The challenge for this group is to skill up before they have to start supporting themselves and therefore turn into group 2. How can they skill up? There are plenty of websites out there to learn including Gamedev.net<\/a>, opengl.org<\/a> and nehe.com<\/a>. You should use all your available time to learn as much as you can. On buses or trains, instead of watching tv, or during breaks between lessons or lectures. I used to print out as many tutorials as I could off the internet and read them on my 30 minute train ride home. While textbooks are generally good for consistent, complete information on a subject, you can find nearly all the information scattered over the internet. If you have plenty of time but no money, take the time to search out this information.<\/p>\n Also, don\u2019t neglect your current studies at school or university. Even the most unrelated subjects can give you a lot of important skills for starting an indie team later in life. From the psychology elective to the Haskell subject I took, I\u2019ve learnt a lot that I use in my every day life, even if indirectly.<\/p>\n 2. Experienced Workers<\/strong><\/p>\n Overtime is a killer for this group. Each person has their own limit to how many hours they can work. To succeed in working full-time and making your own game, your limit needs to far exceed 40 hours. If you work overtime, it becomes almost impossible for your personal limit to be high enough. After the initial 40 hours, there seems to be an exponential drop in how much energy and concentration you can give to your project. I\u2019ve found the best way of handling this is contracting 2 or 3 days per week. I found I was most productive as I didn\u2019t have to worry about an income, while still having plenty of time to work on my game.<\/p>\n Working Together<\/strong><\/p>\n The best solution I can see for these two groups is for them to work together. Their strengths and weaknesses are complimentary. 2\u2019s (Experienced Workers) should become leads for projects made up of 1\u2019s (Inexperienced Free Timers). 1\u2019s should exchange their time, for knowledge\/mentoring from 2\u2019s. You need far less time manage a small team than you do to sit and code the entire project yourself; group 2\u2019s should use this to their advantage.<\/p>\n Due to the anonymity of the internet this may be a problem for some people, so my recommendation is to start out slow. For 2\u2019s, maybe see if there are current projects that are flailing that you can step into to help out as a manager. For 1\u2019s, find people with no time to work on their projects and see if you can help them out. If the current projects are small enough, there\u2019s little risk involved. After this you\u2019ll be able to put more trust in each other and you\u2019ll know whether you can work together well in a team.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n I realise there are a few people creating indie games that don\u2019t fit into either of these groups. These are the lucky people and you should take full advantage of this. One day you may end up as a Group 2 person and will look back on your current life with fond memories and I can guarantee you\u2019ll not be able to forgive yourself if you waste it. So go out there, find your complimentary group and see what you can come up with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I see the biggest challenge facing Indie game development stemming from the two major types of people who develop the games. The first group have plenty of time to make games, but don\u2019t have the skills to do so. The second group have the skills but have no time to make them. How can these Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,5],"tags":[112,37,42],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-development","category-games","tag-game-development","tag-game-programming","tag-indie-game-development"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgEc5-15","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/qut.jpg\")
<\/a>The people in this group include high school and university students, or more generally, people still living at home. They have plenty of spare time, don\u2019t have a job or family that rely on them and don\u2019t have to try and find the energy to work on their games after a 40 hour week at work.<\/p>\n<\/a>The people in this group usually have a full-time job to help support themselves (and possibly their family). I am currently in this position. Over the past years in the game industry and in my personal projects I\u2019ve picked up the skills allowing me to create games. However working a 40-50 hour week means I don\u2019t have the time or energy to work on my own game much. The best way to fix this is to set out definite times you will work on your indie game. Without setting out these times, it\u2019s easy to get bored and stop working when the \u2018fun\u2019 parts are over. Forcing yourself to make a schedule and work a certain number of hours per week (even if small to start off) will help you immensely.<\/p>\n