Gaming The Rise of the Hobby Developer

Developers around the world have submitted over 61,000 games made in Game Maker to the YoYo Games site since 2007. The rate at which they are being submitted is that, when I started writing and researching this article, it was closer to 60,900. A new game is submitted every 20 minutes....

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/gaming/2011/03/18/the-rise-of-the-hobby-developer/

 

I think the widespread of internet in general has helped this because you can get the tools for making a game (legally or otherwise) and you can get help from countless of programming communities that are out there if you're stuck somewhere.

Nice article, sorta boosted my confidence to think more about an idea I had. Still a long way till i try and learn C, lol.

 

I'd class myself as a hobby developer but I'm still on the C++ path to making a game although admittedly I am using a graphics/physics engine so that's a lot of coding I don't need to worry about. That's also another thing in favour of hobby development today, UDK and the Crysis engine are both free to use providing you're not making any money from your game and stuff like Ogre3D and (until recently) Torque means that first-time devs don't have to worry about all the complicated stuff and can jump right into what makes a game a game.

 

I code with DarkBASIC Professional, which can be found at The Game Creators website;

www.thegamecreators.com

Pretty fun stuff.

 

I have been in the process of making a game for some time i still think i'm 3 months off completion (Minimum) will be hoping that i sell a few copies but really hoping to Learn more than anything

 

Most of the things I make are not really polished enough for public consumption...

That said, we (my two-man games-development team...) did release a little design pretentiousness a few months back. We released a 1D game on TIGSource called LINE (linky)

As part of a separate team, I was working on a neat exploration and puzzle game called Cosmic Roots. Due to a falling out with our main engine programmer it was never taken to completion, but we did get a trailer up (linky)

I wouldn't really classify myself as a hobby developer as I am a trained programmer and designer. I just don't work in those streams and I make things on the side, the other part of my team works in software development though, so we perhaps have a leg up...

Laz

 

Does anyone else miss the days of the Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit? And later Klik & Play, and The Games Factory?

Good times.

 

AMOS