What comes after tetris?

It really depends on what your goals are to begin with. If you plan on making a large game, whether it be a FPS, MMO, RPG, etc, you'll probably need a team or at least a couple of other people. There are a lot of one man shops particularly in iphone and android development so going alone can't be that bad. Maybe post what languages your learning and on what platform you're developing for, for a better answer.

Things like Tetris/Breakout/Minesweeper are a really good start, but they are still small projects. I'd say, definitely work on a larger (but not commercial size!) project before trying to get a team together.

A small TBS or a sidescroller, or something similar, would be really helpful. Who cares if it has bad graphics, or no music, if it's point is to help you learn.

Why? It teaches you how to make all the code from larger-scale games interact well. Tetris, if you don't code it well, can still be duck-taped to work, and the bad code can be hidden. A larger project, bad code re-surfaces and causes all sorts of problems, and forces you to learn good code.

Plus, a completed project of a larger scale helps dramaticly in recruiting others. You can say, "Hey guys, I'm getting a team together, my last project I completed and polished, and you can see screenshots and download it . It's a function small-scale RPG I made on my own, so pardon the programmer's art."

It doesn't help much for recruiting if you say, "Hey guys, I made a tetris clone, want to join my team to make a FPS?".

If you only know the 'basics', it's certianly not time for you to 'pull a team together'. Perhaps join another team, to gain experience, but certainly not lead a team of your own, to make a large game, until you can actually make a medium-sized game on your own.

How about something along the lines of a Mario or Mega Man game? I also read somewhere that a top down shooter is a good beginner program.

Not that I have any idea of how to make a working version...

If you're wondering what type of project to do next, personally, I made brute force password cracker.

It is a great practical demonstration of algorithmic complexity. When I switched from a naive approach to meet in the middle, I achieved speedups over a million fold. Even if you already understand it all in theory, a practical experience like that really hammers it in. It's also a good point to learn about multithreading since it is a trivially paralizeable task.

In case you were wondering, it was to discover the backdoor codes to a user created map for Warcraft 3, so I don't think there was anything ethically wrong with it. (Speaking of which, it's not a good idea to use a 5 letter password, an insecure hash, and then boast about how it is uncrackable)




If you were wondering what the potential of a one man shop really is, just look at Iji. Although, that one took four years to make, but it does show you what's possible.

I blow at logistics , so I find it easier to work alone for the time being. That's why I so love procedural content generation. It's somewhat easier for a one-man team to handle. You might want to consider it.

Make games from more than one genre. It forces you to expand and much of what you learn will be usable in other genres.

I think you're really asking two different questions:

1. What can a lone developer achieve?
   
   • Can a lone developer produce anything beyond simple puzzles or clone games?
   • Is it possible for a lone developer to be succesful and earn money making games?


2. Should I [you] form a team?
   
   • Is a team neccesary to produce the type/quality of game I'd like to make?

Quote:

Original post by johnnyMakesGames I'm asking what does a one person shop really do? It seems impossible for one person to do all that much.

As always, it depends on the person. Different people have different skill-sets as well as different goals, and what they can or will achieve will vary greatly based on these. It's a pretty obvious answer - and it probably doesn't help you much. What might be more useful however is a few examples of what a lone developer can achieve:

1. A lone developer can make small puzzle or arcade style games. These are the type of games you make as a beginner when you're learning; you gave an example yourself - a lone developer can make a good version of Tetris or similar games. With a good level of polish and a collection of these games you can make some money off it, as with John Hattan's Code Zone "Daily Puzzle" (and "Play 'n Share") Flash games.


2. A lone developer can make different games, with a style that is achievable with their own skill set.

Desktop Tower Defence and Cursor*10 are reasonably successful little games that use very simple art styles, avoiding the need to hire an artist.

Dwarf Fortress -- the majority of the work is done by two programmers rather than one, but I feel it still provides a suitable example -- has a huge scope, but is all displayed in the console. MUDs or other text-based games would be similarly achievable.


3. A lone developer can work with existing resources -- either freely available or purchased. This blog post at Lost Garden tells the story of a beginning Australian developer who produced a game prototype using graphics made freely available by the author and sold it (you can see a review of the game here) for $4000.


4. An appropriately skilled lone developer, or one who takes the time to become appropriately skilled can go it alone and produce commercial quality games like you see in the stores. They may need some help with some of the final graphics or audio, but they'll do almost all of the work themselves - and with an impressive game to show have little trouble finding the appropriate help to finish off their game.

Examples?

Check out Danny Green's journal.

The in-development Infinity MMO was also a one-person effort for a long time, and only more recently in the lifetime of the project started accepting help from volunteer artists to produce content for the game. Build an exciting enough game and build up support and people will be willing to help you.



5. A lone developer can do something other than producing their own game. You might make a useful library that helps others to make games -- SFML is the work of a lone developer (excluding a couple of the language bindings) -- or you might produce editors or other tools.

You might also join someone else's team; if everyone starts their own projects there won't be anyone to join other people's teams.

Quote:

realistically, after studying the basics, is it time to start pulling a team together?

Well, maybe. Again, it depends on you. A lone developer can achieve very impressive results if they have the appropriate skills to achieve their goals. If not, you may want to look at forming a team.

Don't forget that formating of a team comes with a whole set of additional potential difficulties to deal with, and that you may need to spend some time learning to do that; it's very rare for everything to just fall nicely into place to produce your game. A few additional difficulties associated with team development include:

• Recruiting


• Managing the team members - assigning and tracking tasks, etc.


• Communication


• Mediating disputes

Anyways, that should give you a bit to think about and an idea of what a lone developer can do - hopefully it helps! [smile]