Dave Gilbert’s gamedev blog

So I looked at my calendar today, and I noticed that it’s been roughly one year since The Shivah was released commercially. I suppose it’s a good a time as any to break my “no angst” rule and get all maudlin on What It All Means or How This All Got Started. I have no idea what it all means, but I can certainly give you a bit of a retrospective on how it started.

The summer of 2006 was a weird one. I had just returned from living in Asia for a year, my apartment was still being rented out and I was shacking up with my parents. My dad had retired, and I felt really lame hanging out with them all day when I didn’t have a job. So every morning I packed up my laptop and went to a local wifi-enabled coffee shop (a lovely place called Cima, since gone out of business) and worked on writing a game.

It was a bit crazy, and totally messed up, but I treated it like a job. I’d get up at 8, do my morning routine and be sitting in the coffee shop at 9. I’d break for lunch around noon, and try to keep going until 5. In this way, I could delude myself into thinking that I was actually working. I did this for a month, The freeware Shivah was the end result.

After that, I realized that I loved making games too much to even think about doing anything else. I tried finding jobs in the industry, but I didn’t have any real experience so that wasn’t going to happen. Besides, I didn’t want to work for anybody else. I wanted to make my own games and sell them. To do this, I needed two things. First, I needed to actually make a game. Second, I needed to learn more about the industry.

First step, make a game and sell it. The Shivah seemed like the best place to start. I decided to enhance it with professional music, voice acting and animations and then try my hand at marketing and selling, simply as an exercise. I knew I’d make mistakes along the way, but this was just going to be a training ground for me. I put a team together and went to work.

Making the game was only half of it. I knew nothing about the industry as a whole, and didn’t know anyone I could talk to. So, I decided to take a class. I sniffed around Google and discovered a Game Development course at the New School for a mere $200. Interestingly enough it was starting the next week. So I signed up.

The class, I admit, didn’t teach me anything new. However, it DID give me my first glimpse into what life in the industry could be like. Here were adults, my age, who still played videogames and were interested in making them. For the first time in my life, I was able to talk about videogames and development with real live people.

Through the class, I got involved with the NYC chapter of the International Game Developer Association (IGDA). I latched onto anyone who seemed interesting and would talk their ear off. To my surprise, they seemed very interested in what I was doing and eventually I was encouraged to present The Shivah at their Demo Night event. To my trepidation, I did so. It was a nerve-wrecking experience, but the overwhelmingly positive reception I received made me feel like I had arrived home at last.

So, it’s a year and almost two games later. People still seem to like my games, and I still seem to like making them. In the past year, my studio was nominated for a Choice Award, I became heavily involved in the NYC IGDA scene, childhood heros of mine (Brian Moriarty and Tim Schafer, to name a few) have acknowledged my work, and my parents have actually become interested in videogames (which is something I consider a personal triumph).

I’m a lot poorer than I used to be, and it’s been very difficult at times, but I can’t deny that I’m a heck of a lot happier. It’s not a bad life, as lives go.

Angst mode OFF. Bleh. Gotta get rid of that angsty aftertaste. Here’s an old picture of me with pens stuck up my ears.