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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Director of Thirsty Suitors. Co-Founder and Creative Director
@Outerloopgames
. Sri Lankan. Supporting and uplifting marginalized devs. he/him linktr.ee/ekanaut
Seattleouterloopgames.comBorn October 29Joined November 2009
1,440 Following
13.1K Followers

Chandana එක Ekanayake’s posts

Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
This probably took the cost of our whole game to do.
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Dan Hindes
@dhindes
There's a scene in The Last of Us 2 where a character just...takes a shirt off, over their head, without any clipping, and it's probably the most technically impressive thing I've ever seen in a game?? Like have you ever seen a character do this in a game before?
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Hey
@unity3d
I'm not sure if you're aware but we have this rad game called Falcon Age coming out in a couple of days and it makes your engine look pretty good and has a good message. It's the kind of thing you should totally get behind :)
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Over hearing my 12 yr old son resolving an argument over Fortnite chat with his friends “I have feelings, they matter. It’s not complaining when you say something hurtful and I tell you about it.” 😭
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I started a game studio at 40, it’s never too late. It did take a lot of spite fueled courage to do that though! Spite is life.
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NIL ニル👾🎮
@nil_sanctuary
A friend told me "you shouldn't quit your job. It was a big mistake that you chose to learn and become 3d gameplay animator. You're 29 and It's too late for you!" It's not the first time someone tells me "iT's tOo LaTe". I feel exhausted.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
One bit of gamedev advice that took me way too long to learn is make a game with the resources you have not what you hope to have. Not good at art, fine, keep it abstract and simple. Focus on your strengths and find ways to hide the weaknesses till you get better at it.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Having pitched to movie folks, they really think making games is so much simpler than making movies. I had a studio head say to me "It's just people on computers right?" The economics are probably better in games though if you know what you're doing. It's still hard.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
My mom doesn’t really understand what I do for a living but is still supportive. As long as I’m happy doing it she’s happy too. Showed her our announcement video for the new project. 😭
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I see yet another all mostly white male ex-Riot/Blizzard video game startup that's fully funded. Now that we can do fully remote studios, the pipeline problem excuse doesn't really work. It's deliberate. More reason to have diverse funding sources.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I'll never understand game devs talking shit about other games on here. No one ever sets out to make a bad game on purpose and it's so hard to actually ship something. I've learned something valuable on every project, especially the ones that weren't successful critically or $.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
E3 2005, while working on Path of Neo, I got a request from Atari for some last minute E3 art. The request was for a 90ft x 90ft Matrix code drip illustration with the Atari logo. The largest piece of art I'd ever made. Done in all vectors to keep the file size manageable.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Years ago I pitched a game to a successful film studio that wanted to get into games. They told me film biz is tough and margins are slim and games seemed easier and more predictable to make. They asked me “all you need for games are some people and computers right?”
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Minority devs, apply for positions that you think you're underqualified for, apply for grants and funds you think you wouldn't get. Pitch that project. It's a hustle. No one's looking out for you and don't settle for the subset 'diversity' initiatives.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
This isn't sustainable. Four to six years for an ever increasing arms race of high fidelity is burning people out. It's very difficult being creative for that long of a period of time on the same project unless the working conditions are changed.
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VGC
@VGC_News
Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty has said that both game players and the industry in general need to realise that most big games now have development cycles of around half a decade. vgc.news/news/xbox-game
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
From start to finish, Thirsty Suitors took about 3 years and some months. I'm proud that we were able to have a smooth production cycle while making sure everyone on the team was taken care of and not overdoing it. Last two+ years have been on 4-day work weeks.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Wow, @SonicFox5000 is a legend. "Pretty much I have to say is that I'm gay, black, and a furry, pretty much everything Republicans hate, and the best e-sports player of the year"
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
We tried out half day Fridays for several months and recently switched to a 4-day work week. This is for a team of 15 spread across 12 hours, 4 continents, fully remote for the last four years. Working async through Slack and meeting/playtesting over Discord.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Having a real hard time finding a vocalist to work on Thirsty Suitors. If you can sing in Tamil or Sinhala, and English please reach out! It's a fun project and a great opportunity.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
This DICE talk was fun and felt honored to be asked to chat with Tim.
@IGN
Tim isn't talking to himself. Could someone over there update the description to include my name too? It's the little things and omissions that makes us feel unseen. Clearly I'm not trying to be invisible.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I've seen the "work like their lives depend on it" getting dunked on. In my 24 years in the game industry there isn't a single project or crunch that I look back on now and think it was worth it. I would trade it all for the missed relationship time, missed putting kids to bed.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
Replying to
@Ekanaut
I think their closest analogy to games is working with visual effects houses. They think oh we make up the story and have "technicians" make the thing. What could go wrong? Oh you poor baby, let me tell you.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I remember pitching Thirsty Suitors to a particular big publisher in early 2020 and there was zero reaction. No comment, just stared at the demo and said nothing. One of the strangest pitch meetings ever 😂 Glad we went with Annapurna
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I don't know if y'all heard but we announced our next game Thirsty Suitors. It's game celebrating culture inspired by our stories and families, our backgrounds and lived experiences.
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Thirsty Suitors 💦🛹🔪 out November 2nd
@OuterloopGames
Thirsty Suitors is a stylish RPG that follows the story of Jala who’s back to her town of Timber Hills to confront her mistakes, make up with her exes, reconcile cultural differences and become the person she was meant to be with active turn-based combat, skating, and cooking.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
To clear things up, the two main characters in Thirsty Suitors, Jala and Tyler, are not sisters. They're ex-besties, ex-lovers, and story is about their on and off again relationship. Will Jala fix things up with Tyler? Who knows? (Ok, I mean we do, but you get the idea)
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I'm getting more comfortable telling bigger companies and publishers if they want my feedback on their games business I'm more than happy to consult for a fee. I don't charge for indies or folks starting out especially marginalized devs. Feel free to DM
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
The part of game development where you have to make a whole lot of different sized images and banners for various store front needs is my least favorite part but it also means we're almost done.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
How does an indie studio can give so much while certain publishers and platforms can't even utter the words Black Lives Matter even as an empty gesture?
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Klei
@klei
We stand with the Black community, and Klei is donating a $1 million to ACLU and the NAACP legal defense fund. More Information: forums.kleientertainment.com/announcement/6
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I spent the week playing Half-Life: Alyx at
@valvesoftware
in 4 to 5 hour daily sessions on an Index. It’s amazing! Gameplay, visuals, pacing, story are all fantastic. Much bigger VR game than I thought it was going to be with so many great moments. It’s a real game y’all! 👀🤯
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
While y'all debate about Buzz Lightyear, it's a good time to bring up Cars universe and how cars evolved from the last person to drive it and became sentient after humans died. Also if you open up their doors, brains will fall out.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
I can’t stress this enough. If you’ve had a great career as an individual contributor and are starting up a studio expect to cut your output by 50%. So much of running a studio is not about getting content into the game. It’s about enabling and removing roadblocks for your team.
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Chandana එක Ekanayake
@Ekanaut
The longer I do this the more I appreciate the real secret in making good games is a team that works together well and hopefully continue to do so over multiple projects. I prioritize that over anything else.
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