\u201cThe catch? I had two days to finish it,\u201d said McGregor. He buckled down and managed to ship something; \u201cit was rough, but it was completed. I showed it off at the event, and it went amazingly; sure there were some bugs, and it wasn\u2019t the most amazing game out there, but it was something that was actually finished.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elated, he decided to release it to the public and gave himself a strict two-week deadline to get it out. It took two months and a few added features (\u201cdiscovering that adding in polish took that much time really helped put things in perspective\u201d), but at last McGregor released his first game: a 2D twin-stick shooter called Glitch in the System<\/a>. <\/p>\n Releasing Glitch in the System opened up the \u201cfloodgates\u201d of opportunity for McGregor; he ported the game to mobile, did some public talks, won an award, and got his first paid contracting gig because of it.<\/p>\n More importantly, he says, he began to see how game production works, and how projects can sputter or spiral out of control before the finish line.<\/p>\n \u201cI started to understand what went into finishing a game, because I now had the experience of doing it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was no longer a hazy area…I was able to start working on projects that were much more reasonable in scope, and I better understood what caused my games to bloat.\u201d<\/p>\n McGregor continued to make small games, taking part in game jams and making games with friends in an effort to learn more and experiment with new mechanics.<\/p>\n After two years he\u2019d finished 8 projects of varying sizes, a \u201cstark contrast\u201d to what he\u2019d accomplished before. At some point he was asked to speak in front of a class, and had four days to design a game for the presentation, so he scoped out a game (that would become HyperDot<\/em>) that he figured would take about four days to finish. It ended up taking four years.<\/p>\n \u201cSo…yeah. It doesn\u2019t always work out perfectly every time,\u201d he admitted. \u201cThe difference was that I had much more experience dealing with each part of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
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