Hi, my name is Dan, and this is my “not the first” the first post in which I will share my story and how I end up with a goal to become full-time game developer.
Everyone has a dream that they trying to accomplish, but life can bring it’s own correction.
I moved to the USA in 2013, with a dream to work in the film industry, I even bought a camera and started filming. First, it was small projects, and then gradually started doing some advertising work for local businesses, but I didn’t have enough patience and desire to grow it into a real business. Every day I wake up with a feeling that it is not something I want to do for the rest of my life.
One day I was surfing the Internet and this is how I discovered the game engine called Unity (I think it was version 4 where you have to pay for some PRO features). Back then it was mind-blowing that you can make a game on your laptop by yourself and it can be published for everyone to play on all digital stores and even consoles like XBOX, PS, and Nintendo. It was the rise of indie devs and independent publishing.
I have been playing games since childhood, starting with SEGA then PS One, PSP, and of course PC. I remembered how was amazed after playing such games as Max Payne, Final Fantasy, Alan Wake, etc. This was the moment when something clicks inside me – “Video games are the perfect fit for me”. I have a degree in computer science and love movies, storytelling, and art. A video game is a perfect merge between all these disciplines, and this is how I set my main goal to become a full-time game developer.
But life always has plans on its own. My wife and I had our first child and I did not want to take any risks, but decided to find a more stable job, gladly I had experience in IT field and in 2016 I got my full-time job at large IT company, where I am still working.
My dream never left me. I found the Unity course on Udemy and remember doing it on my Microsoft Surface during lunch breaks at the office. The progress was very slow, but enough to feel confident so I sing up and participate in my first Global Game Jam in 2018. It gave me so much inspiration and boost that in the same year I release my first mobile game on Apple Store – BeatCoin AR.
When I was developing the game, I was thinking that I had everything that need for it to become my golden ticket to quite the job and become full-time game dev. I specifically chose AR technology, mobile platform, but oh boy how wrong was I.
BeatCoin AR performed lower than mediocre AR game at that time. Generate $28 from ads and Unity cannot send me this money because it was below $100. And the main problem back then I cannot tell what went wrong. If it was a design issue, gameplay, marketing, or all together.
Between 2019 – 2020 I had a couple of unsuccessfully Game Jams, this where you did not upload your game or upload something unplayable. I think that during that time, I start not only thinking, but feeling that the game market is very saturated and complex and to succussed, I need to have an understanding of every aspect of the game development process from concept art, 3D modeling, game design to marketing.
This is why I created my own game dev education plan where I put all classes that I can find all over the internet on every aspect of game creation (If you are interested in more specifics you can read it here).
But in 2021 COVID came to our family, and it was a very hard time. One of the family members even got into critical condition. Gladly everything went back and everyone is back to normal. But as soon as all symptoms were gone I went into depressed mode.
It’s really hard to explain, but basically, I didn’t want to do anything, I would wake up and go to my office, turn on my work laptop and YouTube on another screen, and just start working on autopilot and consuming YouTube at the same time. I also started eating and drinking more than usual, so I gained weight to the point where I feel uncomfortable and insecure.
But I never let my dream to become full-time game developer go away, when I had creative itch I would open one of my classes and start doing them, but after couple hours I will get back into the same mode. But slowly this itch become stronger and depressing started getting less noticeable.
And of course I understand that I am 33 years old, married with two kids (for now) and spend almost 6 years on trying to pursuing my goal and never even get closer. I am not getting younger and it is getting harder and harder to free some time even to finish this post, but we are talking about game dev classes and developing games.
But I made the decision to try it one more time, I gave myself 1 year and 1 month from today (11/22/22) to finish all my classes and develop and release games, the profit from them should be enough to leave my job and become a full-time game developer.
One of the reasons I created this blog is to keep myself accountable, another reason I want to share my story and encourage others who are in the same situation. You are not young, have someone or something else that you have to prioritize over everything else, this is why you cannot be like Gary Vee or Grant Cardone to jump into the ocean and see if you can swim. No, you cannot be risky for now and you need to make sure it is safe first to make that jump. I hope that my journey, and tutorials (that I am going to post here) will give you enough motivation and foundation to start achieving your dreams!
Let’s game dev journey begins!