why i make games

I love making video games but I didn’t get into making video games because I liked playing them. Frankly, I don’t even enjoy playing video games very much most of the time (I like board games much better, generally).

I got into making games because I was tired. Really tired. Tired of manually doing the math for trade calculations in a made up paper and pencil 4X game called Tempus that I was running in high school between classes and during advisory period. Math sucks. I hated manually doing the math over and over again. It was so tedious.

It was nothing like Junior High. Back then, I had a lot of fun making up games to play with my schoolmates. I didn’t know about D&D, but I made something like it called Dream about — well, I don’t really know what it was about anymore. But somehow, everyone was happy to let me do it and I enjoyed doing it.

In fact, I enjoyed it a lot. There wasn’t really anything else in my life like the feeling I got from it, which was notable during a time in my life where I normally felt so bored and directionless and where everyone also wanted to know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I suppose to my relief, friends started to suggest to me that I should make video games. It sounded much better than my original idea of following in the footsteps of my father, taking up engineering, and doing more math. Gosh, I really hated math back then.

I thought noncommittally that maybe I could be a designer, an artist, or a musician. I had so many ideas I wanted to make that I thought people would like, but I could never find anyone to work with. And, if someone would agree to work with me they would often flake. How could I make a video game without a developer? I couldn’t make anything happen otherwise.

I shared these frustrations with a friend and they told me that, well, if I wanted to do it so bad, why didn’t I just learn to code? I could take the computer science course and make the games I wanted to make. So I did. And, to my surprise, I actually liked computer science. It had only been a day or two, but I was already ahead of the class vociferously consuming every bit of documentation I came across, trying to find out how to make a game. Suddenly, I could make it happen. It was exciting.

It was hard, but I had fun. I puzzled over how to parse user input in order to make MUD/infocom-style games, the kinds where you type into a prompt what you want to do next like “go west”, “open door” or “look at item”. I learned Java sockets so I could write multiplayer networking code to make Tempus into a video game. I made a dumbass math game with voice acting in it. Go figure, me, making a math game. Goddamn it.

I started to spend a lot of my free time making video games. I jumped from Java to Unity in college. I didn’t really pay attention in any of my classes (except for the one course that almost had me get kicked out of the computer science school if I failed it again); I had better things to do: make video games. My understanding of what games could be matured from one that views games as just a vehicle for fun entertainment into one that views games as art. I wanted to make people feel things. I’d make games at game jams with other people and it always felt so great to see people play them and see how they reacted. Unbridled joy, surprise, sadness, or whatever emotion positive or negative I could elicit — it always felt like such a great payoff.

I graduated and got a software development job, but I kept making games on the side. I jumped from Unity to Godot. Occasionally, I go independent like I currently am. I’m still trying to make games and I still love seeing how people react to what I make.

Game development has sunk its hook into me. I hope I can keep doing it for as long as I can.