Hey everyone! Hope you're doing well.
You may or may not have noticed, but it's been a hot minute since I've posted on this blog. In fact, it has been the longest break I've taken since I published this website.
I'd love to tell you all what I've been doing, and why I haven't posted in so long. Let's start with a small recap of what I've been up to:
Gotten married
Moved back to Australia
Worked on and released some Game Jam entries
Hosted my own Game Jam
Started (and dropped) development on multiple games
Started (and completed) development on some games which I can't really share here
Kept working at Beach Bum Ltd
Yea, it most certainly has been a busy break.
What am I up to nowadays?
There are two main things I'm cooking up right now.
The first, unsurprisingly, is my work in Beach Bum. I've recently been promoted to architect there, so along with my existing responsibilities as team lead it's been really busy. In general, working Israeli hours remotely from Australia is really tough. Thankfully I'm a night person, but I'm still a person and it's impossible to work these hours without some level of social isolation.
I'm thankful I have a supporting wife and that my work is as accommodating as possible for this. It wouldn't have been possible otherwise. As for what exactly I'm working on in the company - as I'm signed on an NDA I can't share anything specific, but the general gist is that I'm making new stuff, and it's very fulfilling.
Over the years in the company I've gotten to work on all the games it has made (including the non-released ones), and by far one of the most rewarding things about my job is getting to work with the different dev teams and learn about their game, their dynamic, and their code.
You'd be amazed how different teams operate completely differently, even in the same company. Getting to learn from all of them is a privilege.
The second is a PC game. At the moment, I don't know if I will release it when I finish it. It's a digital recreation of a board game a good friend of mine designed. It's not pretty, but it's functional. The main point of it is to be able to playtest the game far more easily than with the physical copy.
All I can say is that I'm happy with my code there. I've utilized Unisave (which I've discussed in my previous blog post) to create all the server-side for this multiplayer game, and Unisave doesn't disappoint. It does have its quirks, which I may get into at some point. We'll see.
Why haven't I been posting?
As I see it, there are two major contributors to this.
The first is an excuse as old as time - I've been busy.
Basically following up from my last post, I've had a more or less finished version of Pyramid Scheme (on a technical level). Visually it was very lacking, which was annoying because the only way for it to make it would be for the game to be visually appealing.
What followed was numerous failed attempts by me to collaborate with artists to make UI for this game. Who knew that people wouldn't be psyched to work on art in their free time for a game that will make no money?
I can't say that I'm not entirely disappointed, but it's what happened. Perhaps I have a ways to go when it comes to indie collaboration.
Following this, and sorry for the abrupt transition, my friend died. I won't get into the specifics because it doesn't feel right to, but this sucked pretty bad and affected me mentally for many months. They were an awesome person and I felt like I needed to do something to commemorate them in a way they would want to be remembered. I came up with the idea of making a game jam in their honor - and that's what I did. This basically consumed a half-year of my life as I studied and participated in game jams in preparation, created the game jam, created marketing for the event, promotional videos, social media presence, etc.
The game jam was fine. I'm really grateful to those who participated in it, but turnup was smaller than I anticipated, and I wasn't able to raise any money for the charity I was partnered up with.
It sucks knowing I could've sunk the advertising costs into donations to the charity and possibly have done more good in the world, not to mention saving me a stressful half-year.
I wish I had the retrospective knowledge to know exactly where I screwed up with the marketing of this event and its design, but I don't know.
I'm glad I made that game jam, but it wasn't necessarily good for my mental health.
I'm purposefully not sharing the name of the game jam here nor any links to it because this page is about my game dev efforts, and while this is related to making games, this game jam was all about my friend - not me.
After this, I got swept up in planning my wedding and moving to Australia. Re-settling in here was very time and effort consuming. So it was only a few months ago that I found myself able to work on games again in my free time.
The second contributor to why I haven't been posting is the philosophy of posting itself.
I know that basically nobody reads these posts. In general, people don't even like to read - they prefer video. It feels insane to explain, but it's not naturally intuitive for human beings to open a webcam, start describing what stuff they've been up to, and then editing that video for upload. Like, I'm a game dev. I make games. That's my passion - that's what I love. I like to share my games with others, and I like to tell others about what I'm up to, but it's not easy or intuitive to do so in a 'fun', 'digestible' way.
Making vlog posts was always a bit of a chore for me. I did it because I felt like it was the only way for people to engage and listen to me. I was trying to make indie development my career, and I was desperately trying any trick I could think of to make it happen.
For better or worse, this isn't the case anymore. I have been working full-time in a game studio for a couple of years now. My urge to develop games in my free time has gotten smaller. Not disappeared - I've still done it multiple times, but it's certainly not as strong as it was in the past. It's a shame because I love what I make on my own - it's my self-expression, me proving to myself that I have the capacity to create and be original, but I think it's also a good thing. Not 'needing' to make games on the side means that to some capacity I'm happy where I am and what I'm doing in my day-to-day.
I am, and always will be, an indie developer. The only two things that will change are how much time I set aside for it and how much I will depend on it for my living wage. I am at a point in my life where I don't have to depend on my indie development for money, and I do have some time and patience to dedicate to it every week to keep making games. I'm happy that way.
So for now on, unless I feel the need to change it up in the future, I'll return to working in blog posts rather than vlogs. Running with the theme of my indie development - I am creating weird things that are fun for me to create, and writing these summaries of what I'm up to and what's on my mind is fun for me.
If you're reading this, first of all - wow. That's a lot to read. But also - thank you! I'm glad my ramblings are of any interest to you. I hope you stick around as I continue to log my development.
Anyways, that's it for now. Thanks for checking in, and have a good one.
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