By Zarrar Chishti

1. Starting Big!

Create a series of small fun games.

Take the game concept you have and literally scale it down so that it would take you no more than 2-3 weeks to develop. If you cannot scale it down to that timeframe I would suggest you shelve that game idea for now and think of another one.

Depending on how much time you are spending on learning game development, you should be looking to have developed 5 small games in your first 3 months.

I guarantee the amount of pleasure you will get from developing these tiny games will far outweigh the anxiety you will experience from tackling your first big game head on.

Have fun and don’t worry about becoming viral and attracting publishers until after your first quarter at least.

2. Buying the latest tech and software

Firstly you do not need to race out and purchase a tear inducing expensive machine to code in. Whatever you have is fine. Whether it be a 10 year old Mac or a 15 year old PC. If it switches on then we are ready to develop.

Moving on, there is no need to purchase the latest “all in one”, “every major game developer uses” IDE (integrated development environment). Although there are several free edition ones, you will find that to use them you will need to upgrade your existing computer.

In my book “Crossover to HTML5 Game Development” I list a few of the latest IDE’s and then go on to tell the reader that you can simply use notepad (or TextEdit if you are using a Mac). In fact I used notepad whilst developing the game, “Space Zombies” for my book.

Finally you do not need to go out and buy several phones and tablets so you can test your game on them. Since you are developing an online game there are several excellent websites that you can use to test your game [1] and even check it’s performance [2].

3. Doing it all yourself

Game development involves several specialist areas that all require equal skilled attention.

Don’t try and do them all yourself. Seriously. Don’t.

Initially you can tackle the first important area. The actual game concept.

However as your start creating your game engine you will start to need specialist graphics and fast flowing animation.

Unless you are that rare developer who can draw as well as code – don’t fire up Illustrator!

After this you are going to need the help of other specialists; sounds & music, marketing & PR and finally a business mind to take care of the monetization and general legal work.

So how can this be achieved without spending a lot of money for all this expertise?

Collaborate.

Find like-minded experts in the other fields and see if they share your passion for your game.

Build a team of experts. Build your team of experts.

This is what I did many years ago and now I am lucky to have so many talented experts who allow me to take on and streamline multiple game projects simultaneously.  

^{References
1.      Mobile Test, “Test your websites in smartphones and tablets” http://mobiletest.me/
2.      Mobi Ready, “A free tool for developers, designers and marketers to test website performance on mobile devices” https://ready.mobi/}

About the Author

Zarrar Chishti is a software and games development consultant with over 500 games developed for companies around the world. He is sought after to advise on the development of viral games for major marketing campaigns. His consultancy and development firm serve prestigious companies such as Turner Media, British Airways, and Channel 4.  His work can involve him in liaising with marketing directors for new launches and project managing teams of game developers and designers for large scale development projects. He is also involved in organizing and running game development courses and events. During the last five years Zarrar has also helped train developers to crossover and become software game developers. Most of the trainees go on to either work for Zarrar or gain programming jobs in the ever expanding game development community of Scotland.

Want more from Zarrar? Check out his book, Cross Over to HTML5 Game Development.