First Entry: the Reasons

Here's to the beginning of a new chapter of my life, and who knows how it'll pan out?

All I know is down the rabbit hole I go with trying my hand at game development.

Why, right? 

The Underlying Reason

For me, I think it's tantalizing as a combination of my existing skills and a vast ever-growing universe of knowledge to be learned and tamed and then shared with anyone that's remotely interested. I love learning. I've learned throughout my life that the times that I feel most grounded, most connected and most alive is when I'm learning something new. Unraveling the fabric to see how it's been woven and then being able to put it back together again (maybe even with some of my own enhancements along the way) make life worth living for me. 

So it's probably not surprising that I became an engineer and probably also not surprising that I have considered multiple other career paths along the way, simply because I want to know stuff. I like knowing stuff just for the sake of knowing stuff, without any rhyme, reason or purpose. The beauty is when you combine that one thing you learned for an entirely different purpose and apply it to something else in a new way that maybe wasn't thought of yet (at least not widely). 

But if there are an infinite number of things to learn and mediums to learn the by, then why choose game development over other things? Why not software development? Why not medicine? Why not carpentry or crochet?

The GameDev Path Reason (the roundabout answer)

It turns out I actually did start down the software development path after I lost my job in 2021. I thought maybe I was stagnating because I wasn't feeling challenged (it may also have been that I just had my second child in two years and was exhausted in every way imaginable and burnt out beyond reason... who can say?). 

It also turns out I've considered all of the other things I mentioned above to learn as well. I wanted to go down the medical path because I wanted to help people and I've always excelled in academics, sports, etc. I had both the smarts and the mentality to think clearly in an emergency that I thought this could be a good fit for me. Unfortunately, life took another turn though (a story for another time) and I never returned to the notion but I have always wondered about it (and still do occasionally). Some of my oldest hobbies are actually thread crafts like crochet, knitting, cross-stitch and the like (thanks, Grammy!) and I've always considered myself an avid crafter. I've expanded my craft room to include all sorts of things from soap/candle making, drawing/painting, scrapbooking, sewing, quilting... and so on. 

Carpentry, then? Sure, it's probably the only one I've listed that I haven't bought a book or a course to learn more about but it's on the list of things I'd eventually like to learn and practice, even if at a rudimentary level. But that may be for a later time when my free hours aren't limited to nights and weekends...

So, as a learner, naturally I'm a hobbyist. And as a hobbyist I tend to collect more hobbies. It turns out I love playing video games and I have since I was first introduced to them in my younger years. I couldn't tell you the first game I ever played but I can tell you the one that I think of when I think back, and it's no surprise that Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo is the one. My sister and I would play it all the time. We had three games (a luxury!) in total on the Nintendo: Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 3 and King of Kings. (And yes, I actually love Super Mario Brothers 2 as well, and luckily my grandparents had that one for us to play, but we just had the three and only at my Dad's whom we visited every summer. I don't know why that's so important to add, other than I always felt like 2 got overlooked when it should've been up there with the others... that's the middle child in me probably...). 

I was quite lucky though in terms of being exposed to technology at an early age. Both my grandpa and my dad are computer programmers so they have always been passionate about computers and technology. My dad showed me how to navigate through DOS and started me programming basic things when I was young. He had some additional games on floppy disks and I remember loving the 16-bit versions or Jeopardy! and Soko-ban. All of this was instilled but I didn't pursue it to the degree I wish I had. He gave me other things to learn and read to spark my curiosity like a build-it-yourself radio from Radio Shack and he started teaching me how to use the HAM radio. I was pretty close to getting my certification on that (and I wish I had) but I went on to pursue other things (cue the boy bands, God forgive me). 

I was never a one-trick pony, and I probably never will be. I will likely also be a master of none. I may or may not continue down this road but while I do... I figure it's going to be a fun ride and I should probably document it. It's something I do naturally anyways, although I've usually preferred journaling analog-style... there's just something neat about going back to 10-year-old me's journal and not only reading what I wrote but seeing how my handwriting would change over the course of pages, days, and ultimately years. Of course typing is much faster and I have a collection of both digital and paper books that chronicle my weird life, but I'm okay with it. One day I'll compile it all and pray no one ever takes to the task of reading it, especially while I'm still alive! 

The GameDev Path Reason (the shorter answer)

So, if I haven't exasperated you yet with the long-winded version (which is quite abbreviated for me), then here's the shorter version of why this notion of developing games was put in my head. I love playing games, I love creating things and now my 4-year-old son is starting to get interested in playing games. He is no longer satisfied just watching, he wants to be a part of the action! And who could blame him? He's part me, and he's part my husband, who is also a hobbyist and a gamer, God love him. I want to create games that my kids can enjoy and ultimately be able to bring their weird little ideas to life (maybe some of my own too).

The Problem for 4-Year-Old Gamers

You know what the terrible part about gaming for a 4-year-old is? People don't make games for 4-year-olds! Naturally. I get it. TV rots your brain. Games rot your brain. We're setting him up to have problems with attention, isolation and addiction. Yeah. Maybe, I don't know if any of that is entirely true, but I can understand the sentiment to a degree and especially if done unchecked. For me though, gaming was always a social thing, not something you lock yourself up in your room and do by yourself. We played together, we took turns, and it was an experience I'll cherish forever. My husband and I have always taken this approach even now. We only have one TV on the main level of our home and it's in the living room (the second TV is in the basement so I can work out or watch TV in my craft area whenever I'm down there, which is rare these days). I entirely understand why people put TVs in their bedrooms, the kitchen, and in every room of the house though. No judgment from me, just a different choice made than mine (turns out it's entirely fine to have a different opinion than someone else!). Nowadays it's like that anyways since we can stream on our phones, tablets, etc. I already have the flexibility to watch TV in bed from my phone if I so choose it, but my husband and I have always had this idea that you gather around the TV and decide what to watch or play together. So, maybe it's nothing more than symbolic but hey, it works for us. 

In any case, my son is incredibly intelligent and so we went down the path of starting to show him how to use the Xbox controller and play Lego Marvel Super Heroes and eventually Minecraft. He picked up on the controls surprisingly quickly, even with the numerous buttons that the controller has (especially compared to my original Nintendo experience). He is quite adept with it now and honestly, I'm super proud of him. I think he's learning so many skills that will serve him well and it's another way for us to have fun together as a family (don't worry, we still go outside and do all of the other things you'd envision good parents would do with them). And it's something we only to for short bursts of time on the weekends, but it gives us a story to talk through a lot of morality-based questions and why things are they way they are (we are very much in the "why" phase with him!). I understand people feel mixed about this topic, but I believe there's benefit if framed up in a constructive way with the appropriate boundaries, and it suits us and our family. I'll leave it at that for the moment...

Well, now that we've established that he enjoys the Lego games and Minecraft, we've got a small library of games to pick in that realm that he will likely enjoy. However, at some point, he's going to want something else, and I think it would be pretty cool to have a game that incorporates things he loves with ideas he's given me. I mean, how cool would it have been to tell my dad to make me a game when I was a kid then actually get to play it? My husband jokes that he's going to think that it's a normal thing when he gets older and that everyone probably has custom games made for them. This makes me smile to think about... what a neat thing to think.

In Closing

This entry turned out way longer than I wanted and I promise you that it's short compared to what's in my head and all of the things I want to explain or talk about, but that can be saved for another time. In my next entry, I plan to talk about my idea for the first game I have in mind for him and how I'm planning a phased approach since I'm thinking this could be a bigger, multi-faceted idea for a series of games. 

I'm excited to share the journey, a little apprehensive to put myself out here like this, and above all more than a little concerned about actually finishing. Given my track record, I flit between things and often change directions so it'll be interesting to see how this goes. Until next time...