The Joy of Indie Game Development

Alternative title: "Why I do what I do"

Game development is awesome. It's fun, it's challenging, it's complex, it's brutal, it's competitive, and it's rewarding. And I don't mean cash money rewarding (though that can definitely be the case). I mean, it's genuinely worth pouring hundreds of thousands of man hours, and your very heart and soul, into a game. It's worth it because if it works, if it's good, it makes people happy. People have fun, people enjoy what you made. People laugh, or get excited, or smile if you made your game just right.

I've found, from playtesting and from Game Demo Day, that Chromacore is a hit or miss game. When people like it, they LOVE it. When people don't like it, they reeeeally don't like it. And that's okay! I'd rather have a small group of fans that love it, over a bunch of people that are "meh" about it.

But boy oh boy let me tell you - the people that love it really LOVE IT. When these fans sit down to try a demo or playtest the beta, they get this wide grin on their faces and starting getting all excited. It's the same grin I make when I get really excited about game development. Some would get so excited they couldn't even articulate it; they would just keep repeating "awesome" and "amazing" and "wow this is great".

It's these sorts of reactions that make me giddy. It's these sort of reactions that make it worth it. It's these sort of reactions that reaffirm that day in, day out, I'm doing what I love. It’s reaffirmed that I've made the right career choice, that I belong in the game development industry, and that It’s what I love to do. I can’t ever see myself doing anything that isn't this.

It’s made the past 4 months more than worth it. The idea that I brought joy to players from a simple 2 minute demo level is really thrilling. Even further, the idea that I did this, that I made it happen, it mind blowing. I've of course had help from a laundry list of artists, musicians, and talented people; but at the end of the day I brought it all together. That's what really puts me over the moon.

Thank you to the fans we've earned so far, thank you to my game professor Casper Harteveld, my academic adviser Mark Erikson, CCIS Dean Richard Rasala and Game Design Director Magy El-Nasr. Without these folks, none of this would have been possible.