“Creatinology is a mental illness that makes people’s brain creativity skills constantly fight to their brain technology skills“. Of course, this doesn’t exist (yet) but if so, I would have it for sure. I have been a lot of years working in a technology environment where people only were interested on if “it works or not”.

So, in some sense, my professional education is technology predominant. When my brain tries to think about work (even if the work is making games) it is difficult for me to avoid trying to solve the technological problems first in my mind. “Is 3D or 2D?”, “Needs animations?”, “Particle effects? If so, how would I implement it?”. This are the kind of questions or thoughts that I still need to train my brain to avoid when thinking about making games or, in general, any kind of app.

Mental note: making games or apps has nothing to do with technology. People doesn’t care about technology. People only care about having a good experience playing your game or using your app. So, if technology makes the game experience better, work hard on it, but if not, don’t waste your time and listen to your creativity side.

People doesn’t care about technology. Yes, it is hard when you realize about it, but its true. You have been more than five years of you life working and learning about something that nobody cares about. Only others like you care about technology.

However, technology is an excellent tool that allows you to create great experiences that people may care about and even enjoy. On the other side, creativity is something that nobody can teach you. Creativity is something that lives deep inside everybody. You only need to look carefully.

So, the conclusion is that having technology skills is a great point because you can use them as a tool to create great games. But if you are a technology trained guy (like me) you will need to re-train yourself. You will need to train your creativity side to be in charge and lead your projects. If the technology side is in charge… you will fail.

When I first thought about making an iPhone game I was exited about how it would be. It would be fun? Would be nice? People will enjoy it? But immediately after this kind of (adequate) first thoughts I said: “Well, first I need to code a little 2D graphics engine to be able to make great games.” Wrong.

Mental note: always use existing tools. If there is a tool that barely fits your needs use it. You will be amazed about how quickly you adapt yourself to that tool and how your productivity increases.

Fortunately, Cocos2D came into my life. It is an absolutely great piece of code. It has been really useful to avoid coding a 2D engine on my own. It has all the features I need and even has other ones that inspired me new ideas 🙂

I have been using cocos2d from the very beginning of the New Sokoban development. First prototypes where coded using it and the current version uses cocos2d to load, paint and move sprites around the screen. And works like a charm 🙂

So, decide what you want to do. Do want to make games? Or you prefer to develop technology? (Like creator of cocos2d did) The two options are great but you will probably have to choose one. Living in the middle is not save for an indie.