Through the Sacramento Developer Collective, people can find kinship over their shared love of games and bolster one another in creating their own.<\/p>\n
Frank Lourence, a SDC board member, says even those who just have an idea for a game but not the skills or resources to begin creating one are welcome to join.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Members interact with one another through town halls, where they can meet in person. SDC also holds events like the Progressive Game Jams which allow members to collaborate with one another by forming teams to create games in a relatively short period of time. Over the course of six months, teams develop a game from start to finish, Lourence says, potentially hosting their games on online sites and forming working relationships with their teammates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Daniel Todd pitched the idea for the game Kobold Tactics during a jam in 2022, a riff on Dungeons & Dragons by having players take on the role of a monster. Now, Todd is still working alongside the same team to develop the game, acting as program lead and artist.<\/p>\n
Todd says he\u2019s always enjoyed the ability to share the interactivity of games with others.\u00a0 He\u2019s now able to share this experience through his own work through events where people have been able to playtest the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think actually seeing people play and enjoy the characters and the game in person and get real time feedback is just super awesome,\u201d Todd says. \u201cI think it\u2019s been one of the most rewarding parts of it so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
One such event is the Capital Collective Showcase, an annual event hosted by SDC in May where individuals can play these games and also attend panels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The showcase allows creators to gain direct feedback on their work, which Lourence says is crucial in the development space, especially when online feedback can quickly morph into criticism.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re talking face to face with the developer, it\u2019s this back and forth conversation that truly helps them out,\u201d Lourence says. \u201cNot only are they meeting players, but they\u2019re also meeting other developers in the area to pitch ideas with each other to develop the games they\u2019re bringing and the next game that they might be working on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Player input can be important for indie creators who are making a passion project but are unsure how to market it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lisa Aquilina, a game developer who has been working in the industry for 16 years, began developing Snap Quest after her partner encouraged her to pursue her own project.<\/p>\n
Aquilina says creating games independently differs from her studio work because a studio designer is making something for an audience, not themselves. Company culture has designers keep metrics in mind or meet deadlines, which can be a hard lesson for creators to learn.<\/p>\n
As she\u2019s worked on studio games, she\u2019s held onto ideas that she considered but could not implement, Aquilina says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept all those ideas, all those things that I know I love and I\u2019m sure other people will love,\u201d Aquilina says. \u201cNow I\u2019m going to finally do the thing that I want to do. I\u2019m gonna do all the stupid things that I love. \u2026 I still have to make a game that I think other people will play but I\u2019m hoping the things that I love will resonate with other people too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many challenges can arise during the development process, including combating a sense of choice paralysis, where it can be hard to make choices when she has so many ideas to work with..\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SolvingSac_VideoGameDesign_02-1024x683.jpg\")
Developer Brandon Rad is working on a chess rogue-like video game called Board of the Kings with fellow developer Thomas Ruiz. Ruiz and Rad are president and vice-president, respectively, of Sacramento Developer Collective, a collective that works to connect video game developers and creatives. (Photo by Cristian Gonzalez)<\/p>\n
This was an issue that Brandon Rad, SDC vice president, dealt with for Board of the Kings, a tactical role-playing game inspired by chess which is now in early development.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve adopted a very \u2018let\u2019s get it done\u2019 sort of mindset where we want to finish the game,\u201d Rad says. \u201cWe all have things that we want to do in the game realistically. We\u2019ve had to reduce scope a lot to kind of make the game manageable for us, since, when the scope is so big, we kind of get paralyzed. We have all of these things, and all of these things require even more things. So where do we even start?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, these challenges don\u2019t deter the team from continuing to meet weekly for over three years now, carving out the time to work together in-between jobs and other responsibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Regardless of whatever obstacles Immanuel encounters during development, he knows he wants to make games for the rest of his life. He says whether he\u2019s employed by a studio or not, he will always create games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some ways, it feels like trying to pile sand up to a certain height and the more you put on the top, the more things roll down and spread out,\u201d Immanuel says. \u201cThat aspect of it is certainly frustrating, but 100% worth it. It is the most remarkably gratifying experience I\u2019ve had in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story is part of the Solving Sacramento <\/a>journalism collaborative. This story was funded by the City of Sacramento\u2019s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento<\/a>. Following our journalism code of ethics, the city had no editorial influence over this story. Our partners include Capital Public Radio, Hmong Daily News, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Sign up for our \u201cSac Art Pulse\u201d newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucas Immanuel\u2019s earliest memory of playing video games is when he was a child, sitting with his brother…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[11753,121,123,122,14976],"class_list":["post-245758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-gaming","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-streaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}