After spending the better part of a decade of game dev being the central anchor in my life, I’m rapidly stepping back from it.
This is the post I promised over a year ago, that I’ve been putting off because it’s such a tough one to write. This is the post about shrinking as a creator. Maybe “pulling back” or “drawing down” is a better term, but “shrinking” is what I’ve settled on because it’s the antonym of growing. There are a lot of posts about growing as a creator, but not a lot about shrinking (I couldn’t find any with a cursory search, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist).
I’m on attempt 3 of writing this post. The last version was about halfway finished, but after talking with some other folks and observing the vibes at a local indie meetup, I decided to start over with different framing and a more personal tone. This doesn’t need to be a formal essay, nor should it be.
What really struck me was a conversation with one of the other attendees, discussing the challenges of trying to take a serious shot at game dev while holding a full-time job. To paraphrase, his position was that it’s doable, but that’s all you can do; your life will consist of your job and game dev and nothing else. That’s a sacrifice he was willing to make, but it’s not a sacrifice I am willing to make.
At least, not anymore.
There was a time where that pretty much described my life to a T. I didn’t have a lot going on, didn’t go out or do much, just worked and worked on games (and sometimes just the latter). At some point, though, things changed. I want to be able to play games, and watch shows, and just have that time to myself to unwind and relax instead of being in production mode constantly. I want to go outside, go places, make things that aren’t behind a screen, go to events and make new friends. I don’t want game dev to dominate my life anymore.
I’ve definitely lost my passion for game dev to some extent. At the aforementioned meetup I noticed right away that the crowd was really into making games. They’ve got projects they’re putting their all into, they’re taking notes on how to do better, they really want to make a go of this. My attitude was more like two more and I’m done, here’s a half working demo, I’m not going to fix any of the issues you bring up. I’m already in a mindset of winding down, of putting in the minimum and taking every shortcut in an effort to spend less time working on games.
I’m not intending to give up on game dev entirely after Project Daybreak and Shattered 3. I do think I’ll take a break and I am going to change my approach toward it once I’m back.
I think you can do this as a hobby without no-lifing it, and that’s the space I’m going to explore in the coming years. It’s unfortunately not the space I’m in right now. Part of it is letting go of any notion of trying to make money off it, which I’ve already done. But I still have those two projects in progress, both of them too large in scope, both of them related to previous projects (I’ve talked about the challenges of sequels before). For many reasons, I just want to get them done and out of the way rather than dragging them out or abandoning them.
Once those are concluded, though, I’m going to limit myself to smaller projects that aren’t going to turn into life-dominating time sinks that I have way too much invested in. Things that I can put much less time into, pick and up and put down, without feeling like I’m neglecting things. Stretching big projects over a longer timespan just doesn’t work, at least not for me, because it doesn’t give me any room to do other, new things, and that’s something that’s super important. I think the challenge is going to be to avoid falling into old patterns and starting things I can’t reasonably finish anyway.
Does that rule out Shattered 4? Honestly, I don’t know. I want it to be a thing, I still have that impulse to make reality from fantasy that’s driven me form the beginning, and it really is intended to be the true conclusion to that series. On the other hand, it is a perfect example of a huge project that’s going to become an unbearable burden that I shouldn’t even start. Maybe there is a reasonable way to do it, and maybe I’ll find that.
We’ll see.