Leveling Up My Dev & PM Toolkit—24 Hours Inside a Full‑Cycle Game‑Development Bootcamp
Great software bends two universes at once: the player’s imagination and the product backlog.
1 ‧ Why a Mobile‑App Engineer Went Back to “Game Dev 101”
Even after shipping DoneTodo, I felt a gap:
- Systems‑level fun‑engineering. Games are the pinnacle of engagement loops—perfect sandboxes for practicing retention mechanics without dark UX.
- Rapid cross‑platform prototyping. Console‑to‑mobile thinking forces ruthless performance trade‑offs that transfer directly to Flutter and React Native.
- Team orchestration at indie scale. I juggle designer, PM, and full‑stack hats daily; formal methods for mock‑ups, milestones, and test releases sounded like free steroids.
So I enrolled in LA County Library’s instructor‑facilitated How to Get Started in Game Development.
2 ‧ Micro‑Wins From Each Lesson
| Lesson & Focus | Hard Skill I Added | How I’ll Exploit It in My Apps |
|---|---|---|
| L1 • Industry Primer | Benchmarked genre budgets & revenue ladders. | Build data‑driven ROI models before green‑lighting side projects. |
| L2 • Genres · Platforms · Audiences | Segmented nine core genres & mapped them to device affordances. | Re‑frame onboarding screens using genre expectations (e.g., progress bars ≈ RPG XP). |
| L3 • Interface Design | Designed feedback ↔ control loops; built greyscale mock‑ups in 30 min. | Convert Figma comps to tappable prototypes before any SwiftUI code touches Git. |
| L4 • Immersion & Fun | Deconstructed Prensky’s 12 Elements of Fun. | Stress‑test new features against “CCCO” (Conflict‑Competition‑Challenge‑Opposition) before backlog grooming. |
| L5 • Production Planning | Scoped 13 studio roles; drafted lean staffing matrix (artist + dev + PM + QA). | Formalize contributor agreements for future contract collaborators. |
| L6 • Toolchains | Evaluated Unity, Unreal, Xcode, Android Studio—bench‑marked build times & asset pipelines. | Choose Unity + Addressables for 2‑week AR prototype; reuse CI/CD scripts from iOS builds. |
| L7 • Team Leadership (Pt 1) | Implemented remote stand‑ups, async status docs, and project prefix tags ([AppName] Subject). | Halved Slack noise in my freelance squads; Jenkins jobs auto‑label by prefix. |
| L8 • Processes & Testing (Pt 2) | Wrote pseudocode first, code second; locked “Alpha → Limited Beta → Public” gates. | Embed pseudocode PR step in GitHub Actions; no sprint closes without device matrix coverage. |
| L9 • Mobile Publishing | Mapped Apple vs Google submission checklists & test‑device heuristics. | Zero rejection streak since—metadata & screenshots automated via Fastlane lanes. |
| L10 • Post‑Production | Modeled Fun × Audio × Graphics × Uniqueness × Replayability formula for marketability. | Funnel analytics dashboards through the same multiplier to flag low‑replay screens. |
| L11 • Career Pathing | Audited eroding barriers: hardware, software, publishing. | Position personal brand as “one‑person studio”. |
| L12 • Capstone | Assembled concept → GDD → prototype → pitch deck in 48 h. | Repurpose template for investor briefs on my smart‑repair SaaS spin‑off. |
3 ‧ Translating Theory Into Shipping Muscle
3.1 Indie‑Scale PM Framework
- Mock‑Up → Milestone → Playtest loops. 5‑day cadence keeps scope visible to stakeholders and my future self.
- Asset Ledger in Git LFS. Every sprite, SFX, or SQL script tags owner + license + version—no more Slack archaeology.
- Alpha “Chaos Days.” Borrowing from lesson‑8 testing, each Friday I run (low battery, slow network, rotated UI, VoiceOver) gauntlets. If a build passes that, prod feels trivial.
3.2 UX Upgrades Already Live
- Dynamic Difficulty (Adaptive Element). DoneTodo’s streak visuals now brighten/shrink based on completion momentum.
- Micro‑Quest Onboarding. Borrowed Goal → Win State → Feedback triad to replace monolithic tutorials with 60‑second “quests” that teach swipes, long‑presses, and calendar sync. Engagement up 18 % week‑over‑week.
3.3 Leadership Hacks
- Prefix‑Driven Email Taxonomy (
[DoneTodo] QA Hotfix #42). Cut hand‑offs confusion by 40 %. - Time‑Zone Matrix: Auto‑generated Notion page lists contributor UTC offsets & “deep‑work windows.” Meetings dropped from 9 h to 4 h per sprint.
4 ‧ Formal Recognition
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Credential | Certificate of Completion – How to Get Started in Game Development |
| Issuer | LA County Library · Instructor‑Facilitated Online Learning |
| Issue Date | 19 Jul 2025 |
Final Thought
Game development isn’t a detour from app engineering, it’s the R&D lab where engagement physics are discovered. After this course, my toolbelt feels heavier in the best possible way.
Enjoy Reading This Article?
Here are some more articles you might like to read next: