In the Casual Connect Europe 2015 conference, Vitaliy Zasadnyy and Sergii Grynets shared their mistakes and the problems they have faced and how they solved them as they built an MMO RPG game called Dragon’s Fall. They tried to develop the game without managers. Each person managed themselves. The problem with this is that even after several months of development, they found that they were stuck. Vitaliy related, “not everyone agreed on what we are doing and how we are doing because there was still discussions about should we do a real-time, fight, or step-by-step, should everything be in 2d or 3d, so that was a problem”. He further explained that the reason this structure did not work for them is they didn’t start from the ground up as others have done.
Vitaliy Zasadnyy, a game developer passionate about his work, has recently joined GetSocial, a company based in The Hague. This company offers developers a social platform that creates community and features chat, activity feeds, leader boards and more within their apps. For the previous two years, Vitaliy worked at Nravo, a game studio based in Lviv, Ukraine. Nravo had several very successful MMO text-based games; Vitaliy joined the recently created mobile department and later started leading it. At the end of his first year, they began a new project, Heim (Dragon’s Fall), a mobile 3D game that would bring the next generation experience to existing players from web games. His deep knowledge of native mobile development was a great advantage while working with Unity.
Vitaliy began his career as a freelance Android developer. He extended his career to game development almost by accident, although his interest in the work he does now began while he was at university getting his MS degree in Computer Science. When he was working at EPAM Systems, a huge outsource company, as backend Java developer, a good friend suggested joining a small game studio. He didn’t know a lot about the games industry and had never considered it as a career, but he was intrigued enough to make the leap, and he has no plans to leave.
An Industry With Infinite Space to Grow
He was inspired by the almost infinite space to grow within the industry and insists there are so many areas to improve his skills that if he became bored, for example with creating 2D games, he could start making something for virtual reality or switch to game development or marketing or business development. It is all within the scope of the games industry.
The aspects of his work he most enjoys are flexibility and the ability to see immediate results. He likes to see the results of his work as quickly as possible and to have an influence on his current project. He also appreciates the unique atmosphere of a game studio with fun meetings, challenging tasks and great people.
Begin With Research and Analysis
Vitaliy believes that any new game should start with detailed market research followed by analysis, sketches and detailed game design documents. Unfortunately, it is not always a case.
Ideally he would love to create something for VR; it is a totally unexplored area where so much that is interesting can be achieved.
Vitaliy has been faced with many difficult tasks involved in game development, from selecting the right team all the way to finishing the project within the release period. When the project runs into a creative block, particularly those with complex architectural solutions, they handle them with team brainstorming sessions. It is important for every logical part, such as Quest Engine or AI to participate.
Fortunately, there are also very rewarding aspects to a game development project, starting with feedback from play testers, and later from real players.
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One of the difficult challenges for Vitaliy came during the development of Heim. The team spent an enormous amount of time polishing and re-implementing the fight system. They began with a step by step fight taken from their web games but ended with totally different mechanics similar to those in Batman Arkam City and Blade Runner. They developed a successful fight system only after four iterations. In order to achieve more efficient results in the future, Vitaliy suggests creating functional prototypes and then play testing as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, Heim was not released. As Vitaliy says, “We, as a team, made too many mistakes to make it happen”. That is why he travels to various conferences and shares his experience: to prevent other teams from failing.
Players Want More and More Interaction with Friends
The most important trend he sees developing in the games industry is coming as players want more and more interaction with their friends within games. This is why there are now leaderboards, ratings, etc. in more and more games. And it is also the reason Vitaliy recently joined GetSocial.
For someone interested in a career in game development, he advises, “Play games, a lot of games!” To someone already in the industry this will seem obvious, although to those on the outside it may seem silly. But he insists, “This is no joke!”
When Vitaliy has free time he chooses to go to the gym or to play Ultimate Frisbee, but he maintains this is about lifestyle, not a hobby. His hobby is actually community management. He is a founder of Google Developers Group Lviv, one of the most active groups in the Ukraine. Also, his team from Nravo founded the first Unity group in the Ukraine. He believes the games industry, in every aspect from mobile to game development, will grow much faster if everyone shares their experiences.
