Hello, and welcome to my corner of the internet. My name is Terry Jin and I am a game developer based in Cambridge, UK. I am currently working on a 2D Life Simulation game called Little Sim World as the lead designer. This is a blog dedicated to game development both from the perspective of the theoretical and pragmatic. This means that we will attempt to review the nuances of creating successful indie games as well as analyse existing titles to learn from their development cycle.

I believe that this is a very interesting area of study and is typically useful to divide game development into two major categories – both of which are very relevant to any developer. First, is the process that most are acutely aware of and that is game development itself, the experience of creating the game. However, as one must realise, the vast majority of games fail. Failure here is simply defined in financial terms such that the development cost was not recouped. There are many fantastic games in terms of design, but it is useful to quantify terminology at this stage to avoid ambiguity. Game design is a very complex topic that many underestimate, due to many reasons that will be discussed throughout this blog.

Second, is the topic of startup philosophy. Many game developers get into the industry in pursuit of making a great game – a virtuous cause indeed. However, many struggle as the startup side (which any indie game indeed is) remains somewhat sidelined. This is a topic of great interest to me as I believe indie studios are fundamentally startups and I aim to discuss some interesting strategies in improving one’s workflow to avoid common shortcomings that indie teams may encounter.

That’s all for now ~