World: “We don’t think it’s a good idea for you to attempt to be musical director of an instrumental jazz/funk band, you’re completely unqualified and wholly unsuitable. And besides, you play, bass.”
Me: “Screw you World!”
You’ve gotta fake it to make it. Or so the saying goes. Well I’m going to try something different. I’m going to put myself out there, flaws and all whilst I build a small publishing imprint with an initial focus on games.
Welcome to The Proto Typer, a place where people possibly have no idea what they’re doing, but do it anyway. With a focus on prototyping, because nobody needs pesky final products when they have sweet prototypes.
By day I’m an Electronics Technician and road construction worker so I’m no stranger to building things and keeping track of complex processes.
By night I’m not so much an avid gamer as an avid game prototyper. And by that I mean the physical aspects of a game. Here at Vamoose I am part of a two man team whose approach to creating fun and irreverent Eurogames is simple: historically I have been the one to originally blurt out a name and theme for a new game. This gives Marcus enough material to apply some ‘maths’ to it while I enthusiastically try to produce the best prototypes I can, usually way too early in the piece.
I’ll be quite honest with both myself and you the reader, my graphic design skills are woeful, my awareness of colour palette selection non-existent and my bumbling attempts at creating game assets with free software are amusing and/or disturbing depending on your perspective. I’ll readily admit that I’m a Jack of all Trades and Master of None. My earnestly naive attempts at pushing into creative pursuits I have no business in will either horrify or charm you, hey they might even inspire you to have a go yourself and easily match and surpass my efforts (which I want to hear about BTW).
I know I’m not ‘supposed’ to be doing this stuff but I don’t care, it’s a constructive way to pass time, learn basic new skillsets and quite frankly, given our history with publishers whilst trying to entice interest in our first game, ‘DamBeavers’, we have no choice but to do it ourselves. There are NO barriers to success other than the ones constructed in our minds and I’m busy smashing those ones down.
So I’ll be covering topics as diverse as:
3D Printing
Interesting tools
Cutting up cardboard in a pleasing fashion
Finding prototyping materials in thrift stores and op shops
Awful graphic design
Trying to hold down funk grooves on bass after 20 years of playing drone rock and country
It may or may not be a winning strategy. I just don’t know. And that’s the thing, I’m prepared to say, “y’know what, I just don’t know the answer to that question. Or I don’t have an immediate solution to that particular problem right now.”
We’ll see if it works, it may not. But I see so many people presenting themselves as highly polished entities online right now that I think going in completely the opposite direction may actually have its merits. Join us in the wonderful pursuit of not taking anything too seriously…
The Proto Typer 