Mid Life Crisis....

[korruptor]

I'm starting to realise that I'm having a mid life crisis. Actually, maybe not a crisis, maybe a crisis of confidence is a more apt appraisal?

Let me try and put this into perspective, and you can be the judge.

My first computer was an Amstrad CPC 6128. Fantastic machine [in it's own time] for all the wrong reasons. Nice cpu, nice monitor, and cpm on a disk. Wooo.

I'm 12. What the hell do I know? In fact, one of the first things I did was format the CPM disks by mistake! Misreading the manual, thinking I was the boy "I can handle this computer lark". How we learn... But I digress.

Let's skip past the "Sending off the machine and getting the CPM disks replaced" stage. Lets get to the "Completing Head over Heels" stage.

I spent 13 hours -- from start to finish -- getting those two pixelated bastards to freedom. And I didn't take the short cut! (Although, I forgot the bag once) What did I do after that? I sat down with some graph paper and I drew out two worlds of my own isometric arcade adventure. With a story, and with character design. Last time I counted, there were two hundred rooms from the start (in the mystery woods) to the end (in the castle of doom). All I wanted to do was to program my own Head over Heels. Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond were Gods, and to this day they still are, and always will be...

Time passes. I go to Uni, I've read every development diary from Jeff's to the Blood Money one in Amiga Format. I've even had my letter published in Amstrad Action (yeah, future ho's! I can remember the shed...) Finally, I learn to program, and I've missed the C64/CPC6128 and Spectrum eras. Christ, Jeff's even released Llamatron on the Amiga, clearly his least favourite platform (oh, how I dream of Jeff and the Agnus making visual music together) and I'm starting to feel old. Yet again!

I've missed the 8bit, and I wasn't up to speed for 16bit era. Scoopex, RSI, and Orange have been and gone, and here am I, noodling with Amos and Blitz, desperate to show the world my ideas. Cos I know they could work. Honestly.

Cue wibbly wobbly Wayne's World Part three. The PC "Dark Ages". I'm learning asm. I'm plotting pixels. I've got Watcom, and I'm going to get protected mode down. Except I'm not. Yet again, I miss the boat. Lack of confidence maybe, but as I grew to realise, fundamental lack of skills. You can only play catch up for so long.

Time passes. Yet again. This time I decide to give up the code, cos clearly I'm not good enough. I join demo groups and I discover I've got a serious talent in Delux Paint & Photoshop. Admitedly -- and even to this day -- my work may not reflect this, but suddenly I'm involved in the Open Source game scene and I'm kicking arse! I'm a big fish in a small pond... I'm the only pixel artist with Amiga experience for *miles* around, and I know linux.

So, three years later and I've got a reputation. I've started coding again [for Pygame and other Open Source projects] and I've finally achieved my "One True Ambition" in life (well, since I was 12): I've worked on a game that's been released [Civil].

Now this is where the crisis comes into play. Civil's an Open Source strategy game, the one genre I *do not* play. In fact -- if I'm honest -- I only joined the project to prove my worth (and more specifically, via a "put your money where your mouth is" conversation with the lead developer). But here I am, three years later, watching /thousands/ of people hammer the site the minute we announce our first semi-playable release, and I'm still not statisfied. It's not my game, it's not my design, it's not what I initially wanted to work on. (But please, don't get me wrong. I'm horrendously proud of what we've achieved.)

So now to the present. After NTK pointed me in the direction of Retrovision I've met more game developers, producers and *seriously* talented people than in my whole "aspiring to be a developer" life to date. Fuck, I've had interviews with Team 17, Codemasters and Mucky Foot and I've failed *abysmally* to get anywhere. I've had refusals from Climax, Rare, Nintendo, and 5 other companies that don't deserve mention and I'm still as excited about the mystic of games development as i was when I was 12. Welcome to my crisis...

As far as I can see, Jeff's the only one here that's 100% happy. Ego time: I earn more money being a wanky J2EE developer than most of you games spods do, royalties included. Yet I spend 2 hours a night, every night, slaving over mediocre games and simplistic ideas in the hope of one day finishing a concept -- of one day getting the respect of other developers, to just *once*, do something that *someone* appreciates, within the medium I hold above all else.

And finally, to the point of this emotional diatribe. The last time I came close to "breaking the industry" was at an interview. The first games related one I'd had in 5 years. Like a fool, I let myself think of the possibilites, and when the obvious was pointed out: "You're enthusiastic, but you've just not got the experience" I was closer to tears than I've been since puberty. To me, this was the last opportunity I was ever going to get. Better or worse. Yet Yak Yak and #llamasoft have slowly, but surely, taught me something. This industry's fucking shit. Each one of you has more talent in your header files than I have in a thousand classes, yet all of you are restricted by publishers, deadlines, lack of money, and management.

Here I am, a mediocre programmer (but a shit hot pixelator! with ideas, time, and above all, will power (!), and I'm slowly [but surely] working through one of my idiotic ideas. Yet I've got to live with the fact that industry I've wanted to break into all my life is never going to take me. What's more, the industry I've wanted to break into isn't ever going to produce one of my game ideas. So help me out here!

I have so much respect for all the programmers here, amateur or otherwise, but I feel inadequate working on Open Source. I see the unhappy developers and I think that I should be thankful that I'm not inhibited. But I still feel failure over the situation, professional help or otherwise.

Maybe I actually need to finish a project. Maybe that will solve the problem. But in the meantime, how do I live with the fact that all the people I aspire to be are unhappy?!

[Muttley]

As stupid as it sounds, I get the same feeling with journalism, time and time I ask myself "Is what I do really relevant?" Asking musicans (most of them with an IQ of a garden tool) questions and trying to make their often illiterate answers sound interesting...
From time to time I do meet the odd, interesting person and it does seem to make it all worthwile again.
But what shocks me is that I seem to have lost my passion for music, now a new CD is something I need to evaluate, not something I can thoroughly enjoy and concerts are "just an evening of work" - maybe I'm having a midlife crisis too?

[Gus]

Conversely, the OpenSource dabbling I've been doing has restored my will to live. Okay, a slight exageration, but it's certainly restored my will to code. I can't remember the last time I felt so excited about coding stuff up, in fact it even seems to be having a positive effect on the day job, which is great! I kind of feel like I've passed through my midlife crisis, & come out the other side knowing what to do with my old age.


Guy

[teamonkey]

I remember there was a similar topic in the Recruitment & Advice section of the Edge forum a while ago. It went along the lines of,

Being in the games industry sucks for the following reasons:
* Long hours
* Poor pay (compared to other programming jobs needing less skilll)
* Market led/not enough input into game design/can't do what you want
* Poor job security

And the replies fell into two categories:
* Yes, it really sucks arse. I want more money.
* No, it's the best job in the world: I'm getting paid to write games! No, really, people pay you to write games!

I suppose it depends on your perspective.

[arron]

I have a similar problem. I'm 32 now (Happy Birthday Bog!) and although for the last ten years I've been a physicist, I've been wondering whether a change of job might be a good move. I did think about games programming, but when I asked some people in some of the larger houses, I was told to "Go away and get a job programming for a few years and come back if I was still interested", which was odd considering that I already had extensive self-taught self-motivated programming skills, a long term job involving practical science and programming and a physics degree to boot. You'd think that they'd be falling over themselves.

I've been wondering whether the 'industry' is the wrong way to go. Sure you get to write games for a living, but looking at the likes of fatbabies.com and also see what the average softdev produce these days under licence, there is precious little room for artistic freedom in what is produced. The last issue of EDGE was pretty depressing as well.

It's not all bad. The chat that I had with Lardygaz at the RVII was quite encouraging, and there are some good companies out there. I'm passionate about creating games, but unfortunately the games that the industry want to produce aren't necessarily what I want to produce (licences, same seven genres etc) so perhaps being free and independent is the way to go.

[JonR]

Hi All,

well, Korruptor, if you swap an amstrad for C64 and remove most of the open source work you've done, you might as well be talking about me

I've always wanted to be in game development, started off learning using pascal and denthor's graphics tutorials, going onto C and Mode X, getting some interviews at gamedevs....but always being refused.

then i moved over here (canada). end of my dream? i thought so. i was so unhappy for about 6 months/a year, just thinking of my dream (my one dream is to write a full game that is released, even freeware or shareware). eventually i got in touch with some guys who were interested in the demoscene and we've got a group.
on the side, i've been learning DirectX and SDL and thinking up ideas for games.
A few weeks ago i decided that now was the time. i'm going to write a game and i'll release it as freeware. i'll see how i feel after that and if i'm still pumped up about it (i'm pretty sure i will), i'll keep releasing freeware and shareware.
my side aim on this is that i'd like to group a gamedev company of my own. I've found that i have to ask myself the right question at the right time. I asked myself "do i want to still be working for my present company when i'm 40?", do i still want to put up with the office bickering, the lack of privacy in my cubicle, the stupid work hours when i could be doing something *constructive* and *fun*?? i said no, and i'm 28 now, so i'm doing the gamedev stuff so i don't end up too bitter and too regretful when i'm 40 .

wheres all this going? my problem is lack of time currently. so i've found that you have to make the time. if this means having to argue to get the time, so be it. if this means lack of a life for a while, so be it.

i'm pretty sure this wasn't constructive and sorry for going on and on. just wanted to tell you that you're not alone in this bizarre feeling you're going through.

Jon.

[dtj]

The older ones here seem to be having similar issues - though they are all dressed uniquely. Was it Tolstoy who said (paraphrasing): "All happy families are alike, but all unhappy families are unique in their unhappiness?"

I got a free issue of a new mag called gameSTATE in the mail and went to their forum because many of the things in the magazine disturbed me. I posted this topic:

http://www.gamestate.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22

Got some interesting responses - but it just goes to show this problem is far larger than we think - and these so-called "crisis" moments are not so much crisis moments as they are a new paradigm waiting to be born. Perhaps we are the ones to change everything. Perhaps we are a revolution waiting to happen and we don't know it? Or perhaps - I'm bitter and delusional? I'm not sure.

[matt]

Perhaps we are a revolution waiting to happen and we don't know it? Or perhaps - I'm bitter and delusional? I'm not sure.

Whatever you are dtj, we love you for it.

edit: i've also added my story to the gameSTATE topic.

over and out,
matt

[Ahchay]

Personally, I'm not sure I would ever want to work in the games industry (for some of the reasons that have been mentioned here) but...

I really do feel, and being *here* on this forum has played a large part in this feeling, that we are on the cusp of a change. We are just now beginning to realise a few things - firstly, that games are a major part of our lives, and secondly that so many big releases just don't cut the mustard.

Pretty soon, we're going to realise a third fact; we are in the majority - or, at least, a sizable minority. The more that the major devco's cater to the so-called "mass market", the more of *us* there are going to be. The more Fifa sequels we see, the larger the market for small, independent gaming (such as Unity f'rinstance) will become.

And with that knowledge comes power. The power to strike out on our own. To write the games we choose to write rather than the games we are forced to write. To only play and support games which meet our expectations.

Mid-life crisis? Maybe. The realisation that we've been working for 10 years or more producing things we don't care about? Maybe that too.

I am surprisingly optimistic about the future, and my place within it. I'm more passionate and excited about gaming *now* than I have been at any time over the last 15 years.

In personal terms, I doubt whether I'll ever publish a commercial game, but I'm happy writing my little retro remakes and I'm confident that others will be producing games I want to play.

Cheers
Chris

[JonR]

i second everything matt and achay said.

personally, i find that the vast majority of games are either crap (my wife has a problem with violence in video games and also thinks they're boring anyway) and/or overpriced, so one reason i'm doing my own thing is to actually play games *i'd* like to play, not
"Grand Theft Auto 37 : wheelchair bandit" or "Command & conquer 12: Another RTS".

oh, and if i do produce anything of substance, you can bet your arse i'm going to distribute it to you llamasofties first. people who actually *know* a good game and not just a bunch of faceless wankers who email you and tell you your game is shite just because its not as nice looking as Unreal II.

JonR.

[korruptor]

Glad to see I'm not alone in feeling this, although I should have guessed that, given the people on this forum. In fact, I've spent quite some time talking about this with friends over the weekend -- we were celebrating a birthday and starting to feel old...

After a bit of thought, I think I'm going to have to opt for the JonR philosophy: do what I have to now, but resolve to be working at what I enjoy before I'm 40!

Have to admit, Lardygaz was very positive and up-beat at RV, which was good, but even he couldn't list many games that he'd completed and enjoyed over the last year. Personally, I'd love to feel as up-beat as Lardygaz or as confident as Achay, but I'm not quite there. I'm still highly cynical about commercial games and I can't help but feel a little upset about that. But, I've started playing games a lot more -- mostly Emu -- and I'm slowly but surely doing something positive about my situation, coding something I quite fancy playing.

If there is a change on the way (and I'm not convinced there is yet) then I'm happy to know that I'm in the right place. I can beta my homebrew games here, among some dedicated hardcore gamers, and hopefully produce something at least a few of you will like. And that's gotta be a good thing, hasn't it?

Thanks for the opinions. It helps

[JonR]

40 is a good target. originally, i was aiming at 30, but when i got to 28, i thought i'd better up that (you know, before having the nervous breakdown trying to reach that target )

Matt: are you still working on Simple soccer?? i'm probably going to jinx myself by saying this, but i was looking at making a GBA remake of sensible soccer (my next project after the current one)

JonR.

[Muttley]

An all too familiar story korruptor.

Substitute Amstrad with C64. I started getting good at coding it towards the tail-end of the c64's commercial life. Then I couldn't afford to get into the 16bit scene for a few years and so got left behind.

Now I'm in a shitty job that pays me lots of money, and I can afford all the gizmo's I want but don't have the time to do anything with them.

Muttley

[donky]

I have so much respect for all the programmers here, amateur or otherwise, but I feel inadequate working on Open Source. I see the unhappy developers and I think that I should be thankful that I'm not inhibited. But I still feel failure over the situation, professional help or otherwise.

Maybe I actually need to finish a project. Maybe that will solve the problem.

While I'm not in exactly the same situation, I feel your pain. I program for an up and coming MMOG which is fine, no problem - I enjoy the work alot. However, when it comes to my own programming projects, programming the game I want to play that is, it just doesn't happen. I'd trade some of my programming ability anyday for the ability to force myself to spend some time each day working on my own game. Its not the lack of ideas but more the lack of ability to apply myself. Its so easy to feel tired from the 14 hour day+ and just collapse watching the idiot box.

Btw, the five years experience sounds like a crock, all I had when I got my job was "its not what you know, its who you know" - who I knew being a guy I had programmed on a mud with for several years. Apart from that I had done was some amateur stuff (a basic dungeon master type maze program in 68k assembler) and gotten a degree in computer science.

I also feel like I need to finish a project. Unfortunately, while I am making some progress, that project doesn't happen to be "my" game - its the tools to facilitate making the game.

[korruptor]

It's been mentioned a couple of times here already, but the older I get the harder it is. There's so much to learn - games wise - that it's incredibly hard to find the time to code on a project, read the books, learn the math and do the research... Especially if you want to keep a job that pays well. You can bet your bottom dollar that the tech you have to learn for work has nothing to do with gaming...

After reading the initial post again it does sound bloody depressive, and at times I do reach some serious lows about it, but that wasn't really what I wanted to convey. I'm more frustrated than depressed, but I'm lucky to have a girly that gives me as much time as possible so I can at least 'chase' the dream.

If nothing else, having a rant, seeing I'm not alone and listening to what you've all had to say has been a *really* positive thing. I'm resolved to work a little bit harder and to try and make at least a little step everyday. I know myself well enough to realise that if I'm not being productive, or 'artistic', that I'm a pain in the arse to live with, so I guess I have no choice in the matter. I've got to do something I like...

At the end of the day my game ideas may turn out to be crap. It's not like I have any experience on how to structure a gaming experience for example. But for now I guess I just need to have fun *trying* to write a game and not get so caught up in the fact that I'm not doing what I wanted to do, "full time". I'm not going to chase some "dream job" in an industry I'm skeptical about -- and that's skeptical about me -- but I can try and find some ways to restructure my working life to give me more time to produce my own little ideas.

Time for some April Resolutions perhaps? Or maybe a book on time management? God knows, but I'll keep you posted if I figure anything out myself...

*hugs*