This was great, as painful as it was to read and see myself in there.
I wouldn’t say that I was complaining as much to others, but it definitely took me a good long while to get to a point where I’m actually enjoying the process. I wanted to make games despite not enjoying the process, just to make the idea real. What a terrible way to live. And now, I have a thing I’m working on, and am stuck creatively and otherwise, but that’s fine. I’m gonna get back to it when I feel better. Forcing it doesn’t help and I’m not enjoying working on it right now, so I’m not! I never want to end up in that terrible place again.
Another thing that came into sharp focus while I read this was how I struggle to call myself a game developer. I struggle to really call myself anything, frankly. I’ve been noodling around (see I’m doing it again!) in game engines for over ten years. I worked as a QA tester for years, slowly burnt out, quit and am now trying to make my own stuff. I have a bunch of projects, some WIP, some finished, but I haven’t released any of my own games commercially yet. I did ship games at work; I worked on a bunch of commercial games, big and small! But…there’s that thing. Am I really a game developer if I haven’t released MY OWN video game on store dot steampowered dot com? This is, of course, a stupid way to think. It doesn’t matter, and being able to call myself a game developer is not the goal. It’s not something I consciously think about often, but still, it’s a bit nuts that I have this block, so what you wrote about exceptionalism and how we think of our projects and ourselves really hit home for me.
Thank you for writing this, really <3