In my 10-year-long pursuit of a career in game development and design, I sometimes find myself feeling somewhat like Sisyphus, an ancient Greek figure known for spending eternity pushing a large rock uphill. The rock, in my case, consists of distractions, zone out episodes, family matters, occasional computer maintenance, part-time bagging and cleaning duties, and money management. More often than not, I felt like my life is being wasted cleaning up after other people for a living, that my efforts to improve myself have all been for naught, and that I'm subconsciously being driven to insanity by being at a blue-collar job that's irrelevant to my career goals. Simply put, it would appear that I'm doomed to be at a dead end for the rest of my life without accomplishing anything that even remotely resembles a game design career. Yet still, I continue to find reasons to keep moving onward in my creative endeavors and I continue remind myself of my unwavering resolve to become a successful solo independent game designer no matter what the odds. In this regard, the only thing changing here is the approach to achieving my goal.
Cyberjack
A gamer's study of video games in history, culture, and design.
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Friday, January 19, 2024
Sunday, January 15, 2023
My New Year's Resolution: Continuing on my Indie Game Dev Career Path with A Few Updates and Adjustments
Still living the dream, or at least continue trying to, anyway. |
Sunday, January 16, 2022
My New Year's Resolution: More of the Same, Just a Year Older
The first few weeks of the new year have just went by. Day after day, things have gone by just like any other day. As my Dad joked while dropping me off to work on a foggy, gloomy January 1, "The streets are the same. The houses are the same. Even the house numbers are the same. They're all just a year older." That joke basically sums up my pursuit of an independent game development career: unchanged beyond being a year older. As things stand, I still live here at home browsing the Internet, playing video games, reading a book or two, keeping my anxiety in check via medication, and work the same part-time job to generate income. I admit I've come a long way in striving to achieve my goal of attaining a career. I confess that I haven't done as much practice as I would've liked due to various circumstances, some beyond my control and others that are entirely my fault. There are still things I need to work on first before I can start game development on a more regular basis.
Sunday, January 3, 2021
My New Year's Resolution: What Went Wrong in 2020 and How Things Could Be Better in 2021
In spite of all that's happened in 2020, I'm still here. Never giving up my goal to one day become a full-fledged independent game developer. |
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
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. |
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Announcement: Upcoming Changes to Cyberjack
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Paying to Win, Progress, and Level Up: The Road to Industry Suicide?
In an age long since past, video games were an avenue of pure adventurous escapism in the eyes of those sitting on the floor or couch across from the TV in their living rooms or bedrooms with a controller in hand, being close to their computers with their fingers flying across the keyboard, or hanging around with friends at a local arcade. The moment we ran our PCs and consoles or insert our quarters into the arcade machines, gamers of my generation, myself included, were transported into various worlds uncovering treasures, slaying monsters, uncovering secrets, going through stories rivaling those of other media, feeling like badasses, and experiencing the thrill of getting a high score to show off our skills. These times were what we would call the Golden and Silver Ages of gaming. But since the latter half of the 7th generation video game era, we have entered what a lot of us would probably call the Dark Ages.