So it begins...

Ruud April 29, 2015 2 Comments

In less than 2 months I will free up my time to focus on mobile game development.
It seemed like a good idea to keep track of my progress and share the experience through this blog.

What’s the story behind this?

I’ve been a professional web developer for the past 14 years, working as a contractor for the last 4 years while co-founding & managing ParTech IT and Bulgabit.
During those years I’ve worked with a range of technologies, but my expertise lies in .NET and I specialize in Sitecore implementations.
Even though I love my job and I never really go to work against my will, I have always dreamed of developing games instead of doing “real” work; no one telling me what to do, just me working on my own ideas.
There has been this voice in my head for quite some time telling me “I wish I could spend my time developing games”… but who has time for that?
I’m spending more than a full-time work week on contracts and management tasks leaving no spare time (or will) to spend on game development.

Then one day it hit me; It will stay a dream forever if I don’t put aside everything else and just go for it. If I don’t set aside my work I will still have this voice in my head in 10 years only now it’s telling me “what if…”.
So I decided to finish the contract I’m currently working on and then spend my time on developing mobile games!

What’s the plan?

Putting aside everything is not realistic when you have a company with employees, so I have reserved 30 hours a week for game development.
The plan is to give myself 4 months to build at least 5 games that run on both iOS and Android and to build a user base with them.
Those first games will be technically simple, but very fun to play!

That’s generally the plan for now (aside from the more detailed ideas for those 4 months).
How it will continue from there on is still open and depends on how things work out.

What’s the goal?

The main goal is to have fun creating these games and having the freedom of making my own decisions while doing so.
I realize that, in order to keep doing this, I will need to monetize the games but that is not the main goal here and that’s also not the expectation.
Best case scenario is that I’m able to make some money with the games and can continue to build them, worst case is that I will have loads of fun for 4 months and gain a lot of experience; seems like a good deal to me!

What’s next?

I’m currently making the necessary preparations to get started, one of them being setting up this website.
During the 4 months I’ll do my best to regularly update the blog with my progress.
It will mostly be technical, but I’ll also share general information about the games and the development of Rumar Gaming as a company.

If you would like to receive a notification when my first game is available you can subscribe here.
You will only get mail if a new game is released or available for testing, never any spam!

I’ve also set up a Twitter account for quick updates.
You can follow me at @rumargaming