As you probably know I have been making games for over 35 years, doing the programming, art and sound in most cases, however I think enough is enough. Its hard to make a dent in the games industry these days, months and sometimes years of hard graft comes to nothing because you do not have the marketing budget to spend on your next big idea. Yes but you can do it yourself I hear some of you say, in my experience its no you really can’t, not if your attention is on the development and maintenance of your works.
Today there are too many people developing games, everyone with a computer and an internet connection can learn to code as the code they need to make games these days is not very much at all as the majority of the hard work is done for them using game engines like Unity, Unreal Engine and Gideros and while they take the grunt work out of it, leaving developers to focus on the actual game code they have opened the flood gates everyone who has a game idea.
You cannot believe how many conversations I have had that started with “I have a great idea for a game” and after sitting listening to them they use phrases like “Zelda but in Space” or something like that, everyone has a favorite game and everyone thinks they know how to improve or change it to suit their idea of the “Best game ever”.
But that’s not me, for me it’s about originality doing something others are not doing which is why it took me nearly 2 years to make Skyfight, and more than 2 years to make Monkey Mofo/Stars. So the thought of spending another 2 years making yet another original computer game is not for me anymore as I cant afford to put my heart and soul into another game only to not have anyone play it because I either cant afford to market it properly or I get let down by the marketing partners like I have in the past.
Therefore I am sorry to say I am retiring from computer game development. Thank you all for supporting me over the years and playing my games, it has been as much fun making them for you as I hope you have had playing them.
In the near future I will be publishing the source code to the last few games I have made including Skyfight. So, watch out for those posts.
Still making games.
I will not be hanging up my mouse completely as I am moving to board game development and hopefully finding a publisher for my board game ventures, but more on that another day.