Learn the secret behind making games from three of South Africa’s top developers.
It’s an odd moment when you realise you’re in the company of a man who has hugged ex-LucasArts legend, Tim Schafer. One does not simply hug Tim Schafer. But this is QCF Design; they hug whomever they damn well please, okay?*
It’s from a three-room house in Table View, Cape Town, that QCF’s trio of Danny Day, Rodain Joubert, and Marc Luck work game development sorcery: these are the people who are making Desktop Dungeons.
If you haven’t yet played Desktop Dungeons – wait, what do you mean you haven’t played Desktop Dungeons? It’s a crime in seven fictional states not to have given it asylum on at least one of your hard drives.
For the moment, suffice to say that it’s mighty decent – and we got to chat to its creators about just how to get into the not-so-simple art of making games while they annihilated a tableful of hamburgers.
How did QCF Design start?
DAN: QCF emerged from Game.dev, which is a community I started in 2005. I said, “Hey, let’s try and make some games, let’s see what happens.” On that, I developed a bit of a reputation, and people started paying me to do game design work. In 2007, I got a contract that was too big for me to do on my own, so I had to incorporate and hire someone, and the company grew from there.
How do you get into making games?
Dan: Make games. If you want to get into making games, make games. Any time you’re about to make anything, analyse whether it’s helping you make games or not. A lot of people think that sitting down and learning C++ or the biggest new coding language will help you make a game, and it actually doesn’t. When you’re spending all your time battling with the technical elements of games, you’re not actually making a game. Four months down the line, you still don’t have a game.
Marc: I remember wanting to make a game in high school. We were learning Turbo Pascal at the time because we’re incredibly old. What I remember is, anytime we asked the teacher about “how that game did that thing”, it was always like, “Oh no, that’s something you’ll learn about when you learn C++”. Eventually, you go to university, and you learn C++, and you know what you realise? That’s not helping you make games.
In a program like Game Maker, which has a free version, most of what you need is just given to you. You just go crazy. A lot of people don’t like Game Maker because it’s “too easy”. That’s ridiculous. They don’t realise that designing the game is actually the most important part.
Dan: People have all these misconceptions about what you “need” to do before you can make a game. That’s all rubbish. You can make a board game. You can make a card game. You can make a game with your friends on the floor with chalk.
What about fancy graphics?
Marc: If a game’s not fun when it looks like ass, it’s not going to be fun, no matter what. If you can translate a design into pieces of a game board, and you can make it fun there, it’s still fun.
Dan: It doesn’t have to be real-time, it doesn’t have to be 3D, it doesn’t have to be just about any of those things you think it has to be. Make the game. Then the best thing you can do is play that game with someone else – because until you play a game, it’s not a game. Whether it’s a game design on a piece of paper or a huge document you’ve been writing for years and years, it’s still not a game until somebody plays it.
The first time you make something fun, something other people can’t stop playing… that’s the most addictive feeling ever. You’ve made this thing, and people are having fun that did not exist until you made it. That’s cool.
But what if everybody hates your game?
Dan: You will get more feedback from people who hate your game than people who like your game – unless you’re only showing it to the wrong people, in which case they’ll all say, “Oh, it’s amazing!”, and you can’t do anything with that information. You need at least to have constructive criticism – though destructive criticism can be fine, too.
Making games is always more expensive than anyone thinks. It always takes more time. It’s always more difficult. It’s basically one of the most difficult things you can do with a computer.
Getting started
Want to try your hand at making games? QCF recommend starting off with Game Maker: Studio – get the free version at www.yoyogames.com Keep an eye on QCF design’s devblog at www.qcfdesign.com
* Rodain actually did this – and in his defence, he had just been handed the Excellence in Design Award at the Independent Games Festival for Desktop Dungeons.
Text: Rogan Louwrens. Article from the July 2013 issue of Popular Mechanic Magazine.
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