Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Tim Wicksteed from Twice Circled answers our five question blog feature.
1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?
My earliest memory of playing video games was sitting around with my brothers, playing the demo discs that came with my Dad's Atari ST magazine. Seeing our fascination, and being a programmer himself, my Dad showed us how you could create a simple platformer using code. It was like magic! And that was that, I was hooked, from that young age.
The most exciting thing about the games industry today is that is feels like such an open playing field. There's such a diverse range of gaming tastes out there that there's room for games of every shape and size. There are amazingly affordable development tools and the route to the consumer has never been more direct, both in a promotional sense (YouTube, Twitch) as well as a technical one (Humble Widget, Steam Direct). But of course there's a catch; there are also more games and developers than ever before. It's both inspiring and terrifying, we all have the power to succeed but there's no-one to blame if we fail.
I have very fond memories of my first visit to Develop: Brighton. I was still early on in my career and I was lucky enough to be invited to a couple of developer dinners by some friends of mine. It was daunting to hear that all these much more experienced developers were struggling with all the same things that I was at the time: discoverability, funding etc. But it was also reassuring that there wasn't some magic trick that I was missing due to my relative inexperience. The industry is constantly reinventing itself and in that flux there are opportunities for established players and new developers alike.
I'd love to meet Finn Brice from Chucklefish (or perhaps their technical lead Catherine West) and talk deep, down, technical stuff. I'm amazed by the technical feat achieved by Starboundso it would be great to just geek out and learn how it was made.
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| Indie developer Tim Wicksteed (@TwiceCircled) runs Bristol based, one man game studio Twice Circled. He's the creator of pharmaceutical company simulator Big Pharma and was recently announced as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit 2016. |
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