So for the past month I’ve been helping out a duo of Ukrainian iPhone developers make their/our first iPhone game. I did this game on a much lower budget than I would have wanted, but I figure it’s definitely a good portfolio piece and a bonus when applying for contracts that require iPhone experience. That icon (the one with the P, I don’t really wanna mention the name of the game because I don’t know how they’d feel about that) actually may not be the final one btw, it’s just what they sent me yesterday.
This is the first time I’ve had language barriers when working with a client, and there were definitely times were I struggled to decipher their use of tense and swapping of words. I had to learn to swap words like “picture” with “image” and get around the fact that they seem to have no concept of tense (ie “made” instead of “make”). This isn’t a knock on them by any means, these are all common mistakes for anyone who didn’t grow up using English (and even with some people who did). In fact, I think their game is quite unique though definitely not something you’d play for more than five minutes. I don’t know if it’ll make them a lot of money though, but certainly it’s enough to cover the cost of hiring me. But to go back to speaking English, I’m used to discussing things with clients, clearing up matters, making suggestions on the aesthetic of a certain sprite or button, but it’s hard to do that when you’re not sure that you’re truly being understood. Eventually after a few tries I decided to give up, and I came up with a simple mantra “if what they want isn’t ridiculous or horrible, just do it.”. I also stopped making suggestions or waiting for them to make suggestions when I saw a problem, but addressed it instead and simply told them how my solution worked. The less dialogue the better.
Hopefully the game does turn out well though, cause if they make some money off of this we have a good enough relationship that I’m almost positive they’ll come back to me for more work.
Geek of All Trades 