Seeking Advice

A big mistake made by first time independent games developers is thay often seek advice from the wrong sources. What you have to use is a bit of common sence, and do thourgh research before contacting other developers.

Why did I write developes in italics?

Anyone who knows the basics of scripting languages can start building a game, and anyone who can read and follow a tutorial can start modding an existing game. What this means is ANYONE can call themselves a game developer. That is the beauty of being an independent artist; whether its in Music, Film, Litriture or Games Development, anyone with the creative urge to express them self can do so.

That being said, you dont just become a famous Hollywood filmmaker, you study film, go to university, make a pile of really bad short films to try and get noticed and eventuality someone may notice your work and get you to work with them on there project. If you want something (this applies to anything), then you have to be prepared to work for it.

This is where seeking advice from professionals gets complicated--they got to where they are by hard work, and there not going to cheapen there industry by giving there secrets away to any fly by night script-kiddy. But, there is a flip side to that; they know how hard it is to get started in the games industry so some of them will be more than happy to answer your questions--provided you ask the right questions.

Dont ask the same questions that they get asked a million times a day, to be sure your not asking the wrong questions have a look on there site--if they have a FAQ, then read it, and dont ask them any questions that are already on the FAQ. Common sense.

Other than the right questions, you need to ask the right people. Asking a washed up dinosaur from the machine code era questions about Lightwave is not going to get you anywhere. And asking a Lightwave designer about your coding problems is not going to result in many solutions either.

You should know what questions can be answered by what professionals, and what questions can be answered by the non-profesional community--IE; other indipendant developers like yourselvs.

You can also seek advice from professionals outside the games industry, but I will talk about that in detail in another post.