The following post was copied and pasted "as is" from my now defunct Substack page
We all love video games. I do, and so do you. I’m guessing that’s how, after exploring down the rabbit hole, you ended up here. But, where did you land at? Well, my friend, you are at my personal journal, aimed at registering my progress to become a full-fledged RPG dev and, if possible, live from this.
But first things first: as the title says, who am I? My name is Franco Pedroncini, “Pepper” for the peeps, and I’m an Argentine game dev learning the ropes of game design and coding, stumbling one step at a time. I grew up playing a variety of games including Sonic The Hedgehog, Resident Evil, the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy and so on but there was one game that captivated me like none other: Final Fantasy IX. The story, the music, the varied characters you could control at once, it was all too perfect for me.
Of course, as I became older, I understood there is no such thing as a flawless game, but the seed was planted already. The thirst for more turn-based RPGs, specially those made in Japan, was making me crave for more. I played in the coming years, as a teenager and during my first years as a university student Dragon Quest, Pokémon, Persona, Tales and so on, learning a bit from each of them. I also tried RPG Maker XP to no avail, having problems with the tutorials and the language barrier back then when the information on the internet was not that vast, fifteen years ago.
Fast forward to when I finished secondary school as an 18-year-old and had to decide what would I study after it. The choice was clear: it was… psychology. Yeah, nothing related to gaming. For a while, I was aimlessly studying until I put a stop to it and found out that it is possible to dedicate my life to making video games as someone from the Global South. So I decided to switch and dedicate myself to learning how to do it. Partly at a different university, partly on my own.
I spent years on and off trying to learn Unity, it was tough. I’m still not done with it but I have faith in myself. I tried Godot for a bit but ultimately I feel the former is the better one of the two to get a job in the industry, although there is never “too much” learning. Nowadays, after many attempts, I decided that I’m still going to work on Unity for portfolio reasons while also working on RPG Maker for tiny projects that will let me practice some game design while getting out of my system the need of making and publishing RPGs.
Having said that: what can you expect from this blog? This is a journal with updates on whatever I’m working on at the moment. Monthly or every two months, I’ll be posting any progress I have, working as a sort of “official site” along with my itch page and my linktree. Wait for tomorrow for more info! As of now, suscribe to the blog with the button below to get e-mails each time I post something. It is free!
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