State of the Game #86: Change is in the Air

Hey everyone, I thought this week I might do something a little bit different for the State of the Game. You see, at some point, a project gets big enough that talking about every single change gets pretty boring. So I got to thinking and you know, I thought it might be better to talk more about the development of the game. So more ‘Me’ and less ‘It’.

So let’s give this a shot.

Hi, my name is Chad Mauldin, and I am developing M.A.V.

Well, I say I am developing M.A.V., but truth be told, I think M.A.V. is developing me. You see, over the past 18-20 months, working on MAV has had a profound impact on my life. It has not always been a positive impact, but overall I would not trade it for the world.

To start off with, everyone that I tell I am making a game, has an immediate reaction of ‘Oh that’s cool!’. Once I tell them that it is NOT a 2d platform game or rougelike, the reaction more leans towards ‘What?’. Once I actually explain the size and scope of MAV, they had written me off entirely as insane.

Maybe I am insane because, here I am.

What prompted this change in format?

Fun. After a long bout of losing my motivation, and struggling to find the time to work on the game, I realized I was taking everything way too serious. I had lost the fun and freedom of being Indie and had starting approaching the development like I was some ‘AAA’ studio.

I am not a AAA studio.

It’s just me. And I saw, reading my previous blog posts, that I was not being me. I was being BombDog Studios. Not Chad.

That is everything that is wrong with the game’s industry and I believe the exact reason why ‘The Rise of the Indies’ has started to happen. We like knowing the people behind the work. Like movies, we have our favorite developers and track their work.

So that is my promise. Going forward, I will be me, for better or worse.

I hope you stay around for the ride 🙂

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