People just don’t do one thing anymore, have you noticed that? The days of working at one place until the powers that be hand you a gold watch and send you into the fog are gone. At least that’s the way it feels. In my short 33 years I’ve been an instructor, burger flipper, dog groomer, private business owner, coach, author, columnist, web designer, analyst, broadcaster, colorman, copy writer, candle maker, and video game developer.
About that last one, video game developer. My first game, Bush League The Baseball RPG, is about to come out for IOS. I know, I’ve told you that it’s coming for a while now, but that was mostly just my excitement bubbling over. It was always months off, but you know, months aren’t that long when you’re playing your own game and impressed with your own ideas. You tend to over share…
Any-who, it’s now less then a week away. Before next friday it should be up on the IOS store in a soft sell environment. Holy &@#$ I can’t believe it’s really come this far.
In case you don’t know, in Bush League, you’ll play as a minor leaguer with one defining tool who turns to PEDS to help you make up the rest of them. You can max out at 5. You’ll unlock PED powers as you go by beating bosses (who are also abusing PEDS) based on major league personalities—everything from players to broadcasters to commissioners.
Or you can buy them from our PED cook, who sells them out of his RV in the desert. He’s in the PED Empire business ;-).
The bosses will talk trash, beat you and rub your face in it, tell you you don’t belong in their game, etc… Eventually you’ll put them in their place by combining the perfect formula of skills and performance enhancements to move forward. There are 24 of bosses in all, each nastier and more offensive than the last.
We’re planning on launching the game at $2.99. Why not free? Well, my developer, Shane, and I grew up in a time when games didn’t spam you with adds or “buy more turns” or free trial versions claiming to be full games. We believe that $2.99 for a full game with no annoyances the way games should be— Just a solid game that will keep you tapping for hours. If you like it, you can buy more content later, not because we piss you off with adds or make winning so mathematically improbably your forced to go to the store.
Beyond that, this game was developed by 2 (!!!) people. No team of designers and coders, just two guys who took on all the risk.
I’m very excited that this is almost done and I am praying it’s a success. Not a huge one (although I’m fine with that!), just one that says, “you can do this.” I have loads more ideas on what to do next, but this one will decide if my ideas are worth a dang.
This is all been uncharted territory for me. Learning to manage people, hiring people, writing for apps and directing art and music, setting deadlines, negotiating payments. I was a baseball player with an agent. Then I was an author with an agent. Then I was TV guy with an agent… Now I’m my own boss with impatient agents wondering why I’m not doing the stuff they get paid for. I cost me near 30k of my own dollars to make Bush League, but was all spawned from this feeling that I had an idea and I could bring it to realization (somewhere in there I also had this voice saying “and better than Curt Schilling!), and that idea mattered.
I guess we’ll find out in a week.