No pain, no game: video game design harder than it looks

In the wee hours of the night, sitting at my computer desk on an online forum, I stumbled upon a group of individuals who sought to do one thing: create the best darn Mega Man fan game of all time. They were looking for some people to create some music for the game, so I volunteered. After all, making a video game was my dream.

When most people think of making a video game, they usually think “Bah, humbug. That would be easy.” Yeah, no. It’s not easy. We have been working for a week now and we are at about 1% completion. Making a game is a lot harder than many people realize.

Back in the day, Capcom used to make a lot of really good Mega Man games. You were put in the shoes of the titular hero, Mega Man, and sent out to destroy the evil creations of Dr. Albert Wily. In the end, you could go to sleep knowing that you saved the world from evil robot overlords. Unfortunately in recent years, Capcom’s focus has been on other things, rather than the series which got them off the ground in the first place. The fans don’t want to be kept in wait, so it’s time for them to take matters into their own hands.

It started last Monday night. While scouring the internet for the new Daft Punk album, I stumbled upon a small online forum where a few guys were thinking “Hey, what if we made a video game?” There were about three people planning the game, all of them using codenames to keep their anonymity: Apollo, in charge of music, WreckingFist, in charge of level design, Metool, the public relations guy, and IceKing, the man of many talents (music, art, and comic relief).

“The best way to make a game is often the simplest: you just do it for the fans.” —Richard Heule

I immediately jumped to the opportunity to try and create some music for it. Unfortunately, they were using a system that was completely foreign to me. However, in a few short days, I was beginning to see progress. As of right now, the music production is going fantastically well. However, the creation of the game engine is not. A game engine, for those who don’t know, is basically the framework that the game operates on, and in this case, it is being coded from scratch in C++. Coding a game engine isn’t exactly the easiest task known to man; if everything goes accordingly, it will be coded just short of my 70th birthday.

Making a fan game can be fun. Not only is it a good creative outlet for people, but at the same time, it just gives the actual creators of the games better ideas. Games like this show big companies like Capcom and Nintendo that the fans actually do care about their products, even if their profit margins don’t show it that well. Major video game companies nowadays have lost their way, and have become a victim to the number one plague in the corporate world: money. Hopefully, one day, they will return to their roots and realize that the best way to make a game is often the simplest: you just do it for the fans.