Jennifer Do has spent the last three months putting time, energy and money into creating her own video game. And her mom doesn’t even know.

“My mom has always been like, ‘Video games are for kids,’” Do said. “She’s one of those kinds of people.”

Since middle school, she has been writing fictional stories, but she could never seem to finish them. She couldn’t find a good way to get from beginning to end because there were always so many possible ways the plot could go. Now, the Syracuse University senior has decided to finally finish her stories by turning them into a video game.

“It’s like I’m being a surgeon and am trying to revive those ideas,” she said.

Do has collaborated with others on games before, but this one, called “Post,” will be the first commercial game she directed by herself. She describes it as being similar to a visual novel with a choose-your-own-story format. The player will choose a character and go through the fantasy setting while being presented with different options that determine the ending.

As a magazine journalism major and editor-in-chief of SU’s ALINE magazine, Do is familiar with tight deadlines. But as the creator of “Post,” she is free to work on her own schedule and hopes the game can be released in May 2018.

“I work for myself so there’s nobody telling me that I have to do it,” Do said. “If I put out like a demo or something or promotional art, there are people online who are like, ‘Oh I’m really excited for this game to come out,’ and that’s what really motivates me.”

Do’s inspiration for the game came from 50,000 words of the novel she had already written but never finished. She said she had always wanted to make a video game and didn’t want to waste her work, so she decided to keep building off what was already there. When she does write for the game, she tries to write a scene in one day so she can get more done. Consistency is the hardest part, Do said.

The game is mainly based on text and dialogue, which Do is writing on her own. She also does most of the coding since it is a narrative-heavy game.

“It’s nice that I don’t have to learn some really difficult coding thing or I don’t have to make a platform with physics,” Do said. “This is more just like, I like games and I want to make a game from something that I like.”

To help with other aspects of the game, Do relies on help from the online indie game community. She hires artists to draw the characters and background scenery and musicians to create an original soundtrack, paying them out of her own pocket. Do said there is an entire community of people out there who want to work on indie games.

Courtesy of Jennifer Do

One of the artists involved on “Post” is June Rodriguez. She worked on sprites for the game, which are animated computer graphics that can interact with the player. In the past, she has worked on another indie game called “Romancin Dudes” which is a visual novel-like game.

Rodriguez said she never originally set out to work on video games, but people reached out to her after seeing some of her work online. She’s found that artists tend to be in demand for indie games, especially when there’s a game jam — when a group of game creators meet up for several days in a row to create either one or multiple games.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize that indie games are out there a lot of the time, but there are a lot of fun games to play on the internet for cheap or free,” Rodriguez said in an email. “Indie games have a lot more creative freedom, so you’ll get to see a lot more innovative things than from the Triple A industry.”

The biggest difference between the indie industry and the high-budget, mainstream “Triple A” industry is that there are less regulations and no contracts, Rodriguez said. She said the biggest challenge is making sure to get paid.

“Either way there’s no sure way to make sure my work is even used, since a lot of indie projects fail and never get released, due to lack of time management or whatever,” Rodriguez said.

There is a lot of uncertainty in the indie video game world, as Rodriguez pointed out and this is one of Do’s biggest fears. She has no idea whether or not “Post” will be successful — but at least her gamer friends enjoyed it when she had them run through a trial round.

“I think when you make something by yourself, you put a lot of yourself into it and when you put it out you’re like, ‘This isn’t finished and it’s really bad,’ and you know people aren’t going to know what it is completely,” Do said. “Maybe they won’t think it’s the greatest thing ever but if they at least play it then that’s pretty cool.”

One of the astounding things about the industry, Do said, is that a person like her, who has had no formal training in creating games, could potentially become successful. There are so many people who, just like her, created games at home in their spare time.

“It’s a testament to how easy it is to access technology today,” Do said. “I’m not gonna be massively rich, but I just think it’s kind of crazy. It’s like I can make a career out of something without having that gatekeeper.”

After she graduates in May, Do said she hopes to go into book publishing and still have time to create games on the side. She has always dreamed of becoming a novelist, but making video games has more potential for making an immediate profit. In an ideal world, she’ll be doing both.

Once “Post” is finally finished and released, Do hopes she can tell her mom about it as a success story.

“I think my mom won’t mind if I make money off of it,” Do said.

Published on February 28, 2017 at 8:51 pm

Contact Caroline: cbarthol@syr.edu