I believe that programming is fun and can be fun for programmers of every skill level. I believe that independent developers don't have to be alone. I believe that writing code is just as much art as it is science and math. I believe that it should be easy to make your programs available to as many people as possible without worrying about deployment or web development. I believe that indie development has a lucrative future as more and more people are using independently developed applications on their mobile devices- a large portion of which run Java!
With these beliefs in mind, I'm starting Static Void Games to help indie game developers, or people who want to become indie game developers, come together to learn from each other, show off their games, and hopefully improve indie development in some small way.
We don't have the budgets of big game companies, so we spend a lot of time doing things that aren't actually programming- figuring out how to deploy a program, building a half-decent website, getting the word out.. all while trying to write code and create art!
Let's face it- some of the best Java programmers are terrible web developers. This is part of why Java gets an undeserved bad reputation for things like game programming- too many applets are embedded in a boring gray website because the programmer just didn't have time to do it all! That causes people to dismiss the site and Java as a whole, even though the applet itself might be the most beautiful, creative, and fun game ever created.
I gave myself a goal of helping combat this problem, and I made make plenty of mistakes
along the way trying to learn the best way to do things. But at the very least, Static Void
Games gives you an easy way to upload your Java (or Processing!) game and have a decent-looking
website around it without worrying about the gory details. From here, I'm planning on expanding
the site to include more tutorials and a better community experience for both gamers and
developers (things like a point/achievement system for players and ad revenue sharing for
developers). I'm not a web developer at all, but hopefully this site will help make the lives
of up-and-coming indie developers a little easier. Hopefully we can learn from each other, and
this site will grow with us.
Thanks for being here,
Kevin