Hi there I'm going to make this as long and as detailed as I can so if you don't like long stories please go back now! So my names Ken, I like to go by Asymmetric when I'm online . I'm writing this to detail my struggles and some of my triumphs, basically I'm writing this to get certain things off my chest and out to the public and the general community and maybe some people will find this a bit inspiring for those who are in the same or similar situation I am.  Spoiler Alert though, there isn't so much of a happy ending to this because as I said, I'm writing this to get things off my chest.

As I was saying, my names Ken and I like to go by Asymmetric online. I am 23 years of age and I have a 3 year old son (more on that topic later) and I work a minimum wage job at my local cities restaurant who've I been employed at for now 3 years.  I'd say a couple years before I became employed at Nannas (that's the restaurants  name) my uncle passed away. At the time my little sister began high school and she needed access online to do some of her homework, so my grandma gave us, our family his laptop. Because at the time we didn't have a computer or anything like it besides our phones to go online with.  So eventually my sister never used it nor did my mom, I should also note that I still live with my mother and sister in a 2 bedroom apartment.  So because my sister never used it, I took it over. Now a bit of a back story, I was a huge computer nerd when I was 8 up until 13 years old when the computer broke, just wouldn't turn on anymore and after that I was a xbox kid all the way after high school.  After months of having the laptop and replaying and redownloading old games I use to play a friend had recommended me a game called Starbound. I played Starbound for hours on end everyday for months, it was my first newer game I had and first game I felt like I could get into  without trying if you know what I mean.  Afterwhile I started to figure out how to mod Starbound and that was my first intro into coding, scripts, pixel art so on and so forth and I fell in love.  Thus begins my adventure into game development and pixel art .

I aspire to be a solo indie dev or at least somewhere in that field of being a game dev; it's my dream I've always wanted to make something people will like but I could just never figure out what to make and now I feel like I've found it, that being game development.  I don't have any plans to go to college for this, I don't want to be in debt. See my son, I don't get to see him and I haven't since August of last year. I want to be there for him, I want to be a father but me and his mother have never been on good terms, prior to August of last year I had made a rude comment to her which then set off a chain reaction of events, or event to where she cut off all contact with me and my family. So I can't get ahold of her, I've been threw the courts already. I have a court order to see my son every few days out of the week and even still after i did all that I still can't get in contact with her till this day.  I feel stuck a lot of the times in my life, like where I work at. Another thing I should mention is I don't and have never had a driver's license and have rarely ever drove in my life. These past few weeks my mom has been taking me out driving so I can achieve my license SO then I can have better job opportunities so then I can get a better job to better myself. Even if I work at a better well paying  job I don't really want to do, I'd still be happy with doing this game making stuff as a hobby. 

A lot of the times it's hard for me to want to get up and learn how to make games. I've been taking a few Unity courses here and there and I have this coding app on my phone I'll sometimes practice on when i'm on break at work.  Because of the situation I'm in I deal with a lot of anxiety and depression and it makes it hard to even wanna do anything, sometimes I'll sit there and stare blankly at the computer screen wanting to do something but not doing anything and idk why.  Even right now it's hard for me to write this and I realized this is a jumbled mess  and I apologize for that if it made it hard to follow, but I've never have gotten to talk about this like this before and these are my thoughts as they are at the moment of writing this. 

I don't know how to get noticed enough or anything like that to then maybe make it as a indie dev or someone of the sort, I see a lot of popular people on this site and I figure first step is to get some recognition on this site but I only have so much and so little time and my anxiety eats away at a lot of my time and that's one of my problems with making it. There's a lot of times I sit there and I want to do all these things cause maybe that'll be the one but then I got 5 other things I'm trying to work on and it's hard to figure it all out by yourself and how to do it all and manage. People who even get a few downloads and comments on their games or asset packs I aspire to have because with the few things I've put out I feel like it just went under the radar and idk how to get out of the radar in a sort of words.  

Idk how to push thru at this time in my life with everything I got going on for myself and everything I have to deal with, I have big dreams for myself but as of right now I don't feel so big and sometimes my dreams feel hopeless. 

Hello Asymmetric

I’m sorry that you don’t get to see your son.  I do hope you’re able to patch things up with his mother so that you can be part of his life growing up – mostly because it will mean a lot to him. 

Why don’t you tell your story – in the form of a game?  Like an adventure story or an interactive visual novel or a roll playing game?  You can ask the audience to decide what you should have done / said and imagine various outcomes.  Start by elaborating on the piece you told us here and illustrate parts of it and so on.

There’s software out there that is easier and simpler to use than Unity.  They have free starter editions that won’t cost you anything - look for something that makes you excited about writing games.  If you just browse these forums or the games that fill in the metadata, you’ll see a lot of gaming software.  They all have basic tutorials – work through one and if it seems like “hard work” skip it and go to the next one until you find one that is “fun” to figure out and work in.

Popularity?  Don’t worry about that – life is random.  Do something you love, for yourself and don’t be afraid to put it out there.  If people reject it at first, just remember it’s not personal – there are 100 000 games – 99% of the people here aren’t going to see your project – the other 1% are looking at approximately 100 games, they need a good reason to choose yours (or mine) and it might have more to do with the mood they’re in, than the game. 

What got me into writing games was my love of playing games and wanting to also write games like the ones I was playing.  When I’m unhappy about getting nowhere in developing games, I take time off and just play games other people have written – or ones I wrote myself – and that rekindles my love for the genre.  Don’t worry if playing games seems like wasting time in the moment, you can’t write a good game if you haven’t played a lot of games like it – because you’ll miss all the tricks that make the game fun.  Playing games is part of the learning process – it’s the easy and fun part.

If you’re feeling depressed though – as opposed to just having a bad day - please get some real help – search online for charities that can help you, there’s medicine you can take, please don’t just ignore it. 

Best of luck.

He is indeed right Asymmetric.