2014 is now totally done. As I mentioned in my posts before this it felt like a pretty weird year overall. Usually at the end of the year I feel like I have some sort of body of work to show for it, but this year felt like I didn't really accomplish much. I mean when I look back at it all I really released as a finished thing was Dan Adelman's site, and Starforger, which was a little game jam game from back in August.

Warning: This post is pretty dang long and has some rambly sections. Proceed at your own risk! (There aren't any pictures.)

I can't help but to look back to previous years as a comparison. In 2012 I released both Offspring Fling and Snapshot, and then continuing on in 2012 I also ended up releasing some games on my back log like Jottobots, Namiko, and Super Ninja Slash. That was a pretty crazy year as I finished Snapshot, a huge project, and Offspring Fling which was a big project, and then I still managed to push out a bunch of games after.

Then in 2013 I spent a lot of time soul searching and trying to figure out what to work with next. I was fed up with Flash, so that's the year I started on Otter, and eventually released my first game with it All The King's Men, but that's all I managed to get out in 2013.

I guess I imagined 2014 being a bigger year than it ended up being. I had a lot of high hopes of getting Otter into a big version 1.0 release and have it be a pretty clean and useful framework to use for making games. I also hoped to be way further along on my current big project Stratoforce, but things didn't really turn out that way. Don't get me wrong, I'm really proud of both making Dan's website, and my game jam game Starforger, but it just doesn't seem like it's enough.

It's hard to not feel like my self worth is measured by my body of work in the world of game development. I feel like it must be this way in other realms of creative work as well. Artists, musicians, film makers, all that kind of stuff. This measurement is all well and good when I'm being productive and working on cool stuff that I like, and other people like, but when it's not like that then it's a terrible soul crushing feeling. I spent a lot of time in 2014 trying to just improve myself and my knowledge of design, programming, art, and anything else related to game development, and by some measure I'm sure I accomplished a lot of things, but without a big log of actual realized output it feels like absolutely nothing sometimes. I shouldn't be measuring my self worth in terms of my tangible output, but it's very tough not to, and I'm sure others struggle with this as well.

Sometimes it feels even worse because I have a lot of output behind me. I have two games on Steam! That's a huge accomplishment, and at the moment I was very proud and happy about it, but now that I have accomplished that I feel like the only thing I can do is accomplish something bigger than that... but I don't know what that is, or even if that's for me. A lot of my friends are moving onto big games for consoles but that seems so stressful.

I feel like I now hold myself to a higher standard because of the fact that I have two games on Steam and this whole game development thing has officially become my career over the past couple of years instead of a crazy pipe dream of a young 20-something with no responsibilities. Each time I accomplish something new it feels great, but then that's something I now have to beat in order to feel like I'm still progressing.

Way back in 2008 when I first went to Game Developers Conference I met a lot of amazing people that became some of my best friends. Over the years I feel like I was always observing a specific pattern amongst them. A lot of them were working on some sort of big project, and sometimes those big projects had a lot of hype around them even if they were super early into development. Some of them were just finishing their big project, and some were winning awesome awards and speaking about how amazing their big project turned out.

The overall pattern seemed to be this: They work on a big project for awhile, have a ton of press and hype surrounding it while they're working on it, and maybe they even win an award or two or ten for it while it's still in development. Finally after it's released it's crazy awesome and everyone loves it! Then they're invited to talk about their game at conferences everywhere for awhile after that, and everyone is a huge fan of them and their game now and forever, and they're known as this awesome person (or people) who made this amazing thing.

I feel like everyone I was surrounded by was following this pattern, so I wanted to follow that same path as well, and I kinda felt like I was on the start of it so it all looked promising in the beginning. I was working on Snapshot and it was nominated for an Independent Games Festival award in 2009, and then I worked on it as a real game for three years but things didn't really work out in the same way during those three years. I guess I imagined things going a little differently, and I think everyone on the team did too. I guess we felt like the IGF nomination was an indication that we would follow the same path that so many games before us did, but that wasn't the case. We imagined ourselves being able to make this mind blowing amazing game, and that we would be getting interviews and previews and press about it from day one, but it never really panned out that way. It turned out to be insanely difficult to make the game, and on top of that make the game good.

Ultimately Snapshot ended up releasing and it didn't really seem like anyone cared. We never got any sort of press or hype during the development of our game, although we did manage to get into the PAX10 one year and the Boston Indie Showcase at PAX East which was cool, but it was nowhere close to what I thought all these other developers were experiencing! We didn't make an amazing game that would go on to win everyone's game of the year, and we didn't get any invitations to talk at conferences (actually I did give a 5 minute talk at GDC but that was pretty unrelated) and we didn't become game development super stars. It was just an okay game that we made and that's about it.

Why am I rambling on about this? My overall point is that it's incredibly easy to compare myself to others which leads to a downward spiral. Comparing myself to these great developers I met and failing to live up to the same path that they all followed can be really soul crushing a lot of the time! I could be smarter about it and think to myself that I can still aspire to be like them and just work harder at it, but the reality is that that attitude is very difficult to maintain. A lot of my mental struggles at this point seem to be rooted in thinking that I should be better than I am at this point in my life and career. I should be as awesome as all of those people that I met those years ago! Perhaps the fact is just that they're so much better than me at this stuff, and they're so much better than me that I can't even comprehend how. It's like when you get completely destroyed in a competitive game and you don't even know how it happened because you're so far below your opponents skill level. If you were close in skill you'd be able to tell how they beat you and improve, but when you're so far below them you can't tell, and all you really know is that you've got a long way to go, and honestly it can look pretty hopeless when you're that far down.

I know that I wrote about this in my previous year in review post, and I think I've improved on it a little bit, but it's still a daily struggle for me. I know that I don't have to follow the exact path of those around me, but it does seem like a great path to aspire to.

Moving on, here's some thoughts on various things that took up a great deal of my time in 2014.

Stratoforce

What the hell is Stratoforce? In short it's the name of my current "big" project which I've been posting about over the past year. It's an expansion of my Ludum Dare 17 game Gaiadi which is a game about building islands and defending them from pink fish monsters that want to kill you. The game ended up getting first place Overall in the Ludum Dare which was totally unexpected, but amazing. A lot of people seemed to really enjoy the 48 hour prototype version of the game, and I had a ton of fun making it and playing it afterward. I always wanted to make a big, full version of this game and after finally finishing Snapshot and Offspring Fling and a bunch of other stuff I jumped into it!

Things didn't go as smooth as I wanted to though. I imagined myself just constantly jamming away every day at this game and have it more or less done in a year and maybe some more time for polish but the first rule of game development is that things will always take longer than you plan even if you plan for this rule. The game is very different from any game I've made before, and I'm still relatively new in making a game with just pure code and not any sort of all encompassing game making software suite, and that already sets the difficulty level of development pretty high. Offspring Fling was the first game I made with just code (using Flashpunk) and that game was relatively tiny!

A lot of times I just have no idea what I'm doing or where to go with Stratoforce. I have these grand ideas on how to make it into a bigger game, but the details of those ideas aren't really there, so usually I just don't know what to work on. I often get stuck on a problem and just can't figure out how to go about it. People often offer the advice of breaking down the problem into smaller tasks but I really don't know how to do that with certain issues that come up. A lot of core issues that happen are just me not being satisfied with what I'm doing. A lot of the art takes a long time in this way. I've been stuck on how to have the structures look in the game since I started working on it, and I still have no idea and feel like I've made no progress. This kinda problem drains me and I just don't want to work on the project at all anymore. I end up procrastinating or trying to force myself to work through the problem and both of those paths lead to misery.

I still like the idea of the game though and I feel like there is a bigger, cooler game in there somewhere, but right now I just have no idea how to approach it. Maybe I'll go back to more of a loose prototype and stop trying to solidify things so fast, but then again I don't want to be stuck in a constant loop of prototyping a completely new version of it every two or three months. A lot of developers give the advice to not start over, and to finish the thing, but what if the thing just turns out crappy? I don't know!

Otter

Otter is the 2d game making framework that I created initially two years ago now with SFML.net. I had grown tired of dealing with Flash's insane limitations and I no longer had any interest in using it for game development. I knew about things like Stage3d and Starling and Sparrow or whatever other frameworks there were, but I didn't really like Actionscript and a lot of those frameworks did stuff in weird ways that I didn't understand. I also have no interest in mobile development so I don't have to worry about making anything compatible with that.

I experimented with a lot of various engines and frameworks until I just decided that I was going to try to just port what I knew of Flashpunk to C# and add some of my own style to it. The result was Otter.

I've been using Otter since I first started working on it, so I think it's been worth it for me to make and use so far, but I don't have a big game finished with it yet, and I'm still constantly adjusting and changing things in it. I feel like by now it should be at a solid 1.0 version but I still don't feel confident in it enough to call it that, and I don't know if I ever will.

Otter does have a pretty tiny user base which is neat. Every once in awhile a new person swings by the forums and posts about some stuff but ultimately they usually drift away. I was really hoping by now that someone else that shares the same way of thinking about programming games would've come along to help develop the engine, but it continues to be primarily a solo effort. I can manage it on my own, but sometimes it is a little bit of a bummer to feel like the only person that cares about it.

I often don't know if it truly was the best decision to make my own framework from (somewhat) scratch, but it's something that I never thought I'd be able to do and I managed to pull it off in some form. Sometimes I do look at other frameworks that are just so much better crafted, documented, and realized and I ask myself why I bother. Maybe I should've just buckled down and learned a different framework with a community and support... who knows?

Game Jams

Game Jams continue to be awesome for me and I always love going out to local Phoenix area game jams. I missed quite a few this past year due to travel or just unfortunate timing with other stuff going on, but the few I did attend turned out great. The jam atmosphere in Phoenix isn't exactly what it used to be though which kind of sucks. The first couple of jams I attended in Phoenix had a much closer knit community of developers. Everyone was jamming out of one or two small classrooms, and everyone was very open about what they were working on, and helped each other out. More recently at Phoenix jams everyone seems to keep to themselves, or they don't even stay on location, and I usually don't have much interaction with other jammers. We still get a very good turn out for jams though which is great, even if the style of how people work on their projects has changed over time.

I managed to create Starforger and the yet to be released Super Sky Sisters at two game jams this year and they were great escapes from the burdens of working on a big project that for some reason I feel like I have to make. I'm taking some more time to finish up Super Sky Sisters so I don't know when that will release or if I even will release it, but Starforger was released and turned out okay for a jam game. I don't know if I'm super happy with my results in the game jamming realm lately, but I guess I can't expect to make amazing stuff like depict1 and Gaiadi every time I sit down and jam for the weekend.

I really want to make sure I attend Global Game Jam this year as I missed it last year due to being in Vancouver and not really being in the jam mood. Game jams still have a magical power over me where the give me a lightning bolt of working energy that usually carries over well past the jam and into the following weeks, but now I have to figure out how to stop that from fading.

Am I Improving?

One of the things I wonder about is if I'm somehow getting worse at everything over time instead of better. Sometimes when I look at some of the old game jam projects I've done I think that it's way better than the stuff I'm making currently which doesn't make any sense. I look back at stuff like Bonesaw: The Game and Verge and think that those games are way cooler than stuff I've made recently.

I don't know if maybe I'm not as insanely passionate about making games as I was when I was younger, or maybe I'm just getting too critical of myself to actually free myself to actually create stuff. A lot of artists and people in creative fields will become their own worse critic, and I suppose if they aren't the best at taking criticism they can end up in an infinite loop of criticizing themselves so much that they no longer create.

I feel like I see a lot of developers, artists, musicians, etc that all seem to just follow a directly upward trend of improvement. It feels like so many of my friends just relentlessly get better at what they do with no stopping. So many of them make a game that's amazing and immediately jump onto their next game which turns out even better, and their next thing is even better than that, and I don't seem to be following that path at all. Maybe I am just getting an unrealistic perspective of what's really going on, and of course I'm only really noticing the developers and artists that are following this trend and not noticing the others who aren't.

A lot of times I feel like I'm just not able to work as much as I think other developers are. Often times when it comes to really hard design problems, or really difficult programming tasks, I can only really clock a few hours a day working at it, but then I hear developers talk about how they work for 8 to 10 hours a day programming stuff and I find it absolutely mind blowing. I read a blog post recently that talks about a daily schedule that an independent developer followed and he had clear times in his day where he was programming and working on his game and I couldn't comprehend how he followed that.

Somewhere in my brain there's a write up on work scheduling and work habits in general. Over the summer I experimented a lot with work habits and trying to figure out something that worked really well for me, but ultimately I couldn't maintain it. Whenever I see a developer that is able to follow a strict schedule like "6:30am wake up, 7:00 have breakfast, 8:00 start work, 11:00 lunch break..." I feel like I must be a completely different species than them. A schedule like that seems to work great until enough wrenches get tossed into it that it's impossible to maintain, and then the anxiety of not being able to maintain it drives me crazy and I tear it all down. If that doesn't happen just the stress of trying to maintain the schedule makes me feel crazy. This is something I do want to work on in 2015 though!

One thought I have now while writing all of this is maybe I do actually have some kind of depression that should be treated, or I'm just super lazy compared to everyone else. I did have some weird issues when I was a kid in regards to depression and anxiety, and I had to have them treated by a doctor and some cool medicine, but these days it's scary to go to a doctor in the United States with insurance being the way it is. What if I go to the doctor and then I have to pay some crazy high amount per month for insurance because of that? What if it's not covered or something and it ends up being way expensive? I don't know how it all works all I know is that I have so many friends that have gotten screwed over the past few years even when they have insurance. That's a whole other issue entirely though and not really fit for the scope of this xbox huge blog post...

Same Old

Overall I still have a lot of the same issues that I had the previous year. The root of a lot of my problems seems to come from constantly comparing myself to others and it's very difficult not to. Sometimes when I'm working on my project and I see a friend of mine posting about their project and how they're getting fan art for a game that they just announced I just can't help but to feel pretty worthless. I can't imagine what it must be like to be working on something so cool that when you just announce it people start creating work inspired by your work! It's crazy to me and I don't know if I'll ever reach that point, or if it's even a point that can be reached... maybe it's a point people just stumble across.

I want all of my friends to be incredibly successful though. I want them to all do what they love and to be good at it and be happy, but I'm still somewhat envious of the people who seem to have it all figured out!

Sometimes I feel like I wouldn't want to be working on a project that a lot of people care about though. It must be pretty scary to have so many people watching what you're doing and waiting for your next update or announcement. I think maybe I like creating my work far removed from any sort of spotlight because it seems like having a big spotlight on you can often attract some pretty toxic forces from the internet. Although that has not been the case with everyone, there are quite a few developers out there that deal with some pretty crazy stuff because of their popularity, and that's not something I'm sure I could handle... but maybe it's one of those things that's a "good problem to have."

I think a lot of times I am being too hard on myself, but I think I'm doing it under the assumption that it will motivate me to work more and work harder. Like maybe if I yell at myself to get to work to be as good as my friends/heroes then I will get right on it! Well sometimes that works, and other times I just yell at myself and stop working on stuff and just end up procrastinating in various ways. I still love playing some video games and any excuse to sit down and play Street Fighter IV for hours I will totally use, and often the excuse is "well I suck at everything so I might as well just play Street Fighter."

Overall though I feel pretty good though. All of these issues aside I understand that my life is amazing and turned out more or less as I dreamed it could. Sometimes I see people talking about what would happen if they met their younger selves and a lot of them have pretty depressing guesses on what would happen... but I think if I were to meet myself from 10 or 15 years ago it would be awesome. I've created video games! I learned how to program pretty much independently! I made cool websites for real people! I'm somehow making video games for a living! I've gotten way better at drawing (even though I'm still not as good as I want to be!) Everything is pretty good, but if I could just figure out all of my issues and just buckle down and work on stuff then I could upgrade pretty good to awesome.

What's Next

Alright so what am I going to be doing in 2015?

I think I actually do want to make Stratoforce. Right now it feels soul crushing to work on, but... I really think I want to make it into a game. I think I have to figure out a different approach though if I'm going to finish it in the next 100 years. Maybe the design isn't quite right, and maybe I shouldn't be working so closely to the prototype... a lot of times I feel like starting over again, but everyone says that's just a terrible terrible idea so I don't want to do that! But is that part of iteration? Or refactoring? I don't know!

This whole "One Game a Month" concept seems really appealing to me right now since it would mean I would have a hard deadline and a cut off point for stuff... but I worry that if I do that I'll pretty much never work on Stratoforce and end up working on a bunch of small silly games that take a week or a month to complete, and I don't know if there's much value in me doing that at this point. It does sound fun though.

One thing I do seem to be on top of is managing to update my website almost 15 times a month with stuff. I never thought I'd be able to pull that off, but a lot of the times I am cheating by just posting doodles or tiny little snippets of stuff, but it does make me feel good to have some sort of tangible output in the form of blog posts.

Speaking of doodling I think that doodling is pretty important and I'm going to continue to do that as much as possible. I don't know if I can sign up for the whole "drawing a day for the whole year" program, but I can definitely jam out a few sketches or doodles a week.

I am getting pretty tired of the design of my site, but right now it seems like just a huge undertaking to redo it. Everyone is all fancy with their responsive web design now and I want to get all up in that with my site too, but I feel like I want to make a site that looks even more crazy than this one and who knows how long that will take me! I guess I can hold onto this design for a little while longer.

One of my goals is to become even more versed in the realm of board games and board game design. The pure design aspect of board games has really caught my attention over the past year or so and I have been working a little bit on a board game idea with some friends of mine, and it feels totally crazy to work on (in a good way.) It feels totally foreign to be working on a game without coding anything, but it's really cool so far, and I want to keep going down that path some more.

Ultimately I think I need to just relax and stop being so hard on myself, but I constantly worry that doing that will result in me turning into a lazy piece of crap. The perfect balance of yelling at myself to work and get stuff done is hard to achieve... and unfortunately the advice of breaking tasks into smaller tasks just doesn't work for me for some reason Sometimes I feel like I want to collaborate with someone to have someone else on a project to work with, but I get anxious about that kind of stuff because I'm afraid I'm going to let the other person or people down, or I might not mesh well with whoever I'm collaborating with.

Right now I'm starting out the year with this blog post and doodling some things from my mom's house in upstate New York while I'm really missing my home base of operations back in Arizona. Once I get back I'm going to jump back into some things like a good diet, exercise, and maybe trying to figure out a work schedule that makes sense and wont drive me insane.

I guess I don't really know what will happen in 2015! I suppose I'll still be posting stuff here though if you care. If you made it through this whole post I really really appreciate it! Thanks for reading and I hope you stick around for whatever happens in the next year.