So first off, you see this post. Yah I didn't forget! Honestly already hyped about that, so I'm checking it off as a win. Second off, I did work some today! So you might be asking why I'm even excited about making the post, I've had days where I did nothing BESIDE post, having something to post about should be great?!? right?..... well.... you see..... here it begins. THE STORY OF THE DAY THAT IS TODAY
Finished work and relaxed some. Thought I should do some work, but I did some doodles last night and really wanted to doodle some more so I did that. Then I wanted to watch just one more thing, maybe doodle some more... then people, then talking, then more people, then more talking..... then OOPS I need to work on TPM. I go over to the computer, take a look at my TODO and take let go of a big sigh. There's one thing that I've known I had to do since day 1, and have been putting off since then... I have to learn how to build my own behaviors, look up how to search for other people's behaviors, install and use said behaviors, and start building some for my future game development. The problem with this whole thing, and the reason I've been able to justify putting it off so long, is with that last bit of that sentence.... 'my FUTURE game development'. You see, if it's in the future and not right now, the only work I tend to do is thinking. And the thing about thinking is it only gets you so far. I kept putting it off because I can finish TPM with what I know now, I don't need to learn behaviors.
I will NEED behaviors for later projects, and BOY HAVE I BEEN THINKING ABOUT LATER PROJECTS. I've been thinking a lot about what I want from doing this. Making games, how I could maybe turn this into my job. MY job being the important part, I've worked at game companies before, creating smaller lottery games I'll admit but I still learned a lot and got to know more of the general environment. I worked at a start-up for 3 years and we worked on some really cool stuff... the point is I know that I want to have my own business. My own company, I don't want it to be huge, I don't want to be rich or be part of a famous dev studio making AAA games..... I just want to make games for a living. Thinking about this a lot has led me to the idea that I need to make something that I can try to sell. Making a game that's business model is to market to millions... not really my thing. I don't like the high risk / high reward. I don't like working and hoping for a payoff at the end.
I know a lot of artists in my life, and the coolest thing is that they can get commissions. I keep wishing that I could make game commissions but that's so general it's not really a good business model for a developer that's also working a 9-5 and finds it hard to put more than a handful of hours in each week. I'm sure if I had a project I was being paid for, I'd find more motivation but even with that factored in... still not enough time to create any game at a scale and for a price that a client would want. Expectations are too high and my skill level is too low. I kept playing with the idea though, there has to be a way to do it, get commissions for games that I could create in a relativity quick turnaround while meeting client expectations and giving a good user experience. I won't get too far into it now but the idea I came up with that I think will work is to create dating/adventure/proposal games, mostly text with small mini-games.
The more I think about it the more I think it can work, if I build out a template project and get most of the interactions done I can make versions with new stories, options, a few unique mini-games, and the requested characters. Since I know artists I could try and tap into the same market, people that want their DnD character but also might want a short adventure with them. Or people that get an OC and want a small dating game where they try to win the heart of their OC. I haven't crunched the numbers, because frankly I don't know enough or have any of this built up to stream-line it. I think I'll be able to create new versions in a short enough time that the price wouldn't be unreasonable, or outside what some clients would be willing to pay for.
It all comes down to the same thing though, that I don't know enough. The answer to that is simple and comes back to the reason why I need to learn behaviors. I need to learn more, I need to finish tabpole man and I need to start going hard into building up a stable, reuseable library that I can use to quickly create new versions of a story game. My first choice is a romance, I think it'll have the larger market and would be the easiest to create, not excel at I might add, just create.
So you might be asking, so what does this have to do with you being happy that you're even posting today. While the thing is, I finally bit the bullet and tried to learn behaviors and ... I couldn't, or at least I didn't tonight. I looked for a tutorial, found something on the website, read a little, opened 3 new tabs with other reading that looked required. Finished the short article, oh that's weird, I didn't really learn anything. Oh, COOL another link at the bottom to the REAL tutorial. I clicked that, read through that, opened another tab for required future reading. Got to the bottom and noticed that I had just done the initial setup, the stuff I could have guessed my way through, and when it came down to the MEAT, setting up things and getting them to do things.... well the tutorial seemed to be out of date, the few images it had near the end didn't line up with what I saw AND it didn't even really say much besides pointing to another tutorial that SHOULD be the REAL one this time.... I felt defeated and I needed a break. Then soon it was 11 and all I'd done was brainstorm with Jessy about the romance game I was planning to create and try to market. We came up with some cool ideas and I'm excited to write some of it down, and even talk about it here later... but for now, I'm honestly happy. Happy that at least I made this blog post.
Step 34/1000 Also to top today off, I checked out my 'weeks in your life' calendar and that made me a little depressed. Something about seeing your life, where you are, how much time has already passed. Time is brutal. Time dissolves all things. Time to get my ass into gear.
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