After eight arduous years trying to learn the craft of gamemaking, our work finally began to gain traction. One of our games was featured in Newgrounds and was positively reviewed by a game critic at Jay Is Games. Another game won an award from the Philippine Game Festival. We even had a European publisher to back us up.
But we took on too much too soon. Our expectations regarding cash flow were too high and having a team working from distant islands didn’t help either. We hung on as long as we could, but our studio simply disintegrated.
It was terrible to crash like that after barely taking off. I lost all desire to do anything with video games. My self-confidence had disintegrated with the studio.
Several months passed and chatter about Casual Connect Singapore 2015 began building up. A fellow game dev I look up to, Bari Silvestre, encouraged me to submit a lecture for the event. I was reluctant at first - I really thought I had nothing important to say. But I took the time to think about it and realized that it was a good opportunity to gather everything I’ve learned over the years into a coherent picture. I proposed a lecture on how new game mechanics can be created by transforming old game ideas. I drafted an outline and emailed it to Casual Connect, not expecting much to come of it.
To my surprise, they liked the outline and put me on the roster of lecturers alongside legit CEOs and game dev rock stars. Then the panic sat in. Would people find what I say worthwhile? I had to fight the impulse to back out. As the fateful date loomed nearer, that impulse only became more and more irresistible.
Seeing myself in others
What made me stand firm was all the cute girls I would get to meet the thought that what I was about to say was rooted in my experience. If it would steer even a single, fledgling game developer to attempt the unattempted, it would be worthwhile - so I forged ahead. I didn’t sleep properly for days until I delivered the speech. In the end, I was able to say what I wanted and received good feedback from the organizers and people in the audience.
What was most gratifying for me happened after the lecture: A young game dev from Malaysia approached me asking for a meeting. He had just become a father and was throwing all he had into building an ambitious fighting game. He needed advice on how to best move forward. I saw so much of myself in him! We went over to Bari, who has more experience than I do, and we spent most of the morning talking.
Listening to other lecturers, talking to fellow devs, and especially walking around the Indie Prize Showcase gradually resurrected my desire to make games. I no longer felt alone. I saw myself in every dev I met. We were struggling against the same problems, moved by the same dreams, and, most inspiring of all, I saw that legends like Aun Taraseina of Unblock Me fame were flesh and blood too.
Shortly after I returned home, I was invited to write for Casual Connect Magazine and submit a lecture for Casual Connect San Francisco. Unfortunately, I had to decline because of pressing demands elsewhere. Soon after that, I was going back to my unfinished games and attacking them with new vigor. I yearned to be at the next Casual Connect - this time as an Indie Prize Scholar.
Inside Indie Prize
I was lucky to stumble upon an artist and animator online whose work I had been admiring for years. His nom de guerre is Kokgini and he lives in Indonesia. Both of us couldn’t imagine ourselves making a living with something outside of game development. We both happened to be looking for collaborators and hit it off. We worked like demons for weeks to have a game ready for Indie Prize Tel Aviv.
Submitting a game felt daunting. The explosion of game devs around the world means Indie Prize has become very competitive. The last time I looked closely at the numbers, for Indie Prize Amsterdam, there were 400 teams vying for a slot. There was always this gnawing fear: Perhaps I was overestimating my chances when, in fact, I am not good enough yet.
The deadline was fast approaching. Right before we were about to miss it, we clicked “submit.” There was nothing left to do now but chill, so chill I did - if by “chilling” you mean “tumbling up and down the five stages of grief.”
Finally, the dreaded email came. “Congratulations! Your game Rancho Ranch has been accepted into the Indie Prize Showcase at Casual Connect Tel Aviv!” I had to refresh the browser a few times to be sure it wasn’t a freak accident. It was not. Days later, I received another message from Casual Connect inviting me to give a talk for the design and development track.
One Tribe
Five airports and five times as many selfies later, I found myself in Tel Aviv. The conference was at the grandiose Habima National Theatre complex. I counted five bars. Unlimited drinks flowed from all of them (literally, a land of milk and honey… and espresso… and beer, wine and sparkling water.
More than 50 teams coming from all over the world made it as Indie Prize scholars. The sound of a dozen languages filled the air - perhaps more. But it all felt like one tribe. We were one in our insistence on continuing to create joy in a world permeated by tragedy.
What I enjoyed most in the Indie Prize Showcase was feedback from fellow game designers. My ears glowed brighter than an AMOLED display when I was repeatedly told by my peers that they hadn’t seen our game mechanic before and that they liked it. Maybe they were just being nice. I was dumbstruck as well by many of the young talents, like the OVIVO team from Russia. They had already won at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup and DevGAMM Berlin before coming to Tel Aviv. Their game appeared to me as a masterful synthesis of Sonic the Hedgehog and Shift - and they were barely out of college.
In my lecture, I reflected on the reasons why I stuck with game dev all these years. Preparation was accompanied by a healthy combination of insomnia and jetlag with generous helpings of panic here and there. My ceaseless pacing on the hostel’s balcony during the ungodly hours of the night and morning probably freaked out some people. Yet, by and large, the lecture went okay.
It climaxed with the story of how we joined the Benilde Prize with an entry called the Bamboard Game Project which harnesses game design to fight the dropout crisis in education. When I finished, two Americans approached the stage and offered to help introduce the Bamboard to an American school in Manila. There also happened to be an Israeli math teacher in the audience who was making her own educational game. It was very enlightening to compare notes with her afterwards.
On the last day of Casual Connect Tel Aviv an Indie Prize scholar from Ukraine asked – as much to herself as it was to me – if it has been worth it. I didn’t get a satisfactory answer for myself until my plane left the ground of Tel Aviv to soar up the midnight sky: Getting involved in Casual Connect has, true to its name, connected the dots for me. I met kindred souls. I found amazing collaborators. I partnered with respected publishers. It enabled me to think deeply of the craft, of the why of it. And in so doing pick myself up from the wreckage of a year ago, reconstitute my self-confidence, and reaffirm once more that a life dedicated to gamemaking is a life worth living.
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