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How developers turn their ideas into reality

Martine Spaans leads a panel on ideas and working with others

How developers turn their ideas into reality

At Pocket Gamer Connects London 2018, Tamalaki founder Martine Spaans led a panel of developers on "how to get ideas to happen".

Joining her were:

Creative Assembly lead technical artist Jodie Azhar;
Hello Games programmer Innes McKendrick, and;
Modern Dream founder Helana Santos.

"Almost every studio has an infinite number of ideas," said McKendrick, adding that it's a case of whittling down the ideas and working with the rest of the team to decide on the best possible idea or solution.

Azhar backed this up, noting that developers should break down their ideas into what the actual core idea is, and should be more self-analytical when developing their ideas.

Let it go

Santos also suggested the developers shouldn't hold too tightly to their ideas, and be open to working with others who may not like the initial idea, but can help to make it into something better.

As for actually prototyping an idea, McKendrick said that developers have to start work on an idea as early as possible and "see them through", even when the game is rough around the edges and might not be "fun" yet.

Santos also suggested that developers should get player feedback and use it to influence the design, but noted that "you have to interpret what the feedback is", as players don't always know exactly what they want.


Editor

Ric is the Editor of PocketGamer.biz, having started out as a Staff Writer on the site back in 2015. He received an honourable mention in both the MCV and Develop 30 Under 30 lists in 2016 and refuses to let anyone forget about it.