To be able to explain why I chose to give Games Development a go, I probably need to start at the beginning.
Growing Up with Gaming
So, at the beginning, there was the Big Bang ... I know, you've heard it all before, so I'll skip ahead a bit.
I grew up in the 90's, when smartphones were science fiction and home gaming was a fairly new concept. LEGO was the creative toy of choice, and TV was full of fantasy, science fiction, and hope for the future (that worked out). Even documentaries were about discovering the world around us, not how much damage "we" as a species have done to our planet.
The first games console I played was a SNES, and while we had a few games for it, Mario games were the main pastime. The next one after that was an N64, my brother had a Gameboy Colour, and when PlayStation became a thing, we eventually had one of the 1st generation ones as well.
This meant I grew up gaming. Not like it is today, with online multiplayer, realistic 3D graphics, or paid dlc and in-app purchases. A game was just a game. They were sometimes simple, without a difficulty setting, and you only played to get a high score. Others had a story for you to discover as you played; turning the page with every button press or interaction.
Growing up in this period of hope and fantasy, driven by technology, naturally gave me an interest in technology. It also gave me an appreciation for story telling, regardless of the medium of the story being told.
To me, games themselves became the pinnacle of creativity and story telling. By providing a medium where art, music and writing can be combined into an interactive story that can played. With the most complex games needing to be played multiple times, in different ways to see different outcomes to the stories they contained.
How I Started GameDev
As time went on, the gaming industry evolved, and I kept growing and learning. Eventually, I found myself working in the IT industry, and had the opportunity to learn bits of programming, from concepts, to UML, to needing to use different languages for different tasks. At that time I didn't think of myself as a developer, but was confident that I could review most code, from most of the common languages, regardless of the differences in syntax.
Eventually, my career took a regression, and I found myself working a simple retail job (which I still do). At the same time, the most popular games released today are rarely about interesting stories, or even just chasing a high score, they're about playing online and paying for the best items and equipment. While it is fair to say that is the current gaming market, I prefer single player games. Either story driven games, or sandbox games.
So, with a bit of spare time on my hands, and a general understanding of development practices, I decided to start looking into learning how to make games. My aim, besides hopefully making money, is to get to a point where I can make the kind of games that I would want to play. Games that have a story, games that take more than 5 minutes to play, and games that feel worth playing.
To me, this made some kind of sense, and proved to be an interesting challenge. Over the years, I had been exposed to coding, digital art, 3D modelling, audio software, video editing, project management, testing practices, data management, and so many other subjects that relate to the activity of making games. I'm not an expert in any one of these areas, but have a basic working knowledge that can serve as a basis for learning about each subject as I need to.
As time has progressed, I have learned that it is not always as simple as it seems, but because of the broad basic knowledge I have, I am yet to come across a knowledge or skill gap that seems insurmountable. The variety of types of work in how I make my games, while sometimes a challenge to organise, keeps the experience of making games interesting and enjoyable. If I get bored, or stuck, in one part of the work, I can work on a different part and go back to it later. Meaning I'm always moving my projects and ambitions forwards.
As it stands today, I'm still learning, but I am improving, and the projects I'm working on are becoming more complex. Closer to what I would expect to see in a game. Closer to the ambition.
So that's the story (so far).
Follow me on icth.io and x.com
itch.io - https://crazyhoundgamedesign.itch.io
x.com - https://x.com/crazyhoundgames
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