Monday, May 17, 2010
By: Matthew Doucette

Indie game developer Falco Girgis, of the Elysian Shadows project.

Here's a Facebook chat with words that absolutely made my day. I want to share the whole conversation with you, only slightly edited. It's with Falco Girgis, developer of Elysian Shadows, a 2D RPG under development for the Sega Dreamcast and PC. This conversation entails what I love about indie communities:

Falco Girgis: Hey, bro. I just wanted to say keep doing what you do. You give people like me a reason to keep going when things get tough. I wish the best for you guys. It's very inspirational to just read your facebook statuses. You guys really deserve it. And you're so supportive of other people. I try so hard to follow your example and support others (though my first instinct is sometimes to be envious). You're good fucking people. I really respect that.

Matthew Doucette: Oh wow, thanks so much for the note! That's incredible! It's been tough. To become an inspiration to anyone, for anything, is an incredible honor. This means so much. It makes everything worth it to have someone see you in such a light! To hear such words is great reassurance we are doing the right things.

F.G.: I think it's so important for people like us to support others. What we do is really hard, takes an extreme amount of passion, commitment, and determination. Our instincts may be to be envious of other people or projects, because of the competitiveness of the field, but it's so important to understand and support other people's endeavours. I try to remember that every day when I'm feeling condescending or arrogant.

M.D.: I think so, too. I’ve felt inclinations to not help other developers as I have, but in the end I have found that nobody really steals your thunder, only you can do that with your own lack of effort (or lack of skills unfortunately sometimes). For example, no one else's shmup game is going to make Duality ZF fail... only we can do that job!

F.G.: Haha, yeah! I completely agree. I see people way too often go about the whole thing with closed minds. There is too much to learn. No one person can know everything. You can learn quite a bit from other people and become a better developer. And helping other people with their collision issues isn't going to magically make them release an RPG that is going to make Elysian Shadows fail.

...

Amazing stuff. Thank you so much, Falco Girgis! Any of you, feel free to add me to your Facebook.

Check out Falco Girgis' work on the Elysian Shadows official site and his YouTube channel which has lots of great videos that give back to the indie game development community. Also twitter and facebook links if you want. I wish him the best of luck!

That is all.

About the Author: I am Matthew Doucette of Xona Games, an award-winning indie game studio that I founded with my twin brother. We make intensified arcade-style retro games. Our business, our games, our technology, and we as competitive gamers have won prestigious awards and received worldwide press. Our business has won $190,000 in contests. Our games have ranked from #1 in Canada to #1 in Japan, have become #1 best sellers in multiple countries, have won game contests, and have held 3 of the top 5 rated spots in Japan of all Xbox LIVE indie games. Our game engines have been awarded for technical excellence. And we, the developers, have placed #1 in competitive gaming competitions -- relating to the games we make. Read about our story, our awards, our games, and view our blog.