My New Year's Resolution aka How I Plan to Move Forward in My Video Game Career

As you can probably guess, that me sitting in my makeshift studio office.

With the latest Christmas festivities behind and the first day of the new year upon us, most people would treat it like any other day by either going about their daily lives or just lazing around. Others would take the opportunity to reflect on the past year and set up new goals and resolutions as to what to do for the new year until the beginning of the next one. I myself am part of the latter, the resolution being to have a career in video game development and design. For 4 long years, I've been making these resolutions only to have some of my goals partially met and others having not been met at all. A majority of my attempts to meet my goals have been met with stagnation, procrastination, distractions, mental blocks, oversleeping, and numerous incidents of needless pacing, overflowing anxiety, and passive clicking on the Internet. The overall result of these setbacks has been the lack of progress and not much materials to add to my portfolio. Rather than wasting more of my time pounding a square peg into a round hole, I've spent a considerable amount of 2019 reminding myself of these setbacks, reflecting on what I've been doing wrong, collecting and absorbing new sources of inspiration for my video game ideas, keeping on top of what's going on in the video game industry via the Internet, planning new approaches to productivity, and thinking up ways I could discipline myself.


I've decided more than a year ago that it would be best for me to work alone as working in a team does little for me. In my experience working within groups, I find it challenging and almost impossible to coordinate schedules, getting my suggestions and ideas through, receive timely responses to phone and email, and to even make sure everyone is on the same page. I can recall my earliest college years in which some group members didn't seem interested in adding or contributing anything to an assigned project. And based on my observations of social media and YouTube regarding recent discourses in social issues and politics, I'm sure I wouldn't want to work with anyone who would use something like a video game to push an agenda as opposed to making a good game. In addition to avoiding the various conflicts in working with other people, not working at a major company gives me the freedom to develop and design my video games as I see fit. To be honest, I don't think it'd be worth the paycheck to endure long hours, tight schedules, useless or hostile co-workers, incompetent leaders, unreasonable deadlines, unrealistic expectations, executives fueled by unsustainable greed, PR scandals, and making video games in ways that appease those who don't play or buy video games.

In regards to income, it has proven quite challenging to secure a source beyond a 4-hour once-a-week part time job, the occasional recycling of cans and bottles, and the annual tax refund. For the past couple of years, I made numerous applications for a part time sales associate position at one of the three nearby GameStop stores located within a half-hour drive from my home and even attended a couple of their job fairs. So far as of this writing, I have not received a phone call or an email expressing an interest in hiring me. It could be because they weren't hiring at the time or it may have more to do with the larger business struggles during the past decade. Whatever the case, I'm not really holding out much hope in securing a job at a local GameStop at this point. That being said, I will have to look for other sources of income, ones that would allow me to work at home as well as help me hone my skills inside and outside game development. I could probably get online freelance jobs that involve writing since I've been told that I'm good at it by those who read my work. It may be a long shot, but I'll have to look into it before too long.

My personal investment in knowledge.

But I don't intend on forgetting to resume studying game development and honing my skills while looking for more income. For a large part of 2019, I placed my studies on hold upon realizing that my anxiety was getting out of control and that I was lacking the discipline necessary to working on video games. With my discipline issues sorted out and my anxiety under control, I should be able get back with my studies and research via the Internet. Fortunately, I have a good number of notes that I took for 3 years since graduating from Becker College. And once I give myself enough time to do so, it shouldn't be too much work. With enough study, I should be able to get back in the game of game design. See what I did there?

This is essentially my game room, the place where I indulge myself in my hobby; my personal Fortress of Solitude. 

I heard that to study art is to study life. Taking that praise to art, I would find myself playing video games in order to study them. To that end, I collected a large assortment of video games on a variety of consoles, physical copies, and digital downloads, ranging from timeless classics to hidden gems. Using my limited income, I will continue to build my collection of quality games to play and use as inspiration for my own games when the time comes. As part of my personal philosophy of studying life to study game development and design, I'll continue making an investment in quality movies, novels, comic books, graphic novels, manga, and anything else that I deem worth keeping.

Things may not have turned out as I had hoped during the 4 years I've spent on my chosen career path. But I don't intend on letting that stop me from pursuing my goal of becoming a fully fledged independent game developer and designer. No matter how dire my situation may seem, no matter what's going on in the world outside my home both online and offline, and no matter what other people may say about video games and the industry, I will continue to game on and I will not let anything deter my persistence, my diligence, and my will to make the most of my circumstances. That way, the dreams I first gained over 10 years ago will not go to waste. Here's to the New Year and to hopefully the start of my solo indie game career!