So I did. I left my career to try and make video games. I’ve also changed careers twice before now.
I’ve done the artist thing, and a stint in the tech industry during the dot com boom before that. I’d get into that whole thing, but with so much time from then till now, I don’t think there’s anything useful in there. Point is I do nerd stuff. The rough chain of events looks like this:
- Tech was interesting and the money was good, but it wasn’t creative enough, so I dipped.
- Art was creative and the money was bad, but I missed technical challenges (and the money if I’m being real), so I switched.
- I finally found a kind of balance between both, and the hacker/maker community is a great place to be, but my interest in security just wasn’t high enough to keep me engaged.
So, at the end of 2023, I walked away from my full-time position. To make video games.
Maybe a little more about my history with games is in order. In between work and life over the years, I’ve had the game making itch. Well, I always have the itch, but I’ve been able to scratch it on a few occasions. In 2013 I released a tabletop role playing game, though it didn’t make much money. After I had prototypes for a few board and card games, but life got in the way. I’ve done some small video game prototypes on my own too, time is just never on my side with these things. Then there’s all the games I’ve played. Safe to say it’s a lot, though less so as I get older. Point is gaming is in me.
For about the last 3 years, I had been getting less and less happy professionally. People complain and say it’s the company, blame process or management, woulda, shoulda, blah blah blah. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do the same.
It wasn’t any of that. Nowhere is perfect, but I was working with friends on interesting stuff, going to cool places and while I’m sure there might’ve been better money out there, I couldn’t say I was hurting. I just didn’t like what I was doing. So now I’m going to try and do this.
I just really want to make games man.
So until I’ve tapped everything, I’m taking this shot until I either make it, or have failed spectacularly enough that there is no doubt I took the shot in the first place.
I’ll be self-reporting as often as possible, assuming the process doesn’t start to overtake making the games themselves. I think that will look like 2-4 times a month, but I’m going to play it by ear.
Mostly I will be teaching myself more about game design, making game prototypes and honing my skills for the next few months, building up to my first official release! We can check back after that to see how well all this has aged lol. Hopefully it’ll be an entertaining enough ride that you’ll be here with me on the other side!
A hit of reality before you jam though.
I agree with most of the internet, this isn’t a great idea. You probably shouldn’t try this, and this isn’t me advocating for it. If you remember at the beginning of the story, my first career was during the dot com bubble. The running joke is that I’m 150 years old. While that obviously isn’t true, I ain’t 35 either kid.
I’m doing this because in those last years of being unhappy, I saved every penny. I paid off my apartment sized house, it didn’t cost me $200k. I’m single with no kids and my most expensive hobby outside of custom split keyboards and 3D printing is probably kayaking, and all that moneys spent. I’m in maintenance mode right now.
The reality is that while I don’t have “baller” money, as long as I keep it under a grand a month (which is possible), I can take a nice long shot at this, and only have to deal with picking up side-work every once in a while (which I can if I have to). I’m probably more worried about you than you should be about me, especially if you’re under 25.
In my opinion, taking risks is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and one of the best things you can do for yourself. That said, deciding to YOLO the rent money on a crypto startup is probably just dumb.