Aussie Developers: How Do You Juggle Passion Projects And Life Balance?




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Gizmodo’s Developers Cubed series offers a behind the scenes look into Australia’s up and coming dev scene. This week: how do you balance a successful job, a young family and your passion for developing great games? How does one maintain their passion with so much other important stuff going on at once?

Who are you and where do you work?

My name is Douglas Warouw I’m a broadcast graphic designer by day and an indie game developer by night. Or should I say after midnight, once I have sorted out all my family commitments.

Why do we know you? What have you created?

Some of my work in the broadcast graphics space you may have seen before, namely for ABC News 24 and design for ABC Federal Election coverage. In July this year I released my first game for the iPad called Tesseract.

What platforms do you develop for?

Currently I’m developing for mobile namely iOS but intend to branch out into Android.

What are you working on right now?

My current project is an iPhone and iPad game called Zombie Tales. It’s a first person zombie shooter creator. The focus of my games is democratising the FPS genre that’s why all my game have included level editors and incentives for the user to create levels and share them.

Why do you make the games you make?

As a player I come from a console background and I love my console but as life moves forward my commitment to playing games gets put to the bottom of the pile and I’ve embraced mobile games. However as I discovered 90% of mobile games are dumbed down for mobile and so my focus is on creating games that try to reproduce a console feel.

What’s your favourite app that you didn’t create?

The app that inspired me to create games is Dead Space for iPad. Once I played through it it was clear to me that games can be immersive engaging and impressive all in the palm of your hand.

What phone do you use?

Currently I have an iPhone for my main phone, and in all honesty I would have a Samsung Galaxy if I wasn’t developing for iOS.

What advice do you have for budding Aussie developers out there?

One the things I learned since I started my quest 2 years ago to make games I care about, is that motivation and inspiration are the key. Be self-motivated, know one will make your game for you. And I know that isn’t always easy so get inspired by playing games especially indie games. But don’t just play. Use that inspiration for motivation.


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