Level 0: No Dev to Game Dev
In this post I’ll be taking this opportunity to introduce myself and my motivations for being game developer, this passion has been something that’s been percolating under the surface for a long time. My background, my academic experience never really lead me to think it was a viable career path. However the confluence of situations that happened
I think my first experience with becoming a game developer originated sometime in the 6th or 7th grade. I was sitting at lunch pouring over the latest edition of GamePro or Game Informer reading some developer interview, it’s been so long I can hardly remember who and just remember reading the words on the paper. They said something along the lines of “…That’s when I knew I wanted to be a game developer so I went to school and that’s what I did.”
The whole idea of becoming a developer flashed into my like a thunder crack, needless to say learning to make games in 1999/2000 is completely different experience than you could today. Books and classes were the only real ways to learn that material and coupled with the inaccessibility that childhood brings especially growing up as poor as we did it was a miracle we had a PC at all. I had been playing games for years at this point, one of the first games I ever played was probably Wolfenstein not counting Word Munchers at school so the very idea that I could even make games never even dawned on me but like all childhood infatuations it quickly passed, I never quite shook that bug of wanting to learn how to program and ultimately become a game developer.
I didn’t really revisit the idea until I had graduated college a fair bit of time later, I was a bit of a crossroads in my life and deciding to reflect on myself I recognized that this would be an ample opportunity to pivot to that I dreamed of doing all those years ago. It was probably the spring or summer (it’s hard to tell in Phoenix, the temperature is either on fire or not) of 2013 and I saw Indie Game: The Movie, this was sort’ve a pivotal moment as it really crystalized what it meant to be a gamedev and despite it’s shortcomings it really showed me at the time what being a solo dev was like and lit a fire under my butt to get moving.
Of course this level of optimism would turn out to be a fool’s errand and I learned the real meaning of burn-out. I poured myself into learning, making projects, and failing. I failed so hard so many times and it was somewhat devastating, I would start projects usually using tutorials, be excited, and then because I had no real plan (no suprise really) I would just completely lose interest, and then eventually burn out. One of my episodes in this period of start, work, burn out cycles would be so bad I wouldn’t touch a line of code for a year. It really affected my personal self-worth and made me truly question what I was doing, this would haunt me going forward.
Toward the end of this three cycle fiasco I came across Codey’s Lab and while incredibly innovative for the time with it’s in-editor tooltips, guided approach, and otherwise novel idea I didn’t really appreciate it as much as I do now. This was my first real exposure to GameDevHQ and Jon’s teaching style which you can still see echoes of today. I ended up doing the Complete Unity Developer course through Unity from Ben Tristrem, this course series was (and still is) incredibly thorough it is my first recommendation for people looking to cut their teeth on gamedev at self-pace.
Starting in 2016 I started to really get serious. I decided that I need to shape up or ship out essentially. This is when I began putting together GigaTank 3000 with my significant other in the summer of 2016, she had (at this point) recently joined a VR company as a 3D artist upon my urging and we got to work making a quick little game jam game. It wasn’t anything special and was finished pretty rapidly but this gave me first real taste of a completed project. I had a published game! It was free and nobody downloaded it save for an absolute handful of people.
Working through the Complete Unity Developer course at this time provided me the confidence I would need to complete prototypes that I never ended up publishing but helped me buoy my confidence levels but there always lingered a sense of impostor syndrome. I still suffered from bouts of burnout but I learned to recover more and more quickly still not realizing that the idea was not to burn out at all but instead pace yourself. I began developing a real appreciation for actually taking care of yourself .
In the 2017 I got deeply interested in VR, this was when Google Cardboard was really taking off and everyone was coveting a Cardboard you could either get for really cheap or even free. The idea of accessible VR intrigued me greatly so I began haphazardly working on a VR game, this would eventually culminate in the creation of The Fog VR for Android. Looking back it is a good if really basic game. There’s a wave system, lives, upgrades and enemies you can unlock, and even a really bad but basic high score system, again this was a free game still really doubting my skill level even if I had cobbled it together from a tutorial a lot of that I had to figure out myself. Still couldn’t really shake the idea of my impostor syndrome but burn out wasn’t nearly as bad as that lost year so I steamed ahead. At the time of The Fog’s release cryptocurrency was hitting new heights and Bitcoin which I had been dabbling in from as early as 2012 was reaching new heights of course this lead to a rabbithole of trading, speculating, losses, and profits but the idea of using blockchain for games percolated in my head that still persists to this day.
2018 started off with a bang as cryptocurrency exploded into full mainstream view, I had spent the better part of the winter mining, trading, and just working on coding that I decided I was ready for another project. At the time I was deeply involved with a cryptocurrency called TurtleCoin (which you should totally check out) and made an endless runner called Turtle Trouble (which you can play here actually) as a bit of a celebration and to better challenge myself however I was still deeply stuck into relying tutorials. This was yet another free game but easily one of most popular to date, tens of thousands of people have played it and technically it was one of my most advanced projects to date with a full (if rudimentary) procedural generation of maps so that no play was exactly the same. This game most closely resembles Crossy Road in style but I think was good fun especially for the time and still really holds up.
The better part of 2018 and 2019 was devoted to learning 6DoF VR and trying to wrap my head around making a game in VR that was fun but the space at the time was still very technically difficult especially for someone who with just bad programming skills and even worse discipline. I managed to make a few more prototypes in the timeframe but really was still stuck in this sort of tutorial purgatory where I felt like I could really deliver a competent product with a good tutorial but even with these set backs I still could see myself developing as software engineer. The amount of knowledge I had was growing in tangible and meaningful ways.
Then 2020 struck, I was brushing up on my math skills at the time trying to really understand the foundational mathematics that I had routinely ignored in school. In addition I was working through the first course of GameDevHQ’s certification track. With that under my belt and COVID bearing down on the U.S. I had the good fortune of being in an occupation that allowed me good sums of free time provided my work was complete. This is when I decided the time was right begin a proper project and set aside prototypes and game jams I had been tinkering with in my free time. I started on Damocles VR roughly around April/May of 2020 and like all of my other projects I started really strong I had a gameplan and was building out systems but as weeks turned to months I began getting frustrated with my lack of progress as I began getting stuck on problems that were technically tough. Then I woukd distract myself with small side projects to refresh my mind and the burn out cycle began anew but as we wound our way through 2020 I was supported by friends and my loved one who cheered me on from the sidelines. I would return to my project bit by bit still working on it but also working on myself mentally and physically.
Then as 2021 started things got a little crazy with getting a new home but one of the resolutions I made for myself this year was to finally publish a game for actual money. In that pursuit I decided to take Jon up on his promise of following his program of actually being a professional in the industry. I don’t know how this year will turn out but I do know by writing these words I am making it a commitment to the myself, my loved ones, and the world that I will do what I set out. The road has been long but I’m ready to keep walking everyday toward my goal and I hope I can help as many people along the way as I can.
UPDATE: As I post this on my site I figured I would go ahead and give another update. I probably won’t touch this article again to maintain it for posterity but I’ve been working at a steady clip, still working through the Professional Unity Program as a I experienced some personal setbacks and self-reflection. If you made it this far I commend your commitment and know that I am working hard. Things always take longer than we anticipate but as long as we take one step in front of the other that we always make forward progress. If you’re on your own journey, keep pushing and you will get there.