I don’t think I’ve ever made a game. It’s something that makes me feel like a fraud when I see real video game developers. I mean, sure, I made Garry’s Mod and it got huge, but it’s not strictly a game. It’s a sandbox. It’s a collection of tools.

One of my biggest issues is trying to see a move in front. The logic that by working on something else I’ll make it easier when I come to create properly. This worked in my advantage with GMod, because my “two moved in front” was to implement Lua – which opened up the door for it to be modded so greatly.

For the last few years it’s been a bit of a disability. Libraries, wrappers, websites, editor tools – it’s been a long distraction from the job of making games. I can’t even remember the last time I tried to make a something playable.

I do a ~30 min drive to and from the office every day. Have done for just over a year now. So I listen to a lot of podcasts. They make me pretty contemplative. How we spend our lives, are we wasting our time, should I be sitting on a beach somewhere. It makes me realise that enjoying the time you spend creating something is as important, if not more important than the creation.

So late last year I decided I’m gonna spend more time prototyping. Smaller, contained projects. Not writing tools, not writing reusable components, not getting sucked into huge projects. But writing games. Manageable, finishable, polishable games. Less of a programmer and more of a game developer.

And so far I’ve been having lots of fun. It feels good.