About Me

Introduction

My name is Sebastian, and I am 34 years old. Over 14 years ago, in 2010, I began teaching myself programming (C++ and OpenGL) and have been crafting games ever since :)

Company Origins

A few years later (2015), starting with no financial backing, I launched my first VR application for VR Google Cardboard. The initial earnings enabled me to continue my work and establish my own game development company :) To date, there have been no publishers or investors; it has been entirely self-funded, sustained by the profits from earlier projects.

The Karters (2018) development & Bankruptcy

In 2015, after some initial smaller projects, the concept for The Karters was born. The vision was to bring back the magic of Crash Team Racing from the original PlayStation One — it was years before Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled was even announced. After a few months, we began working on a second project simultaneously called Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR. The game was released on Steam VR in 2017 but unfortunately it did not meet financial expectations. The company was in trouble, and there was not much time or funds left to develop and finish The Karters.

After a few more months of really hard work, in 2018, I made the biggest mistake of my life by releasing The Karters in an unfinished and way too early state. Of course, the game did not perform well and received a lot of (well-deserved) negative reviews. The premature release, due to lack of funding, resulted in the company's bankruptcy. I learned a lesson that I will never forget.

New Beginning

It was a very hard time, but at the same time, a new chapter has began. With my wife, Basia, we began trying to get the company back on its feet again.

After a year of hard work, things turned around greatly for us. Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR was invited to become the launch title for the then, not yet unannounced, first 6-DOF mobile headset in the world, called Oculus Quest. I worked really hard to make a port to the mobile device, Oculus Quest, and we were really happy that the game was released as a launch title on Oculus Quest in 2019. It was a huge success for us and Racket Fury is still popular to this date, allowing us to work on games full-time .

The Karters 2 - Development Start

The day after the unsuccessful release of The Karters in 2018, I promised to release it in the future as a game that would be much better in every aspect imaginable. After the release of Racket Fury, it was now possible to start working on that promise. I decided to work on the new version of the game from scratch, beginning with an empty project and coding everything from the ground up.

Critical Issue: Managing Team and Company with No Time for Coding

The beginning of work on the new version was not easy. I tried to build the team and expand the company with new members. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that managing the team and company was taking all of my time, and I didn't have time to code. It was especially frustrating because, as the sole programmer of The Karters, not having time to code in the game resulted in almost no progress in the game as a whole. I tried to hire additional programmers and a team manager, but even then, I had no time for development, as now I had even more people to manage and take care of.

New Game Development Approach - Decision to work alone

Because of these reasons, around the middle/end of 2021, I decided to change how I am approaching game development. From that point, I decided to strictly work alone on the project and work with others on a contract basis asking for what is needed and getting it when it is done. There is no team/company management anymore, and because I was working with everyone remotely anyway, the transition was very easy to make.

Development is finally going well!

Since then, almost for 3 years now, I have been working in my office on the game alone. With the amazing support and help from my wife, Basia regarding the game direction and features for The Karters 2 it is going really well. In terms of people I am working with, there is Mortus who makes all the animations for the game and a few character designs, Mariusz who helps with 3D and is creating skins and vehicles, and of course, Edward who makes amazing music for the game. They can completely focus on what they are best at, and I have all the freedom and all the time to put all my focus into programming and designing the game.

It is not easy to be a solo programmer for the whole game, as it requires putting tons of hours every day, but at least I can spend all my time programming the game now. This approach works really well because, since 2021, the game has made amazing progress, and after 3 public betas, The Karters 2 is finally near release.

This Micro Dev-Blogs : working with community

I have already posted multiple devlogs in the past, but some time ago I came up with an idea to increase the communication with the community much further. I have always liked working with the community, and I believe it may work really well, both for the game and for me as a developer.