Filling the Gap

What's missing?

As I approach the end of my degree and prepare to venture out into the world of professional game development, I have had the opportunity to review my portfolio and evaluate what employers are looking for. Finding out which skills I possess and those that I need to attain. Looking at my portfolio and the requirements for work in my industry, I narrowed down the skills that I think are most important. The aspects key to pursuing jobs in the game development industry that I am currently lacking experience in is mobile development and the publishing of a game.

Why mobile development?

Mobile Gaming made up 57% of global video games revenue in 2020 and is forecast to be worth a whopping $272b by 2030. Whilst a lot of the growth in 2020 is attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic, the trend of mobile gaming had been steadily growing over the past decade. Given this growth its not surprising that many employers are seeking developers who have experience developing for mobile games.

Why publishing a game?

Why publishing a game, well arguably the most important step in creating a game is getting it in the hands of players. To get it into the hands of your players is to publish the game, putting it out there and making it available to people. No matter how perfect the game may be, if it remains solely on my hard drive, it is worth nothing to the public at large. So far, I have not done much to get my games out there, I have posted a couple of my prototypes to Itch.io but never really released anything with the intent of getting eyes on it. Looking at job ads, many of them have stated that they’d like developers who have had experience publishing/shipping a game. Getting a game to a point where it is ready to be published is important, going through the full lifecycle of game development.

By releasing a mobile game on the google play store I will gain experience in both the developing of a mobile game as well as experience in marketing and publishing.

The Solution

So, what am I going to do to help bridge this gap in my experience? I am going to make a mobile game and try and get it on the Google Play Store.

Project: Luxo’s Return

Luxo’s Return will revisit one of my previous projects Luxo’s Horde and will expand upon it and turn it from a small prototype into a self-contained mobile game. The player will again play as Luxo, the dragon, while he defends his lair from pesky ‘adventurers’ who seek his treasure. The goal of the game will be to stop as many adventurers as possible from stealing his treasures. The game will be an endless casual shooter, with the player gaining points based on time, and by completing special goals. The game ends when Luxo has run out of treasure, or the player quits.

I plan to develop this game in Unity, utilising GitHub for source control, and Trello for project management. I also plan to publish Luxo’s Return to the Google Play Store as well as Itch.io. Down the line I hope to also publish this to the Apple App store. Additionally, I would like to dip my hand into marketing a little for this project and produce a professional looking trailer, and other promotional materials as a press kit for the game.

Given that I will have about 8 weeks for this project, I have chosen to revisit Luxo’s Horde as I think that expanding on an idea rather than coming up with one from scratch will help keep the project on schedule for the goal of publishing this game.

Expanding Luxo’s Horde

In Luxo’s Horde the enemy NPCs had very basic behaviours. For Luxo’s Return I plan to further develop the behaviours of most of the NPCs. For instance, in Horde, Humans and Elves had very similar behaviours in that they would both just shoot arrows at Luxo, with Humans only shooting at Luxo from the position in which they spawned and Elves following Luxo’s Y position on screen. In Return, I plan to modify these behaviours so that, whilst still both ranged enemies, the Elves would have a more distinct behaviour making them harder enemy to deal with.

In Luxo’s Horde they player only gained points, and recovered treasure, for Luxo’s Return I plan to create buffs and boons that the player can gain by completing certain goals. These buffs and boons will be split into buffs being temporary advantages for the player and boons being permanent advantages that are able to be selected at the beginning of a round.

I would also like to integrate a leaderboard system utilising the Google play games system.

I plan to document my process for this project here on my portfolio and by including my Trello and GitHub for this project to help give insight into my development process and so that at the end of the project I can reflect and review my own process.

References

BUISNESS WIRE, 2021. Global Mobile Gaming Market Report 202: Worth $98 Billion in 2020, the Mobile Gaming Market is Forecast to Grow to $272 Billion by 2030 - ResearchAndMarkets.com. [online] Businesswire.com. Available at: <https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210625005180/en/Global-Mobile-Gaming-Market-Report-202-Worth-98-Billion-in-2020-the-Mobile-Gaming-Market-is-Forecast-to-Grow-to-272-Billion-by-2030---ResearchAndMarkets.com> Business of Apps. 2021. Mobile gaming industry statistics and trends for 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.businessofapps.com/insights/mobile-gaming-industry-statistics-and-trends-for-2021/> LinkedIn. 2021. Game Developer. [online] Available at: <https://au.linkedin.com/jobs/view/game-developer-at-royal-wins-cse-skll-2690314191?refId=IgJXkzn3DblCP%2FbVBNtm%2FA%3D%3D&trackingId=arQW9rZ3WhvmwD%2FBHnLHLA%3D%3D&position=2&pageNum=0&trk=public_jobs_jserp-result_search-card> SOFTWARE ENGINEERS / GAME PROGRAMMERS - CANADA CALLING! SEEK. 2021. Software Engineers / Game Programmers - Canada Calling!. [online] Available at: <https://www.seek.com.au/job/53527184?type=standout#searchRequestToken=55ee259c-0634-40c2-bc8f-96422d7db645> (OPEN CALL) UNITY GAME DEVELOPER (JNR./GRADUATE) LinkedIn, 2021. (Open Call) Unity Game Developer (Jnr./Graduate). [online] Available at: <https://au.linkedin.com/jobs/view/open-call-unity-game-developer-jnr-graduate-at-smg-studio-2661390502?refId=IgJXkzn3DblCP%2FbVBNtm%2FA%3D%3D&trackingId=P5%2BbJl2NdQ6UEcqj75Mnug%3D%3D&position=3&pageNum=0&trk=public_jobs_jserp-result_search-card>