Many gamers have wondered about creating their own game, but few actually get the opportunity to pursue that dream. However, some people gather enough time, energy, and resources to make that dream a reality. One such person is Sabar Banks, who, with the help of his brother and a high school alumni, created Storm Blocks, a game available on Android and iOS. Calling themselves Loadscreen Games, the group was able to put out the game with about four and a half months of hard work. While Interviewing Banks,who was the sole programmer of the project, he revealed to me that even when creating a mobile, digitized game, there are many real-life, emotional challenges that come with developing a game.
"I would say that it wasn't hard coming up with ideas and then implementing them, the difficulty was with staying in scope. There were many times, and even Mike (sound engineer/secondary artist) can attest to this, that we would literally come up with a new addition like every other day. Eventually you come to the realization that you should really try and hit a target that doesn't move too much: otherwise you'll never get to launch and your application will look like the flying spaghetti monster of whiteboards," Banks said.
Banks went to elaborate on the intricacies involved in developing a game, taking the time out to pursue one's social and fiscal life is quite an undertaking on its own. The work, he said, was incredibly taxing, especially considering that Loadscreen only consisted of three members.
"...creating a game takes a heavy toll on your life in general. To sum it up simply, you were working pretty much 36/7: doing work meant for a day and a half, in 24 hours, 7 days a week. Finding the time to devote to our game development, paying the bills, and tending to our personal life meant you never slept...at all. So balance was a huge issue: many of our meetings were held over Skype."
Sabar and company, once they felt like they had a finished product, approached both Google and Apple about releasing their game into the company's respective app stores. The process of getting an app approved for both stores may be surprisingly easy for would-be developers.
"Releasing Storm Blocks onto the Android Market was easy as pie: There were no difficulties whatsoever. We managed to port it over to IOS, and that wasn't so bad. However the process is more involved and took about a week to get approval: per build version," he explained.
While Storm Blocks may not have reached the heights that some apps achieve (Banks admits that monetarily, Storm Blocks was "not even a blip" compared to games like Angry Birds), the experience of actually creating and releasing a game is more than enough for Banks and the other members of LoadScreen Games, saying, "...that's the thing about being an indie-dev: it's always a gamble. Never the less, and my teammates would agree, being able to demonstrate that we have the ability to sit down and create game applications was success enough: the knowledge we gained about how it's all done was invaluable."
Loadscreen Games may have disbanded in October of 2011, but Banks is hard at work on three new mobile applications, one of which is slated for a summer release. With the continued success of mobile gaming, and the rise of indie gaming on consoles, the future is bright for developers like Sabar Banks and others, as long as they can cope with the stresses and uphill battle some developers face.
"The amount of indie games/devs will increase, and you gradually see indie-devs go from making small games like Storm Blocks, to bigger and more complex masterpieces over time: It's a linear progression for the most part..today's casual gamers will become part of tomorrow's hardcore crowd, and they will need something more to play."