Farewell 2015! Two short stories and new challenges
The year 2015 is already gone and it left me a lot of experiences and memories.
On a personal level, it was mainly about our baby daughter, Sami, who was born by the end of 2014. It was a pretty fun year, having both my 4 years old kid and the baby growing quickly while trying to imitate everything that the older brother did. I really enjoyed paternity during 2015, among a party of diapers, bottles and some not so nice midnight wake ups.
On the professional side, it was also an amazing year because I was fortunate to be part of the teams that developed the latest two Behaviour Chile great games. The first game quickly became one of the most successful games of the year, and we were super proud when all the specialized press was speaking and writing about it.
The second game, Snoopy’s Grand Adventure, also received pretty nice reviews. The team worked very carefully with this beloved license, paying a lot of attention to details, especially on the characters, and many critics and users appreciated that. It’s also worth noting that the game was developed simultaneously for five platform, which was no less challenging.
And just to make things nicer, just a few days ago the annual Video Games Chile Awards ceremony was held, in which local companies that are part of the local Videogame Developer Association (official Videogames Chile website) voted for the best Chilean games in 2015. On the occasion our two games received many compliments and, even better, three awards, putting the icing on the cake to a great year for the company (more details about the awards, in Spanish).
Every project, every challenge, every milestone, every memory, can give us something: a small lesson, a clever idea, a new challenge or just a precious memory.
During 2015, I wrote a lot of those stories here at Papa Game Dev, but there were two anecdotes which I did not had the chance to tell and I feel it’s worth sharing them before I forget.
An unexpected finding
At the beginning of 1998 (when I was half my current age) I worked in one of my favorite personal projects. It was called JPacman (JP + Pacman), my own version of the classic Pacman for PC. The game took the main design essence from the version I played several years before on the Atari, and I also added some innovative touches that were actually pretty fun.
Why did I make a Pacman? It’s true that developing own versions of popular games is a nice challenge and also a good exercise for those who are learning.
But on this particular occasion, my main goal was to make a gift to my mother, a tremendous fan of Pacman. My mother was one of those people who stayed all night playing Atari Pacman while all of us were sleeping.
Developing JPacman meant a lot of work for several months. During that period, I made all the code, art and music of the game, but it was totally worth the effort: not only my mom enjoyed the game, but all my brothers and even my dad spent several hours playing and competing for the high scores.
As I was very proud of what I had made, I backed up both the source code and the binary package. At a time when there was no (easy) access to cloud storage, the reasonable alternative was to use CDs, and I remember that I recorded several CDs with this and other projects.
But then life took its course, I moved a couple of times to another place, the kids were born, and my job and other events made me forget about those CDs. Some years ago I actually remembered those projects but I had no luck finding them and I finally realized that I had lost them. I felt sad and a bit angry at myself for being so careless with something that meant a lot to me.
But it’s true what they say:
“The best way to find something is to stop looking for it”
A couple of months ago, when 2015 was about to end, one of my brothers remembered a melody that I transcribed around the same time I developed JPacman. After we talked, I kept thinking that at the end of the 90s I recorded a lot of discs with .MP3 music. I downloaded the tunes with Napster or similar apps, and then I recorded them on CDs because they filled my hard drive.
I knew I had recorded many discs and that I had put them together on a big case that helped me bringing the music to my friend’s place. I did remember where that case was, so I looked for it with the intention of listening that old melody, knowing it would bring a lot of memories and nostalgia.
But then something unexpected happened. The case did not only contain the music discs, but also the backup CDs with all the projects I had already given up on!
The first thing I did after the unexpected finding was to test JPacman and check if it could still be played. It worked!
Just after that, I backed up all the projects on a cloud server because of course I did not want to lose them again.
And then I started checking the JPacman project source code. I remembered that I did it in C++ language and I realized that it was quite messy (I was only 18!) and that all the project files were set up to use tools that got outdated 15 years ago.
So I made a decision and I set a new challenge: I will revive JPacman. During this year, I will try to publish a version for mobile or PC or at least I’ll share it in Papa Game Dev. It will be a good exercise and, perhaps, I will be able to give my mom another fun gift.
A very enriching trip
In November 2015 I participated in two events that I was invited some months before. The invitation was to attend Unite Brazil (website) and SB Games (website), both in Teresina, in northeastern Brazil.
Leaving aside the unbearable heat in Teresina (38°C in the shade!), the trip was a very fun and enriching experience.
First, I discovered that SB Games was a lot bigger than I expected, and I had to do my presentation in front of a larger audience than I was used to. It was a little intimidating, but I felt it allowed me to grow and fortunately everything went well.
In addition, throughout my stay the people were incredibly warm and attentive. I always had an invitations to go to lunch or to meet local developers together with the other international guests who had attended to give talks. And it was exactly in one of those dinners that I heard a story that caught my attention.
When Brazil lost 7-1 in the Football (Soccer) World Cup in 2014, it caused a worldwide stir. They are still the only penta-champions and, although their team was not playing at its best, no one ever imagined that it would be possible to make them seven goals in a game, especially if they were playing at home.
The day after the game, we learned at Behaviour of a videogame that was getting viral on social networks, in which one could revive the German victory and score seven goals to Brazil. During the following days, a lot of those mocking games appeared and, considering the magnitude of what had happened, it was not surprising at all.
However, that night I learned that one of those games had been developed in Brazil by a small team who was actually sitting just in front of me while laughing about the story.
The boys built the game very quickly after the match because they felt that what had just happened was absurd and they wanted to laugh at the situation. They proudly recounted that they began to share the game on social networks and that it quickly became viral. They got interviewed by Brazilian television and the whole thing turned into an important milestone in their career.
I found it remarkable, not only for their humor and their ability to laugh at themselves, but also because the story made me think about how important it is to watch for opportunities and not let them pass.
So I decided to add a new goal for myself: during this year I will try to be more open to opportunities and take more advantage of them. It’s good to remember that, sometimes, the most successful projects are not the ones that are planned for months and follow the “safe” path, but the ones that are made with passion, taking some risks and leveraging unique opportunities.
Papa Game Dev in 2015
Writing Papa Game Dev has been a tremendous adventure.
Since the first article was published on March 2015, I have published 16 articles, an interview and a game review. I changed the site design a couple of times, I launched this English version and I tried, as much as I could, to keep all the social networks accounts active.
I was definitely not able to keep a decent posts pacing and I also failed to finish several articles that were kind of time sensitive because they were related to some event that was going to happen on a certain date.
But what really matters to me is that I believe that my main objective with this website was accomplished and I enjoyed it so much: to share my own experiences and thoughts about parenting and videogames, and to invite others to share theirs. I am very happy and grateful to those who have shown me their support and contributed to the conversation.
2016 is here and I’m sure it will be full of good challenges and nice opportunities for everyone. I wish you all the best success!
Farewell 2015! Welcome 2016!
Juan Pablo makes videogames since he was 8 and he is a father since 2004. Today, he has three children and he has worked in more than 20 videogames. He got interested on how paternity and the videogame industry are related and he decided to write about it, founding "Papa Game Dev".
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