Have you ever thought about becoming a video game developer, but are totally intimidated by the amount of time and effort that it takes to build a video game? Well, that is me. I’m Wes and I have a dream of creating memorable and emotional video games that tell stories in a way that no other medium can. I’m constantly dreaming about running a huge studio of motivated developers who have the opportunity to use their creativity to its full potential. But the biggest thing holding me back is a lack of experience, time, and resources (you know, the most difficult things to get.) When you have a rent, car insurance, food expenses, and other miscellaneous bills, how do you make time to gain the skills and knowledge that you need to make a jump to the video game industry? The answer that I landed on was a 30-day “put a game on the iPhone App Store” Challenge! The 30-day challenge has the explicit purpose to achieve maximal learning in a minimal amount of time. The idea is to build a small, lean team of motivated game developers to design and develop a game that can be put on the App Store in 30 days or less! As a developer, the amount of learning and experience that you get from developing a game from its initial concept, to shipping it on a virtual store, is invaluable. Small games are developed in the same way that large games are. Large games only do the things that small games do on a larger scale. A small game still has to go through the pre-production, production, testing, post-production, and marketing phases - just like a AAA game. And the 30-day challenge is a perfect way to get your feet wet in all this knowledge. So how do you build a team of people to join you on this challenge? Just ask them directly! I was surprised that out of 150 emails I sent to game developers, 20 of them wanted to be involved with the challenge! That means there are lots of people out there who want to get that experience - just like me. Our team consists of: Jordan Overmyer - Lead Designer and gameplay programmer Taylor Volek - Lead Artist Kun-Yi Lin - Lead Programmer Jeff McMillen - Music and Sound Effects Wes Wehner (me) - Producer and Marketing Right now, we are 14 days through the 30-day challenge. I will be updating this page on our progress, so stay tuned to get an inside look into how to build an iPhone game in 30 days. Also, follow our progress here: https://www.facebook.com/mightymountaingame
