When I was a child I wanted to make videogames. Nobody could tell me how, so I found out for myself. I got books from the library about how computers work, I experimented with an interactive BASIC prompt, I got hold of open source games and read them end to end. I tried projects that were too ambitious for my skills. I failed a lot: it wasn't any less rewarding than success because I was discovering. Eventually I made things! I wasn't even showing them to anyone, nobody was interested, it's something I just did by myself for its own sake.
Then I found indie games. Other people were doing this thing that I did, making games by themselves, even selling them for money. I'd moved to England: I could even go to jams and meet them in person. I got inspired. I got the idea that maybe this calling, this thing which I do by my very nature, that I cannot help but do, maybe it could be my job. The thing I do intrinsically for myself could benefit other people too. I could take the time and space to really focus on it, even as a responsible adult. I "went indie". It was rewarding in lots of ways! I wasn't making a living but people were saying very nice things. The numbers went up little by little, it kept feeling like I was almost making it, maybe the next will be the one to break through. Whenever it came down to a choice of whether to keep at it, it seemed reasonable to try: I was almost there, I was doing good work, people were writing about me, it might just get there soon. Even coming back after covid, it still felt like the sensible thing to do. My ability to do anything is more limited but this is where I've built up skills and a reputation and that's got to be easier than starting from scratch somewhere else. I've always been so hopeful, it's exhausting.
Listening to the tslog podcasts, especially this most recent one, on Cinco Paus, it tears my heart in all directions. They're writing songs about my work. They're comparing me to Shigeru Miyamoto, calling this the next step forward in taking game design seriously. They've been inspired, their lives touched. I hear how my games got someone through a difficult time or helped them with chronic illness or taught them The Truth. By any reasonable measure, I've succeeded above and beyond expectation. My work is deeply deeply appreciated. It's hard for me to really take it in. When they interviewed me by in May Andy made me shut up and receive his thanks: it challenged me, I kept wanting to say something to stop it and I hit this real emotional barrier and wept. To be meaningfully appreciated is so much. I felt that again listening to the Cinco Paus episode, I want to block out this appreciation but it's good for me to release and truly accept it. Thank you.
But the numbers. The numbers! The numbers tell a different story. Of course the numbers are wrong. The numbers don't know shit. I'll trust a person over a number any day. It's just there are other numbers too and they have to match up somehow. I'm old enough I can't just keep on doing something that's not working. I have kids now, I have medical expenses, I can't anymore get by on the smell of an oily rag (as my father used to say). I've given this thing a damn good try and if it's still not doing the numbers there's no reason to think it ever will. People are even saying it's getting harder. That it's a bad time for games, the industry is in rough shape, there's a tidal wave of ai clones and this and that. I don't even know. I'm not touching any of the LLM stuff myself for I am a righteous man. But is the outlook really so bad? Every week or so I hear of a new release that's sold 10k copies in the first hour, 100k copies in the first day, 1m copies in the first week... we still buy games, someone still makes a living off this, that success is still out there for whomever is collectively chosen to have it. It's okay if that's not me. I've done the best I can do, I've done everything anyone ever told me would work, if that's not enough I need to accept it. I got this job idea stuck in my head and it's time to let it go, it's not doing me any good.
Every time I've asked for help it's been because we're running out right then and there's nowhere else for the next thing to come from. And it's always worked out, you've come through for me. Thank you. Some of you have given so much I can't believe it, Raigan literally posted me a computer, people have given serious amounts to my patreon and the crowdfunding for 868-BACK. Maybe it's fine and you'll always come through when I need it. Trust. But it stresses me out whenever I look at the numbers, I don't want to keep going like this, it's affecting my health, it's affecting my work, I don't feel as free to really explore what needs making when there's pressure hanging over to sort out the next bit of income. I want a break from the endless pant-seat flights. Can I get out of this if I stop trying to have it be job? Maybe?
I'm not going to stop making games! Games are my art, I feel like myself when I make them. It brings peace. If I go a while without making a game something's wrong. Of course I'll keep making games. But there are other times I feel like myself too: when I'm alone in the forest, when I dance, when I brew potions, when the waves roll me over, when I heal with my hands. When my heart is open children and wild animals come to me. A thing doesn't have to be job to count. Something else can job for a while, somehow, I need to figure out what but it doesn't have to be this.
I'm not ruling out the possibility that gamemaking might ever job for me! Maybe it will. I'm trying to orient myself to be able to live in whichever universe we turn out to be in, whether it works or it doesn't. To get out of emotional attachment to success or failure. It's okay if I don't do it full-time, it's okay if I'm out for a while, I can do whatever I want really, I just have to exorcise this idea I got in me, I can't keep hoping it'll treat me like job when it never has so far.
Actually I even know what game I'm making next. Not the details, but the seed it will grow from. As usual it'll take several months of thinking deeply about it, and then a year or two building it out. It's a lot to ask for, to be paid to work away at something for that much time, it's totally reasonable if that's not what I get. But at the same time, compared to so many costs that get paid is it really that much to ask for? I'm still pretty cheap to run. I look at games with dozens or hundreds of people in the credits, and the game is just ok; somehow they got the money for all that. I should be able to get that, surely, there I go committing hope again, fuck. After all this time it still feels like I'm almost there. Maybe the latest one will still break through any day now, people have been saying nice things. Maybe the next one will, or the one after that. Well I'll make them anyway. Maybe I do a crowdfunding but ask for a bigger number this time. Maybe I do it part-time, it'll take longer, that's okay, maybe from everyone else's perspective this isn't any different, Michael just comes along occasionally with the best game and everyone can tell him why somehow although it will inspire a hundred new games and be taught in universities it doesn't deserve to actually be paid for. I'm used to it.
Anyway. Buy my game. It's good, game of the year, best roguelike ever, once in a decade, etc., you'll love it and I'll feel better about numbers, win/win. I'll keep on with the updates I need to do for that, and work out how I'm going to make the next one and also what else I might do for income in between. Probably good for me to do something else a bit, really. I've succeeded in games, the success that was here for me, success doesn't have to be doing the same thing forever, I'm gonna go listen to those voice notes again.
