Whoops! Sorry! Have an article!

GAH! No posts for the entirety of November!? No posts for the entirety of November!? I feel like Doc Brown in Back To The Future. I've messed up and missed some time by accident and now I'm trying to fix it by yelling and repeating myself.

Great Scott!

I don't want to spend this whole post trying to redeem myself, honest. I do have some valid excuses though, I promise. First off, I've just finished my Game Development course at TAFE for the year. While this has kept my development blog healthily updated, it means I have been very busy of late doing lots of work, which I incidentally want to talk about in a second.

Secondly off, I've just started working again after a two year absence. This of course will mean it will be easier for me obtain retro goodyness, and the job is in an electronic store so I enjoy it. It pretty much means I can geek out and get paid for it. 

Now, about my work.
Obviously doing game development in the modern days means I'm catering for the present day platforms, for example Android, IOS, Steam, PS3, 360 etc. You get the idea. Now I may or may not have gone on a rant about most modern day games in this blog... I can't remember and I'm too lazy to check. Just in case I haven't though, the general jist is that they're too easy and for lack of better words, mainstream. Now I'm no hipster, but there is nothing I hate more when games get ruined because of some suit corporate decision by noobs who don't even play games. I'm not going to name names, but if you do your homework they're are certain people who pop-up again and again. 

They kill game franchises by releasing games yearly, even bi-yearly. This of course means that the production time and values are a lot lower, meaning a less polished product. 

Now of course the games industry is based around money, like a lot things in this world. I'm not complaining about this obviously as I want it to be my future career, I want to get paid just like the next guy. I just feel as if things get pushed a bit too much sometimes by greed, and it's not needed. They're plenty of companies who prove that quality products can be made (and lots of money too!) and things don't get pushed to the limit. Valve is one such company. They take pride in the fact that they leave huge gaps in-between games and are always so secretive, quite the opposite from the hype machine that other companies make for their games really. They still make lots of money though, and they've been going strong for years. 

So how can I change this as a developer? Using retro games as an inspiration of course! 

It is quite easy to get into Indie development, Android and IOS are quite welcoming and Steam is to an extent (they're a bit more strict though). I find the gameplay in the older games to be a lot more solid, challenging and fun. Of course the graphics aren't up to par, but who cares. Graphics doesn't make a game good, the gameplay does. Of course any future games I develop will have new gen graphics, but there is nothing stopping me from putting in the gameplay elements I want. 

It certainly is a good time to be in the Indie scene, the amount I can get away with creatively wise is huge.