Developer Rant

One of my coworkers asked me how I could possibly devote so much time into something, like building a game engine from scratch, and not want to continue working on it. It made me laugh because I hadn’t really even given that fact much thought. My initial response was that I do these things for my enjoyment and advancement; I’m not at all disappointed that I’m not continuing to use what I worked so hard to create. Thinking about it now, the reasons for dropping it are really why I don’t feel so bad about leaving the engine behind. While the architecture was fine, there were a number of mistakes I’ve made that would require me to rebuild the entire thing for speed and portability. The other reason is my disillusionment with the market I was attempting to sell to.

Things with even a remote amount of quality are shot down, while games that are about absolutely nothing sell like hotcakes. I understand that the game that I made wasn’t a significant advancement in design or graphics, but it was some mindless fun and it looked fantastic. I truly felt I had done something that was better than some of the highest selling products on that particular market. Unfortunately, I was sorely mistaken and still have not seen a dime from that massive time investment.

I probably did some chicken counting, and that probably didn’t help my disillusionment. In my optimism, I really find it hard to avoid doing that. However, it is my optimism that gives me the strength to do the things I’m able to do. Whenever I’m faced with a problem to solve, I hardly ever see something as insurmountable just because of the optimistic way I look at the problem. It’s a major motivator and helps me learn and grow, since I never walk away from a problem until I’ve found a solution, even if that solution is to work around the problem.