 It's nice to have a friend. When Mike Mood first decided to reach out to a webcomic artist that he admired, he didn't realise just how much this would change his life. He'd been following the progress of an artist and amateur game designer called The Meatly for a while. The Meatly made webcomics detailing his misadventures in making games, and Mike couldn't help but relate to his earnest efforts to succeed as a developer. Soon, Mike and The Meatly would team up together. They'd start working on games as a pair, bouncing ideas off each other, and help to overcome each other's weaknesses. Somewhere along the way, this friendship would do more than just inspire the pair to create better art. One day, completely by accident, the duo would create Bendy and the Ink Machine, and inadvertently launch a phenomenally popular indie gaming series upon an unsuspecting world. Once upon a time, a little puppet called The Meatly wanted to make his own video games. He'd been obsessed with gaming ever since he'd been small. Even back when the only technology available to him was a simple slideshow program, he'd tried his hand at making interactive experiences. Alas, this practice didn't instantly lend itself to a career in gaming, and as such, The Meatly went in a different direction professionally. He was, first and foremost, an artist, and in order to be able to use his skills in a way that would bring in money, he went into a career in marketing. This work was far from glorious, and it did little to scratch The Meatly's creative itch. By day, he would suffer through this boring, terrible day job, and by night, he'd work on creating his very own games. The Meatly was inspired by the beautiful yet creepy textures of Dead Space, and similarly, he found plenty to love about the simple cartoonish joy of angry birds. He tried his hand at a little of everything, only ever making games for fun, as he experimented and tried out making a whole range of different types of interactive media. As eager as he was to work on these personal projects, The Meatly ran into a lot of pitfalls and obstacles as he worked. Something always seemed to get in the way of his game's development and design, and he had to admit that he wasn't the best at programming to begin with. This was to say nothing of the challenge of actually getting anyone to play his games. The Meatly always wished for a big, excited response to a game launch, but no matter how much he worked on his titles, nobody ever seemed to pay him much attention. In an effort to vent his frustrations, The Meatly started making little comics that captured his feelings about creative work. One such comic, for example, showed him being visited by the Idea Fairy, who, with a wave of a wand, convinced him to ditch everything he'd been working on in order to start a brand new game, wasting all of his previous work. These comics were only ever meant as a way for The Meatly to release tension, but before long, they'd attracted a following online. It turned out that a lot of other would-be game developers felt much the same as The Meatly, and a tiny community formed around his art as they all discussed the challenges of staying focused as indie games developers. The Meatly earned a modest following, as a few thousand people came to read his work every now and then. The Meatly treated this small community as best he could, engaging with them regularly on Twitter. These comics would end up becoming even more important than The Meatly could ever have expected, as they soon put him in touch with the perfect creative partner to help him collaborate on the game that would soon prove to be his biggest claim to fame. One day, miles and miles away from The Meatly, all the way in Canada, an amateur game developer called Mike Mood found a series of comics that seemed to sum up his experiences perfectly. He felt a strange attachment to the glib, simple avatar that appeared in these comics, and he instantly recognized the Idea Fairy. She'd visited him plenty of times over the years as well. Mike was experiencing a period of transition in his life. He'd been working for a long time in IT support, and had become sick of his repetitive, unfulfilling job. He had yearned for the chance to make video games professionally, but he didn't see how he could ever escape his dead-end job. There simply wasn't enough time to get everything done. Mike had opened up about his frustration with his mother, who had convinced him to quit his job and throw himself into something that made him genuinely happy. With some trepidation, Mike took the plunge, severing ties with his old job, and trying to find his place in the world as a game maker. Things hadn't exactly gone according to plan, at least not at first. Mike fell into many of the same traps that The Meatly explored in his comics, which was probably why these little illustrations meant so much to Mike. Mike reached out to The Meatly, wanting to talk with him about his work. The pair began tweeting online back and forth, and eventually, despite the distance between them, they decided to try making games together. The pair complimented each other perfectly, even if at times they found themselves at odds over how their projects should progress. The Meatly was an artist first and foremost, while Mike preferred to sort out the technical side. As such, The Meatly always felt that they should start their games by creating a world and story first, and then building their gameplay around this framework, while Mike instead thought that the game's mechanics should be their most important starting point. As much as the two disagreed on this, they were happy to work together. Mike could provide the technical skills that The Meatly lacked, while The Meatly could give Mike's ideas visual, polish and style. They were a pretty perfect pair. As they worked, Mike and The Meatly dreamed up an exciting, interesting game idea that would be their magnum opus. They decided to commit to this wholeheartedly, despite the work that was involved in realising their dreams. This game was not Bendy and the Ink Machine. Instead, the pair's greatest creation came about completely by accident, over a weekend of feverish work on a side project that was never meant to last for more than a few minutes. Despite having a big, bold vision for a unique game, The Meatly was still regularly visited by the Idea Fairy, and he often found himself being distracted by other projects. One weekend, he found himself wondering about a completely different visual style for a game. He thought about early animation, about cute characters that are also just a little creepy, and he wondered what it would be like to create a game that looked like it took place within an ink drawing. What would it be like to walk through a sketch? He began brainstorming, and with a little free time at his disposal, he decided to take a weekend to throw together a prototype of sorts. The Meatly wanted to create an adorable mascot character for his game that perfectly summed up what his experience was about. That said, he wasn't entirely sure how to go about this, so he focused on making distinct, eye-catching art assets for his game. As he was creating a standard monster, he went to save the file in the 3D modelling program Blender. He tried to type in the file name he wanted, monster.blend, but his computer lagged for just a second as he was typing, and instead the file saved as bendy.blend. What a perfect name, thought The Meatly. Bendy summed up what he was looking for with the game, something that reflected the elastic cartoon era that he was looking to emulate. Once the name was in place, finessing the design of the character himself was the easy part. The Meatly spent a while working on the prototype, placing his character models in a flat yellow background with a little shading so that they stood out. When he added in a simple lighting system, things got even better, as with a few clicks, he discovered that the whole game suddenly got creepy. Then, disaster struck. He saved the game file, and when he came back to it, the file refused to open. For long, but not too devastated, The Meatly chalked this up to experience. He'd learned a lot with his weekend of work on Bendy and the ink machine, but if he lost the file forever, perhaps it wasn't meant to be. For the next few months, The Meatly and Mike continued working on the big game project that they wanted to create together. It was a long while before The Meatly decided to give his Bendy game another try, and curiously tried to open his game file again. To his complete surprise, the file opened, and the entire game was back. The Meatly hastily finished up the work he'd been doing on his initial demo, and sent it off to Mike to get his feedback. It was with some sheepishness that The Meatly showed his demo to Mike. He fully admitted that the game's code was a bit of a mess, and while Mike assured The Meatly that it couldn't be all that bad, he was soon proven wrong. Sure, the game looked cool, but the code was an absolute mess, and it wasn't in any way optimized for any PC other than the one The Meatly had used to program the demo. If this game was going to run on anything other than a high-end machine, Mike would need to completely overhaul its inner workings. Mike worked to fix The Meatly's patchwork code, and before long, the initial demo for Bendy and the Ink Machine was ready to be unveiled to the public. There was just one change to make. The Meatly decided that instead of calling this a demo, they should name it Chapter 1. That way, if the pair's little audience enjoyed the game, it could easily be built upon in another installment. Mike and The Meatly launched the game, and then immediately went off to do other things. In The Meatly's case, he decided to go to sleep. As always, he kept his phone by his bed, and when he checked it in the night, his heart stopped. His Twitter notifications were overflowing. Everyone was talking about him, and about his brand new game. Somehow, as The Meatly had slept, Bendy and the Ink Machine had exploded in popularity, as a growing audience had fallen in love with the game that he and Mike Mood had made together. Here it was, the fantastic reaction that The Meatly had always dreamed of. His throwaway prototype had become a global sensation, and thanks to the partnership that he'd developed with Mike, they'd both managed to achieve their shared dream. The moral of the story is that sometimes it pays to work together. None of us is perfect. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and while we can all work hard to improve our talents, there are some things that we'll always be better at than others. Gaming, as well as pretty much every artistic community, revolves around stories of single authors creating their own personal works of genius. While these accounts are nice, they rarely tell the whole story. Instead of striding out by yourself, eager to make your own mark on the world, it can help to look to your own supportive community of friends and fellow creators. Take strength from others, share ideas, and see what can be accomplished when you reach out to other people. As with Bendy and the Ink Machine, great things can come from working with someone else, and taking advantage of several people's talents in order to make the best possible artistic creation. Maybe such partnerships will lead you to create your own magnum opus, or perhaps you'll simply learn from others and further develop your own skills. Either way, reaching out can help you to make genuine friends, and that's often the best prize of all.