Founder and an overall nice guy
Hi, I'm Rob, nice to meet you. I'm the one wearing many hats in this whole story.
Personal background
As a kid, aside from playing any game that came out, I was intrigued by the whole thing. You have an idea, you make it, people play it, wow. So I started making the simplest games I could code, Create Your Own Adventure type text adventures. Or in todays terms, Visual Novels. I had fun making them, but was still in primary school. Fast forward about 10 years, I wrote a design document for a turn based RPG strategy game, insipred by the first Warlords game (v 2.0). Having assembled a team, we started the work, and then marriage, I moved continents, new career, kids. But I never gave up on the main goal. Make games.
About 10 years ago, what little spare time I had, I jumped into Unity for prototyping and learning as much as possible about every aspect of the process. At beginning of 2023, I decided it's now or never, and took the plunge. Having a family to provide for, I couldn't just quit everything, so I cut all side job work and devoted all that time to pre-production of a few larger future titles, and production of smaller upcoming titles.
Professional background
Not dwelling into it all, what's most revelant here is that I've been a web developer, designer and a programmer for past 20+ years. I 'speak' 7 programming languages and am a nerd for numbers, databases, architecture, efficiency and clean code.
What do I do?
Short version is, everything. And the long version is, well ... also everything.
Story writing: most games we're working on are for better or worse, brainchildren of yours turly. Something pops to my mind and I run with it (unless it's scissors, don't run with scissors). Having a lot of ideas, I rank them firstly by how much I like the topic, what I can do with it, and why to do it. After that, I alienate most of my friends by constantly rambling on to myself, and pick the one or ones I feel passionate about in one way or another. And then I write ...
Planning: some games I play which have a lot of information, I make spreadsheet for to help me focus on what I want (yes, yes, it's nuts, I know). No difference here. I plan everything. From scheduling, to requirements, potential platforms, target audience, assets I need, asset I can do myself, or what I need to buy, what I can do in house, what I need to outsource, development time, bug fixing, brain fixing, budget and so on.
Programming: Anything that makes sense to program myself given time frames and requirements, I program. Doesn't matter if it's small or large. I need it to do the job I envisioned, and it's nice to have a system that does no more or less than you need it to do. Where it doesn't make sense, I get the closest thing to what I need if available and adapt it from there.
Art: I'm 'fine' with 3D, but I couldn't properly draw even a horse if my life depended on it, so most of the artwork is either outsourced or bought, and then adapted if needed. I'm the one doing the adaptation, be it animation, textures, materials, pipeline adaptations etc.
Boring stuff: Administration and ... enough said.
My goal
It's really simple. I always have, do, and always will, want to make games. I love to see, read, hear and tell stories. And if this venture allows me to make it my next, and final career, I'll be as happy as a clam.
Favorite quote on the topic
"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing".
by either George Bernard Shaw or Benjamin Franklin, take a pick
