The story of how game development has become a part of my life

Hello! My name is Maxim Gazizov. Earlier I published a post on Habré about the successes and mistakes in game dev. And then, after a year of working on my brainchild called Wasteland Wars, I disappeared from the air. That's because the process dragged me so much as never before. By the way, it turned out that I lost my previous account and now created a new one.

Wasteland wars

Life before your own project


Previously, I was engaged in the development of mobile applications, VR-projects and highly loaded systems. Today I completely devote myself to developing my game. The thing is that I approach Wasteland Wars not as a product, a squeeze, but as a large community of players and my favorite business.

Let me remind you that I am developing not a single-player runner for iOS, not a shooter, but a multiplayer game on the Telegram platform. And, of course, depending on the topics and specifics of the platform, their nuances arose, arise and will arise.

When I was developing single-player games, as they say, I had norms: I wrote a game, put it in the App Store, went through moderation, bought advertising - that's it, went downloads and purchases; then you simply compare income, distribute funds and live the life of a “brilliant director”. However, everything once comes to an end, and at times tends to change.

What made me rethink my priorities


Today the situation is very different. In short, I fully integrated into the development and support of the game at the backend level. When I wake up and go to Telegram, I see data streams in my auxiliary bots, channels and backend chats of the game: reports on the work of the game bot, reports on raids, daily allowance online, purchases and other actions of players.

I’m silent about the PM and game chats - my own life always happens there. People of different professions, backgrounds and hobbies walk around the virtual Wasteland, pump their skills, explore locations, participate in events and get bans for twins. And all this I see both on my phone and tablet, and on the computer.

If any hell happens, I’m trying to fix it. Yes, I’m trying to fix it myself, because I don’t have a development team. Still, I adhere to the principle of "want to do well - do it yourself." In my very first article on Habré I told you exactly what troubles were happening. Let's get back to them, here they are:

  • unstable servers;
  • Telegram blocking.

It turned out to solve and get around these two situations. In the first case, I just invested in the comfort of the players, and in the second situation I had to fight. As a result, as we know, Telegram still works regardless of the ILV's actions. So, in fact, the second situation was resolved both by itself and by the efforts of enthusiastic players (for which many thanks to these guys).

Then, of course, newcomers added difficulties at the entrance to the game, but they also managed to overcome them. Probably the most unpleasant story that happens from time to time is the fall of raids. It happened a couple of times, but still not cool, when on the other side of the screens hundreds of people decided to go on a raid, and it does not work. Because of this, I get into the processes myself and correct the errors.

I did not answer the main question - why is this happening, what pushes me to code from the tablet in “Swift” (lol, in “Swallow”) and be next to my brainchild. The answer is as simple as possible: there is a game that people like, and there are people who enjoy playing it. Consequently, the grocery part, which is mainly the interest of uncles in suits called “stakeholders”, moves to 754th place in priorities.

I don’t have a bunch of commercial directors behind me, and the Wasteland Wars stakeholders are the players themselves. And today, my goal is to provide the community of players with the opportunity to have fun and have fun from anywhere in the world. I am glad that I sided with the user, not the economy. Today Wasteland Wars is more than a game to me.

Recent Updates


The game has survived several global updates. Today she works on patch 2.2b, which was successfully uploaded and embarked on peep-bouts of players. In this extreme update, I implemented several interesting gizmos that so long beg for the game:

  • added gang mechanics, but groups of players (a la “party” in popular online games) are called a little differently;
  • launched a referral system bonus - the link owner now receives a portion of small dolls from each purchase of his referrals invited after THIS update;
  • added the Xsolla payment system for players from other countries;
  • I worked a lot on the UI and fixed it so that the gameplay looked much nicer and was perceived easier;
  • while the player goes from location to location, there is a moment with expectation. Now in the process there are tips that will brighten up this process and throw a couple of ideas to the player;
  • Before attacking the enemy, you can check his avatar;
  • fixed raids, focused on gangs and screwed up a separate raid mode for self-activation on raid points;
  • trophies obtained in battle now affect the faction rating.

Player avatar in Wasteland Wars
View player profile avatar before attack

What is, what will be


A year ago, I thought it would be cool to untie the game from Telegram and make a client on several platforms. There is no need for this today. ILV actions are similar to testing hypotheses in terms of blocking: they do something, something does not. Therefore, now the game quietly exists on the platform in Telegram. However, there is everything for the transfer, I prepared.

Most of all, I dream of making the game self-sufficient and giving the development of the game world to the hands of players. I would like the players to have fun in their own script, and not inherent in the scripts. I’m working on it now.

There is monetization in my game, for which I often catch a hat. I want to explain why I need this monetization and how approximately it looks. If we talk about monetization in detail, then this topic is for a completely different hub and for a separate article, but I will try. Monetization works like this: all game items can be received without donation, it just will be a little longer, but more interesting.

I am often asked if game devs live well. In turn, I’m not ready to say that today you are putting an online game on stream, and tomorrow it will make you rich in donations and you will become a millionaire. Gamedev lives well when he is interested in developing his creation, and not consider it as a bubble squeezer from a product standpoint.

And no, I did not become a millionaire this year, because I spend donations on the development of the game. Paradox, of course, - I want the players to be comfortable, but in the end I get the hate in response. Strange, but all people are different, and our expectations tend not to come true.

If you are going to make an online game, think over everything as it should. As I said, MMORPG is not a story about a quick path to enrichment, but hundreds and thousands of hours of code, testing and all kinds of debugging. And if you are ready and understand all the difficulties in your path, then go!

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