A Minneapolis video game developer
scored second place last week in a Boing Boing Arcade contest for a game called
Infiltration at Dusk.
Creating video games is actually a hobby of
Zachary Johnson, whose day job is working as a user experience developer at Worrell, Inc.
The Boing Boing contest asked developers to build a game inspired by a piece of chip music, the chimey tunes used in old-school video games.
Johnson guesses he's made about a dozen video games since the mid-90s. This one took about 30 hours to create and incorporates unique controls. No memorizing buttons. Just mash your keyboard in the direction you want to shoot.
The premise: you're the last gunman protecting a village from a "horde of biomechanical abominations" trying to rid Earth of all humans.
Sound pretty dark? Well, things are looking brighter for indie video game makers.
"The indie game market is big right now," says Johnson. The cost and accessibility of computing power have given hobbyists tools that professionals could have only dreamed about two decades ago.
Meanwhile, indie video game developers have open markets to sell and distribute their creations via mobile devices or web browsers. That said, Johnson has no plans for quitting his day job.
"It's still a hobby for me. For me, it would be more exciting if I made a game that resonated with thousands of people," says Johnson. "It might earn me enough money that I could pour into another game."
Source: Zach Johnson
Writer:
Dan Haugen