Working on an iOS (and hopefully Android) game based on the dual n-back task. I’m about a week and a half in and I’m still evaluating frameworks, but over the last 3 days I’ve built a working proof of concept in the Sparrow Framework which is iOS only. Over the next few days I’m going to port the proof of concept to cocos2d-x and make a final determination on technology by the end of the week.
PM me if you’re interested in beta testing. I expect to have a playable and hopefully fun prototype (about 75% feature-complete) in about 3 weeks.
For some context, this is not an idle side project: I recently quit my job at a large game company to pursue this project, and I have several years’ experience in the industry. I will be working solo and full-time on the game at least for the next 3-4 months, which is about how long I expect development to take to the point of completion. I plan on outsourcing the music — if you have any suggestions in this area, suggest away! I am well aware of the planning fallacy and Hofstadter’s law, so feel free to take my estimates with a grain of salt, but please note that I do have experience estimating the cost of software projects and I think I am reasonably well-calibrated in this area.
Also, this is not just another Jaeggi or Brain Workshop clone; I am aiming for super-tight gameplay and mainstream appeal.
I currently working for a large game company, and while I have no plans of leaving, I feel as if at some point I would like to branch off and work on a more self-motivated project.
The cost analysis of this isn’t easy for me. My position in the game industry is somewhat atypical; I joined one of the most promising teams in the world directly out of college, and have since done good work on our recently released project. From within the studio, advice on where to direct my career seems pretty risk adverse. We have high paying, extremely stable jobs which aren’t guaranteed to be reclaimable if we exit, and with rewards becoming more lucrative the longer we stay. Two questions for you then:
Why did you recently quit your job? Is you main motivation along the lines of expectations of future earnings, a satisfaction in the intellectual worth of projects you choose to work on, or satisfaction in the worth of your product to others?
Where would you have ranked yourself in terms of your success in the large-scale game industry? I have a hard time comparing my situation to others, because as mentioned I feel as though my case is atypical and thus with potential for more higher payoffs if I choose rightly with my future. Having worked only a year and the half in the industry, I will be giving a talk at GDC this year about work done on our last AAA console title, which seems on the surface like something to make that case, although I recognize the major risk of self-aggrandizement here.
Your situation does seem unusual, so you’ll have to do your own research and analysis. Speaking for myself, I am not strongly motivated by money beyond the amount required to support my standard of living, plus a healthy amount of buffer. Instead I have been motivated more and more by novelty and the opportunity to learn: by, in a word, curiosity (which is one of the 12 virtues of rationality, dontcha know ;) ). It also helps to be working on something I care about, have control over, etc. And I see this as a stepping stone towards projects that might have a larger positive impact. If you are attempting to maximize your income, you may want to stay with your current gig, but your terminal values are yours to decide.
Seattle, although I will of course be in San Francisco for GDC in late March.
I’m not yet sure what my goals are, although savings is a big one. If I knew I was going to be in the game, and even software industry forever, it might not be, but I’ve always wondered if I might not want to have the money to allow me to feel secure in later supporting myself if I chose something new that payed very little.
Also, I recently started a blog, which is dual-purpose. The secondary purpose is to document my progress in building the game, which I haven’t done yet (there’s a mobile game frameworks post coming up).
The primary purpose is to give me a place (and hopefully a reward structure) for writing about ideas that I think are worth taking seriously, including LW-related concepts. Part of the reason for this is that my peers, while for the most part smart and capable, are generally unwilling to read and engage with the articles on this site; the inferential distance is too large. So I am trying to write about these ideas in a way that can be understood by an intelligent person who hasn’t read the sequences. The first and so far only post is in this vein.
I am finding that blogging is rather more difficult than writing software, and, for that reason and others, I am less certain of the success of the blog than of the game.
Working on an iOS (and hopefully Android) game based on the dual n-back task. I’m about a week and a half in and I’m still evaluating frameworks, but over the last 3 days I’ve built a working proof of concept in the Sparrow Framework which is iOS only. Over the next few days I’m going to port the proof of concept to cocos2d-x and make a final determination on technology by the end of the week.
PM me if you’re interested in beta testing. I expect to have a playable and hopefully fun prototype (about 75% feature-complete) in about 3 weeks.
For some context, this is not an idle side project: I recently quit my job at a large game company to pursue this project, and I have several years’ experience in the industry. I will be working solo and full-time on the game at least for the next 3-4 months, which is about how long I expect development to take to the point of completion. I plan on outsourcing the music — if you have any suggestions in this area, suggest away! I am well aware of the planning fallacy and Hofstadter’s law, so feel free to take my estimates with a grain of salt, but please note that I do have experience estimating the cost of software projects and I think I am reasonably well-calibrated in this area.
Also, this is not just another Jaeggi or Brain Workshop clone; I am aiming for super-tight gameplay and mainstream appeal.
I currently working for a large game company, and while I have no plans of leaving, I feel as if at some point I would like to branch off and work on a more self-motivated project.
The cost analysis of this isn’t easy for me. My position in the game industry is somewhat atypical; I joined one of the most promising teams in the world directly out of college, and have since done good work on our recently released project. From within the studio, advice on where to direct my career seems pretty risk adverse. We have high paying, extremely stable jobs which aren’t guaranteed to be reclaimable if we exit, and with rewards becoming more lucrative the longer we stay. Two questions for you then:
Why did you recently quit your job? Is you main motivation along the lines of expectations of future earnings, a satisfaction in the intellectual worth of projects you choose to work on, or satisfaction in the worth of your product to others?
Where would you have ranked yourself in terms of your success in the large-scale game industry? I have a hard time comparing my situation to others, because as mentioned I feel as though my case is atypical and thus with potential for more higher payoffs if I choose rightly with my future. Having worked only a year and the half in the industry, I will be giving a talk at GDC this year about work done on our last AAA console title, which seems on the surface like something to make that case, although I recognize the major risk of self-aggrandizement here.
What city do you live in, if I may ask?
Your situation does seem unusual, so you’ll have to do your own research and analysis. Speaking for myself, I am not strongly motivated by money beyond the amount required to support my standard of living, plus a healthy amount of buffer. Instead I have been motivated more and more by novelty and the opportunity to learn: by, in a word, curiosity (which is one of the 12 virtues of rationality, dontcha know ;) ). It also helps to be working on something I care about, have control over, etc. And I see this as a stepping stone towards projects that might have a larger positive impact. If you are attempting to maximize your income, you may want to stay with your current gig, but your terminal values are yours to decide.
I live in San Francisco. You?
Seattle, although I will of course be in San Francisco for GDC in late March.
I’m not yet sure what my goals are, although savings is a big one. If I knew I was going to be in the game, and even software industry forever, it might not be, but I’ve always wondered if I might not want to have the money to allow me to feel secure in later supporting myself if I chose something new that payed very little.
Also, I recently started a blog, which is dual-purpose. The secondary purpose is to document my progress in building the game, which I haven’t done yet (there’s a mobile game frameworks post coming up).
The primary purpose is to give me a place (and hopefully a reward structure) for writing about ideas that I think are worth taking seriously, including LW-related concepts. Part of the reason for this is that my peers, while for the most part smart and capable, are generally unwilling to read and engage with the articles on this site; the inferential distance is too large. So I am trying to write about these ideas in a way that can be understood by an intelligent person who hasn’t read the sequences. The first and so far only post is in this vein.
I am finding that blogging is rather more difficult than writing software, and, for that reason and others, I am less certain of the success of the blog than of the game.