What to make?

We're currently in the planning phase.  What to make, what to make it in, ground rules, that kind of stuff.

Some of the questions we asked ourselves are, "What are our values?", "What do we do if one person flakes out and the other keeps going?", "What are the risks?", "What would success look like?"

One of the first ground rules we decided was that we are going to make something for ourselves. One of the most critical pieces of building anything is that you have direct and solid interaction the customer. If the customer is yourself, well then it's that much easier to know what they want, and it's easier to keep the excitement up.  When working for yourself, keeping the fires burning is crucial.

There are many things that I value in software. I value being able to be creative, to rapidly iterate, and to have fun.  Someone with whom I share a common mindset is Bret Victor, who has been an inspiration to create tools that allow you to quickly iterate. I've been thinking about tool chains a lot over the years, as I've worked at various companies I've advocated heavily to increase creativity and quality by reducing iteration times.

Then of course there are video games. A light to moderate amount of gaming is often an amazingly positive experience. Video games challenge you, they engage your mind and imagination, and they are immensely fun. There of course is a dark side to gaming. Overindulgence and addiction can have terrible consequences. What was fun and immersive for a while turns into obsessive and manic. In my life games have played both an extremely positive and extremely detrimental role. Growing up, games were my inspiration toward programming, they were my motivation to learn mathematics, science, art. Some of my fondest memories are in gaming: playing Doom 2 on a snow day, playing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance with my wife as she smashes every barrel in the game, and getting a job at Riot and playing LoL in the PC Bang with hordes of other gamers. Video games have also played a darker role. Obsessing over Warcraft III for 16 hours a day, trying to make it as a "pro" gamer, living off ramen and cream of wheat for months on end, losing friendships to gaming.

Trying to decide which path to take, an interesting question we came up with was, "What would we rather succeed at?" We both felt that our personalities better suited the Indie Game developer role.  It was easier to picture myself explaining my business strategy with a giant nerf gun than with productivity graphs.

Time to go make a game!