This post is more like an entry in my journal that I've made public, a post about finding my way in the world of game development.

You're an Artist Now

The most consistent advice I've ever received about game dev is that it's difficult and that I shouldn't quit my day job before I land on a game idea and partial implementation that looks promising. As a software engineer by profession, I didn't need much convincing to believe the first part of the advice. As for the second, I tried it for a little bit, but I didn't have enough remaining time and energy to make any meaningful progress in the afterhours. If you want to end up like everyone else, do what they're doing. I don't aspire to end up where most people who moonlight game dev end up, which is not doing game dev.

But the thing is, my goal is not to be a game developer, in the same way in my career to date, my goal was not to be a software engineer. The reason is because, here, type some code into a text file and compile/interpret/run it, and now think about how to make it "better." Congratulations, you are a software engineer. Whether or not you are "good" is unrelated to whether or not you are a software engineer. Similarly, glue some things together in PopularGameEngine and publish it on Steam. By the power vested in me by Nintindoh, I proclaim you to be an official game developer.

So being a software engineer or a game developer or whatever is easy. Being a good one is difficult. When the difficulty in the journey arrives, what is your reason to keep going? If your goal was to be a game developer or software engineer, well, you've accomplished it, so what are you struggling for? (There are actually common answers to this, the two most popular typically being "money" and "ego.") Why get better at all, in this regard?

The most successful (I'll leave the metric up to your imagination) software engineers or game developers didn't platonically aspire to be software engineers or game developers. They had an idea they were passionate about and saw its development through, and by the necessity of the medium they chose to express themselves in, they are/were software engineers or game developers. And when difficulty arose, they grew through it, because they weren't done yet, and challenge was a means to an end.

One thing that always bothered me in industry was that I never fully agreed with corporate/startup leadership's direction or execution. That, and I grew so weary of fixing the same issues over and over again, that when I realized my most valuable currency in life was time, I felt I had only two options career-wise. The first was keep rolling the dice and hope that I find a company the mission and execution of which I agree with 100%. This is possible, and even the companies I have worked for and since left are this exact opportunity for other people working there, and I'm happy for them. The other option was to pave my own way, be the leader, be responsible for not just fixing the issues but also creating each one of them :)

Time in industry served me well. That's where I grew my fundamental skills as a software engineer. I also created a financial runway for myself to allow me my current opportunity. Expanding on this is for a different post.

While I don't really ever try to bin myself into some category, if I had to, I recently realized that I'm a full-time artist now. In industry, I was a software engineer by title, but if I had to bin myself then as well, I'd say "consultant" in retrospect. The difference between artist and consultant in this context is that as a "consultant," the people around me gave me the what, and I demonstrated a how, but I also eventually couldn't keep myself from questioning and participating in reworking the what as well. I also often naturally worked outside of my immediate team boundaries, ultimately just hopping to this and that burning issue through the years. (Shoutout to all the great bosses I had!) As an artist, I am soley responsible for the what now. I don't consider myself an entrepreneur or small business owner, but I suppose those also fit this mental exercise.

The reason I chose artist is because it helped me explain my feelings toward lots of the game dev content available on places like YouTube. There are many popular YouTube game dev channels. The production quality is high. The audience is loyal. The videos get many views. The comments are mostly positive, agreeing. But I just find so little value in most of the material. I consumed a lot of the material because, as a newcomer to the endeavor, I figured I'd drink from the firehose and try to avoid as many pitfalls and gotchas as possible. "You don't know what you don't know," etc. I didn't really know where to look, so I just consumed whatever felt relevant.

The following is a somewhat detached observation with no disrespect intended. I've come to the conclusion that many of the game dev content creators who pump out lots of material on YouTube are more like entertainers. The material is entertaining. Makes me feel better because I know there is some community out there who knows something about the grind, who can talk shop to some degree about the art. And art is the operative word here. I realized I was listening to a bunch of people give their opinions on how to do art. That, and the field itself is so nascent. Not just the field, but most of the content creators are very young in their own journies as well. Advice is often contradictory, sometimes probably the opposite of what is better for most people, takes are tired and recycled, so much is reasoned through analogy, and there are very few contrary takes with deeply convincing explanations behind them.

Toward building an audience in parallel with whatever I end up releasing, I also streamed nearly daily for about one month. I downloaded my own VODs, edited them, and posted them on YouTube as sort of a dev log. That alone was a full-time job, especially when the VODs are 4+ hours long, to the extent that last week I switched to streaming less and just recording a weekly recap of dev progress. I could hire an editor, but even then, I'd need to work with the editor to explain what I want to convey or demonstrate in the videos, and I don't see a big efficiency win there. This had me realize that lots of people pumping out content are hobbyist game devs and otherwise full-time influencers.

Hormozi, I think it was, has a great saying, that you are not the product of the 5 people you surround yourself with but rather the product of the 5 people you compare yourself to. This helped me understand who, if anyone, I should be paying most attention to, which is the people who accomplished what I also want to do. Having hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers and millions of views would be great, but that's a means to an end for me. That was not Kojima's goal, not Carmack's, not Blow's, not Miyamoto's, etc. These guys had stories they wanted to tell, experiences they wanted to build and share. I want to do the same thing. I'm not going to find a YouTube video telling me about my own ideas and experiences. I also don't use any of the popular engines and the like and so don't need any of the content built around those things. I know how to program and can fill in any gaps on my own when need be.

Just as we put names on things like "consciousness" or "salvation" and predicate entire life journies searching for what we told ourselves exists, I put a name (more like a mental label; I don't actually have a word for it) on the idea that all these YouTube senpais have answers to questions I didn't even know I needed to be asking and spent tons of time wading through the material hoping to find the gems. But the situtaion is obvious in retrospect: if I know how to wield the tools and I can envision what I want to build, I need to stop watching YouTube and get back to work. In other words, just build.

With that said, there is still great material on YouTube. What is "great" depends on the viewer of course. I recently found myself thinking back on a specific video I watched, maybe about 1 year ago, while I was still in industry. When it comes to general game development advice, this video is at least 1 order of magnitude more valuable and useful to me than any other video I've watched on the subject. The video is Jeff Vogel's "Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way."

Jeff has the unique opportunity to be older than the art form he works in. Jeff has been building and releasing games for 30+ years. Jeff is still in business.

This path looks most similar to the one I envision for myself. A key insight Jeff shares is, by another name, that of Kevin Kelly's 1,000 True Fans. Namely, you don't need fame or hits to create a sustainable business. You need to build something that caters to the niche you fall in, meaning the niche you understand best because it is you, and given a large enough total addressable market--and the market for video games is massive, despite all the reported recent industry instability--there will be a small but consistent number of people who love this niche and will buy quality products catering to it. It's hard work, but it's possible. The path is actually pretty clear. It will require iteration and perseverance to get right, but it is doable.

I have ideas for communicating the most valuable things I've learned in life to date. My current medium of choice is games since that provides me the opportunity to exercise skills that I enjoy using to build something I can share with the world. Maybe the medium will change. Maybe my path will change (if kids come along, that certainly changes the calculus). But until then I'm a full-time artist with 100% skin in the game. Our individual paths are unknown until we walk them, unless we choose to follow others' (shameless WOODKID/DS2 plug). I'm terribly excited to see where mine goes and what I can make of it. Blessings and peace to you, fellow traveler!