I’ve been working on another Let’s Make Games report on-and-off for a while now. Such that it looks like although the last report was March 2009. This report will now be April 2010. Ah, close enough is good enough I suppose. 😉
I had originally hoped to have the report ready for last year’s end-of-year party and then again around the start of this year. It’s always been a relatively low priority (and fairly difficult to get motivated about) since I don’t know who (if anyone) really cares about it… and it’s a lot of work.
Ultimately though, I care about it and, at the very least, I’m sure that others would be interested in the next survey results. So I’m in that frame of mind, and current delays are more to do with careful planning rather than lack of motivation.
The last report was fairly speculative. It was the first report on Perth’s game development community and my main goal was to identify the “personality” of the local scene. Turns out that we’re young indie developers at heart, who want to work in Perth, and often end up working jobs in related industry.
With this next report, I really want to capture the history and output of the local scene. I’m disappointed that there isn’t some central registry of games that have come out of Perth (although a few are listed on mobygames). There’s also no real record of where we have come from, and no directory of who we are now.
To an extent we’ve tried to address some of this by linking to local companies on the Let’s Make Games site, but a lot of that information will be updated and overridden. It’s nice to have a snapshot of the industry in the form of an annual report. Since this sort of record hasn’t really been made before, I’d like this report to include information up-to-and-including right now!
So if you are a local game developer (past and present) please be prepared to put in some time going through old notes, calendars, and resumes. I want to know all about it. 😀
Watch for a survey to appear on the Let’s Make Games site soon.
Incidentally, here is a diagram I put together back in November last year (click image for larger version):
I was trying to map out how developers have moved through companies and how companies had grown/divided/died. It’s pretty rough and incomplete, but you can see how the industry has grown in just the last few years.
Hopefully I’ll get rich enough data from the survey so that I can produce a better diagram for the report. 🙂
Tim C and I did stuff for Game Pride in Nullarbor 06 before getting hired. Although I got hired before Nullarbor and stopped working with Game Pride. I just went straight to Interzone from unknown.
I also did 3 weeks work experience (storyboarding) for Bungarra in 2005.
I dunno if Simon W formed Different Methods in 09 or 2010, but if you want to include 2010 Lisa R’s there fulltime and I’m freelancing.
I care Nick 🙂
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Different Methods has been running since 06.
Haha. Thanks Paul. 🙂
Simon: Thanks for datum. I hear that you’re growing recently as well. 😀
The survey will have a “company” section and I’m hoping for one response per company. Amongst other things, it’s odd how few local company websites list the year that the company was established! 😛