When I asked Mark Soderwall the question, “what is Indie Game University ?” he gave me an answer on two levels. First, he explained the obvious nuts and bolts of what it is, saying “Indie Game U is a program geared towards helping programmers, artists, musicians, and game designers learn how to go about structuring their game development. We have 20 videos and 5 full workbooks that are available 24/7 so that Indie developers can learn at their leisure. They take you from the start of game production to the finish describing the tools, the brand, the market and the process of building not your game but how to build a game business.” On the deeper level, Mark described what Indie Game U potentially represents to a new developer utilizing their talent, skills and dream to deliver to a world waiting
“ An Indie developer might have talent and knowledge – they might have some level of understanding in how to make environments, or character models, or how to design levels, or how to code – they have what Mark likes to call “the bricks of development.” But without the mortar between those bricks, they don’t have anything foundational to keep those bricks together. The moment adversity comes up, lack of knowledge, fear, whatever it might be – those bricks can topple over really easily,” he explained.
“What Indie Game U does,” Mark continues, “is provide the tools, the professional methods, the motivation, and the development pipelines to actually build your game the right way – the way that protects your time, helps you find resources & works with your current abilities! We answer questions that starting indie developers haven’t necessarily even thought of, like: Why are you making the game? Have you identified the market you’re trying to capture? Are you using the best tools for your understanding and budget? It’s all about setting you up to you start your game successfully and finish competitively. That’s Indie Game U in a nutshell.”
The beginnings of Indie Game University
“This has been a heart’s cry of mine for about ten years,” Mark remarks. “I’ve tried a couple of launches, a number of years ago, and it just wasn’t ready. I struggled with tool that were beyond my scope, or had difficulty communicating the content, courses, and curriculum I’ve mastered over the years. But now, it’s all crystallized. I’m very excited. I’m very confident.”
The endeavor began as an effort to solve a problem that Mark had observed in the games industry for a significant chunk of his approximately twenty-eight years in professional development. “I really saw the need back when I was working at Atari, EA and Lucasarts.For a time I was an adjunct professor at a game art and design college, what we call GADD colleges, I noticed these academic institutes were teaching people the techniques – of how to build environments, 3-D models and so on. But I didn’t see the soft skills being taught anywhere. Not in colleges or online tutorials.”
Game development, he says, is “so much more than art, design, code or audio.” He also stresses the importance of marketing, branding, financing, team-building, scheduling , business building and so on. As technology improves and small groups or even single individuals gain the ability to tackle ambitious game development products, the actual skills and abilities to run a game development business or teams becomes paramount. “And that’s what Indie Game University really offers,” Mark says.
Not the Cult of Mark – Teaching Indie Game development
“I just want to keep it really raw, and really real,” he says. “Like a fireside chat.” A personal and somewhat low-budget style was important to Mark as he imparted his knowledge, given his target audience. “I practice what I preach,” he remarks, “I didn’t wait until l had hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up a venture with HD cameras and professional lighting & audio. Because a lot of Indies don’t have those kinds of resources. We work with what we have, where we’re at, and what we know!.”
Right now what indie Game U has is 6 courses broken up into 20 lessons of educational material, with 2 more packages due to come out in Q1 & Q2 of 2017. The first package covers your purpose, design, tools, methods, assembling teams, schedules, and setting budgets for your development. As Mark puts it, “how we actually start executing and manifesting the work and the ideas that we have.” Mark is continuing to build out courses and dev material with professional colleagues that will take deep dives into building games with Unity (a major game engine tool) as well as business building & marketing your game. Two major subjects that continually “trip-up” indie developers!
Most of the content built inside Indie Game University is C treated personally by Mark Soderwall himself, but he does call on other experienced professionals to impart their knowledge as well. “I didn’t want it to be ‘the cult of Mark’” he stresses. “ I’m reaching into my deep Rolodex of colleagues and studios in both AAA development and Indie game creation and sitting them down in front of a camera to expound on their successful practices. It’s really exciting.”
Mark envisions exciting changes in the future of Indie Game U, even as it grows from its humble beginnings. “My hope for Indie Game U in the next year is that we foster an even stronger community and culture of people who have success, who have delivered a handful of titles to market, that can start to instruct as well. At the end of the day, I may now know a lot but I don’t know everything. I know what has worked very well for me, and what worked equally well for my colleagues, but the real strength of Indie Game U is its community.”
Helping you take control – Indie Game U and the Digital Revolution
The Being Found Help Center is built around a fundamental fact of the new world of business. Knowledge is the resource that businesses need in our digital world, because so many other things are easily accessed through the web once the knowledge is there. And it is the resource in how to extract and apply it that is often missing.
Indie Game University is a Redding CA. based startup that exemplifies this idea. “We teach you how to take control of your time and your effort so everything you do is going towards completion ‘finish & delivery’, and you’re not just spinning your wheels and feature-creeping on things that don’t matter. That’s what Indie Game Development is all about, “Starting successfully and finishing competitively!” A lot of times it’s just you, or you and a small team of in-house or remote devs, and the last thing you want to do is keep designing towards burnout. That’s why it’s great to have mentors who have gone through all of the trials & tribulation before and come out the other side with incredible success,” Mark says.
What’s more, Indie Game Unhas unlocked creatives true potential, understanding and gifts. “One testimony was from some people who were a couple of months into production, and they watched one of my videos,” he remembers. “The title of that course was ‘What to leave in, and what to take out’ and that led to a paradigm shift in their thinking.They said to me, ‘Mark, after we applied your lessons we got more done in three weeks than what we tried to deliver in a handful of months, thank you!’”
“It’s a liberating venture for me and for my members,” he concludes. “And that’s what’s fun about it. Seeing people walk in the fullness of who they are as creatives and kicking ass to deliver their creations to a world waiting!”
