I've always been a passionate gamer. As far back as I can remember, I've enjoyed creating experiences and making up (and breaking) rules. When I was deciding what to go to school for, I never really considered video games as a career though - maybe it was hearing my parents and teachers voices in the back of my head telling me it's not a real career, maybe it was reading that the industry is notorious for competition and burning out it's developers, or maybe it was just self-doubt. A couple years ago though, I got as close to rock bottom as I've come. Lost a job, just about ran out of money, and was a couple weeks from not being able to make my rent. Right before everything went to shit, my family bailed me out - which I'll forever be grateful for - and I landed a new job (that I didn't really care about) and after I got settled, I started to do some reflection on that time. During that introspection, I discovered alot of things about myself - mainly that my values and how I perceived myself was 50 shades of fucked up (and that I had ADHD). I was stuck in a cycle of putting all of myself into dead end corporate jobs that I hated, burning myself out, then self-medicating with alcohol, drugs, social media and girls all the while hiding from what I truly wanted. Once that hit me, I decided to pull a 360 and completely turn my life around. I started trying to eat well, read a fuckton of self-help books and started to connect with myself so I could understand myself. Let me tell you, the person I was two years ago is a completely different person. My social media addiction got to a manageable point, I quit smoking (even weed for a bit) and started to creating my values. After awhile, I discovered my true purpose and a drive to unlock my full potential. My most important value is creativity and defining that brought back all the feelings and passion I had about games and game design. The negative voices in my head all vanished and were replaced by a hype man pushing me towards my dreams. As someone with an introverted personality (and the aformentionsd ADHD), I also decided to say fuck traditional school, even after going on medication that just isn't an environment I was able to thrive in. Instead, I decided to play to my strengths and jumped into book learning, creating a portfolio showcasing my art, starting a blog to improve and showcase my writing, and working toward releasing a small game to showcase my game design and engine knowledge. As if that wasn't enough, I also decided to forgo a normal corporate game job and go right into trying to start an indie development startup. I feel like corporate games are uninspired, and I want to create a brand new gaming business model that makes money, but more importunely celebrates and encourages creativity and risk. That's where I'm at right now. This blog and my journey are by no means meant as advice or to be taken as gospel. Rather, I want to share the tools and experiences, successes and failures that I've gone through and will continue to in hopes that I can empower you to take risks, bet on yourself, and take steps to achieve your dreams - even if you have.a non-traditional background. I'll add a list of my favorite books at the end - self-help, art, game design, and writing. Let's take a look back this years progress in my journey to indie game developer.
The first thing I started on was art. Art - visual and audio specifically - is my favorite part of video games. I get absolutely drawn in by environmental story telling, spending hours just looking at various locations and imagining normal life in these alternate realities. Art was also the area I was least confident in. I've had a lot of negative experiences with art throughout my school years and never though it was something I could be good at, let alone something I enjoyed. That's exactly why I decided to start there first. If I could master something that I've told myself I never could, that would give me physical and mental reinforcement to pursue even scarier and/or risky things. I was right too - check out my first drawing when I started, and one of the last pieces I did in the class. HUGE improvement in just a couple months, and that was almost two years ago. I've started with the bacis - by focusing on drawing and learning basic art principles. Then I focused on perspective drawing, lighting and I'm now currently working on my art process and doing a character art study. After this study, I'm going to work on environment and architectural drawings. Next year I plan to translate that knowledge into 3D modeling. My favorite things I've learned so far is that art is about seeing, not technique. If you can take a minute slow down, and see things for as they are, you can be an artist.
At the same time that I started art, I started learning game design and dabbling with game engines. I first dove into game design theory, learning what games are and what experts defined are the most important parts of games. I then started applying those theories to the game concepts I was working on (I had 8 so far, two are just about ready to start development) and experimenting with documentation. I practiced pitches, high-level views/descriptions and project management - I also daylight as a startup manger so I get to practice project management there too. This, somewhat surprisingly, came naturally to me. The theory was super interesting to me, and I was very happy to see a lot reflected in the work I'd done so far. Documentation was also easier than the books made it out to me, but I haven't had to collaborate yet so how good I am at game specific documentation remains to be seen (the stuff I do at work fucking slaps though so I know I'm at least a good project manager). I'm currently re-vamping my documentation to include total project pricing calculations - including vendors and all that - and editing my games vs theory. I'm also working on a Table-Top-RPG so I can practice all those skills and actually work on balancing math - something I haven't had a ton of practice yet. Next year I'll take a deeper dive into game engines - Unreal specifically. Then, it'll be prototype time and then the world is going to change - well, at least the world of gaming.
Writing is something I've always felt confident with. As an introvert, I prefer written communication vs face-to-face communicate and I've always been a bit of a storyteller so writing came naturally to me. I'm by no means an expert, but I've read enough books and taken enough creative writing classes that I at least have a solid writing process in place and my vernacular is expansive enough I can sound interesting (my limitation is spelling, I SUCK at spelling, thank God for autocorrect) so it's mostly a matter of practice. I started by writing short stories and lore entries in my game universes, but I wanted to do something I could share with other people and maybe even find people who can give me feedback. So I started a blog (check it out, www.theedge.blog)! It took me awhile too, I've had this fucking thing on my schedule for like 4 months before I even started the dumb thing, but I'm here now so that's all that matters. Since I do consider myself a solid writer, I'm pushing myself a bit and doing weekly blog posts and on various subjects. I get to do Cyberpunk 2020 scenarios, game analysis and reviews, short story stuff, and personal posts - all of which are relevant to games and business ownership. I was going to also write about stocks, personal finance, and my startup experiences, but I decided it was probably nicer for me to leave some topics for the rest of y'all - although I will start a chat room where we can talk about this stuff if anyone is interested or wants to share insight. Anyways, I'm currently working on keeping a solid writing routine this year. I have two short stories planned and ready to go - part one of my game universe short story is already up - several Cyberpunk campaigns cooking, a game analysis series already started, and a bunch of games to review. I'm excited to share what I have with you - particularly my next short story - and if anyone is interested in mutual feedback, slide in the DMs.