It’s currently 3:40 in the afternoon on a Friday, the first day of September, 2023. I’m sitting a few feet from the place I usually sleep – a bed currently occupied by a large, particularly floppy dog – and I’m staring at a piece of a map that’s been in Riverboat Pachinko since around mid-May. I was just in Unity’s editor, trying to click on something else, but I missed. And because of that, I’m now seeing this:
Huh.
August was weird. And by “weird”, I mean, “probably one of the worst months I’ve been through in the last 25 years”. I’m not going to get into the full details here, but suffice to say that I’ve been through several weeks of back-to-back-to-back problems. I was running the gamut of negative experiences, from standard, irritating work stuff to several genuine, personal tragedies. It feels a bit inadequate to just call it a rough time, but… ’twas what it was.
For the record, before I get any further: I’m fine! At least, I’m fine in the grand scheme of things. In spite of negative events, I’m not in any sort of bad situation myself; I just bring it up because there’s something about that time I’ve been reflecting on. Or at least, that I’m about to reflect on. Right now. That’s what this post is.
As I just said, this August was weird. In terms of my personal life, that’s mostly in a negative way. But, in terms of being a game developer, it was (somehow) one of the best times I’ve had all year. And that feels… wrong?
Almost everything I’ve learned and experienced about game development up to this point has taught me about the importance of (for lack of a better term) work-life balance. That ultimately, your happiness and needs are what matters, and pushing forward while ignoring them won’t make you (nor the game you’re making) better.
I still very much believe that. I have to, having experienced a fair bit of it firsthand, from my college crunch time and pandemic-era stress. Keeping your head down and working works for a bit, maybe – but neglecting things catches up with you eventually. The work I’ve done under those circumstances is some of the stuff that still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I wasn’t looking to repeat it here.
So why the hell was my workflow so good in August?
I didn’t sit down to work at any point amidst The Problems TM with the intent of avoiding them, much less doing anything more productive than usual. Yet, I did do more – a lot more, to the point of absolutely demolishing my to-do list for this project.
However, the thing I find most perplexing is that – in the last three weeks or so – I’ve had a greater sense of clarity and direction about this project than almost ever before. Hell, maybe more than ever before in my ADHD-ridden life, period!
Why? I’ve got no idea.
That last bit was a joke, though only partially. I’ve never found a bad environment, nor bad circumstances to make working on games any easier. Work can distract you from thinking about things, sure, but it doesn’t make gamedev better. Yet, even looking back, it still feels like I was on the ball last month, in spite of everything. So what gives?
Strangely enough, I think that what might have happened here is that the events of August soft-reset my life. Once again, I’ll be avoiding any specific details about those events here, but while I am fine, I wouldn’t say things all feel quite right, yet. There was a lot to think about during that time – enough to push most other, lesser thoughts out of my head – and it takes a while for those things to return.
To some degree, I’d expect that in this sort of situation; when the unexpected occurs, plans get upended, routines shift, and so on. What I didn’t expect was for my indecision about trivial game stuff to be included on that hit list. Little sticking points I had about mechanics, UI/UX, etc. vanished into the ether around the second week of August, and, as of yet, haven’t really come back. Not in the same way, anyway.
Whether that’s a good thing long term… we’ll see. But for now, my vision of what I want to do is just a bit clearer – and that feels nice.
I wish that there was a slightly more useful takeaway from this; I’m not exactly going to recommend people go experience some personal tragedies whenever they want to find a broken edge loop. There’s probably better ways of doing that.
I wasn’t even intending to write about this, originally. I was actually 80% of the way through writing a different update for the month of August, about my experiment running this game on different platforms. Spoiler: it worked – but there’s a lot to cover, and I’m still trying to figure out how to present it all in a way that doesn’t make me pass out from boredom halfway through the edit. I did a lot of cool stuff last month that I want to show, but… I didn’t feel like rushing it out. Not when there’s much more important stuff I could be doing. I might even hold off a bit, just to polish up some of it even more. I’ll see how it goes.
In the meantime, I wanted to write this more. It was an… interesting set of emotions I’ve been going through, and I really wanted to put it to words somehow. So, if you stuck around to read all of this: I appreciate it! And, if you didn’t: Yeah, that’s fair. Regardless of how you got to this part of the page, thanks for being here.
As thanks, here’s a stupid video of me sticking a boat in an elevator that’s too small for it.
Have a good day, everyone.
The Chep Site 
Leave a comment