you're making while you're making it. Kyle Erf: I think most people who haven't taken the leap don't realise all the upsides of being part of a large group with an engrained hierarchy and a set plan to follow. When you're funding the project's development with your own money and have no previous projects that are bringing anything in, it can definitely be a bit stressful, to say the least. I didn't have a job to quit to start my career as an indie, as I was always freelance, which made taking off time from paid work a bit easier. Patrick McAvena: One of the biggest challenges I've faced so far was getting started, which meant self-funding the project with my savings for well over a year. What have been the biggest challenges you've faced so far as an indie? Now my focus has shifted into making new projects, supporting old ones, making sure everyone is creatively fulfilled, and also ensuring the studio has a good financial trajectory so we can keep making games and doing what we love. When I first started as an indie my big focus was to just finish our first game. Patrick McAvena: I think like any small business, it's really rewarding, exciting and challenging. What is a typical day in your life as an indie? Following this, I put in my two weeks' notice. Patrick then tells me about his other game and how it's going to help launch this new platform. We hit it off and worked on our own small project throughout the class and months afterwards. I was a creative person and a talented programmer and I loved video games, so I bit the bullet and signed up for a class on game programming, which is where I met Patrick. With that dead end, I tried to think of what advice I would give to someone in my position. ![]() My plan eventually became making it onto one of a handful of comedy internet publications as a staff writer, but then in 2018 that dream shrivelled up as nearly every one of those websites became insolvent and laid off all of my friends.Īfter launching on Apple Arcade, Dodo Peaks has made its way to Nintendo Switch I was actually finding success in my freelance writing career and contributing to a lot of reputable websites. For years, programming was my day job while I worked a second job doing unpaid comedy shows around NYC and making some pocket change via freelance writing work. My college degree is in programming and I've spent my entire adult life working in privileged positions at tech companies, however my goal since I left college was actually to make it as a comedy writer or performer. ![]() Moving Pieces just celebrated its first anniversary in June of this year. ![]() Until we officially became a launch title for Apple Arcade, I was the only developer on the project and the only person working on it in any full-time capacity.Įventually, once we had the opportunity to hire everyone full-time on the project we started Moving Pieces, relocated to an office, and all worked really hard on getting the game ready for release. My career had always surrounded freelancing which gave me a lot of flexibility to take time off in between projects and to focus on Dodo Peak. I started dabbling with Unreal Engine and started working on a project with another friend which eventually became Dodo Peak. ![]() I learned a lot of skills as a 3D artist working on TV commercials that definitely translate into the games work that I do now.Ībout six years into my career in advertising my itch to make games started to grow again and this time I got more serious. I wanted to get into the games industry during college but I graduated during the 2008 financial crisis and felt it was a safer bet to get into advertising. I always wanted to make games ever since I was pretty young. About six years into my career in advertising my itch to make games started to grow again and this time I got more serious Patrick McAvena ![]()
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