16 Mar 2025 - Colin Miller
It’s been about a year and a half since I started doing anything with this blog again and almost the same amount of time since I started playing around with game development.
I have not spent nearly enough time on either of these things.
I find myself now however on a train going to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and I hope to take this opportunity to reinvigorate both of these hobbies.
Work has made focusing on game development difficult. Game dev is a hobby and not something that makes me money, so that thing that keeps the lights on ends up having to take priority. I often wish it were the case that I could do game development for a living, but while I think I’m a pretty good programmer, I’ve not explicitly studied game programming outside of my hobby. I don’t have years of experience writing in Unreal, Unity, or Godot for professional companies. I’ve never published a game. I’ve never made money from making a game. All of thse things make me not really a great hire for any gaming company. Starting my own studio and trying to make something solo sounds wonderfully fulfilling, but also a way to become homeless in short order.
Maybe someday it will be different, but until then, I will focus on the hobby and gain what enjoyment I can out of making games.
I head to GDC with the hope that I’ll find like-minded people and an get some insights into their experiences. I hope to make friends, though that’s difficult as someone who’s fairly shy and introverted. I hope to learn some things. There’s talks by two developers that I hold in high esteem that I’m planning on attending; both either solo or incredibly small team developers who either make their living making games or had a break with a solo game in a way that lets them work on it for a living. Tarn Adams from Dwarf Fortress will be giving a talk about forever early access which is very appropriate. And Billy Basso from Animal Well will give a talk about how he made the game that added up to only 5mb for every year he worked on it.
They are inspiring people, who have inspiring stories. I look forward to hearing from them, not as giant fonts of wisdom as I suspect even they will just state that they worked hard and got lucky, but as people who are genuinely enthusasitic about game development and were able to turn that passion into their life. For me, being around people who have that passion and are able to go with it is the inspiring thing. Perhaps I could too if I were not as timid about the risks involved.
I’ll try to post here about my experiences. This blog is probably more for myself at this point than any reader as I don’t think anyone reads it. I post so infrequently it would be hard for anyone to notice when it’s updated. But it’s good to write and it’s good to take time to think about and focus on those things which I have a passion for. Passion is truely the most important thing I think someone can have, and any way that I can try to reignite any aspect of mine is a worthwhile investment.
I’m looking forward to the week. I’ll keep the multitudes here updated on my progress to the best of my abilities.