archive - patreon "about"

I've updated my "about" page on Patreon to reflect my current situation. I just wanted to keep a record of what I wrote at the time (July 2022) so I've copied it here:

Hi, I'm Michael and I make videogames.

I used to make really a lot of games. I did jams and made small games really quickly, and I spent a long time making bigger games. You can find my work on smestorp.com; there are several available for free and some bigger ones for sale. There's also a discord where people talk about my games - I don't run it, some lovely people set it up. There's even been a jam where people made games inspired by my games (this writeup about it is really nice).

In 2020, like a lot of people, I got very sick and couldn't work much for a long time. It's bad. Making a living from my work has always been precarious, but it had felt like I was getting there and I had been confident of making something bigger again soon, and this illness has completely disrupted that. Since then I've done some small updates on my previous games, made a few small prototypes, but I'm not anywhere near releasing something new.

My health has improved since then. I'm not back to where I was, I still experience fatigue, but the shadow has passed and I'm getting better. I have more energy and more ability to concentrate, and I'm itching to use that to MAKE STUFF again.

I have two children - one three years old and another being born soon. It's chaos. I'm definitely not going to be on track to release anything with a newborn around so here I'm asking for support to get through. I've been learning how to manage myself to be able to do creative work with less focused time and less energy, but simply having money would do more to help free me up to make things.

I've started making videos to talk about my work, games, and other things that interest me. The first is linked above. It's rambling but honest. I'm planning to do these on a regular schedule. This will be my main public output for now. When I have a game to preview I'll make it available to subscribers; that will take time.

There's also a lot of my games that need attention to keep them working on new operating systems, or have rare bugs that would be nice to have fixed, or it would be nice to release on another platform so more people can play them. I've been very dedicated to supporting my games after release but I've fallen behind on that. This is work that doesn't pay very well because mostly it's for people who've already paid! Supporting me here will also help to do this. But my main focus with my limited time and energy will be to make something new.

Thanks to anyone who wants to give anything, and equally much thanks to anyone who takes time to read, listen, to play my games! 💚