Going Fulltime

After trying to do game development in my free time for the last 7 years, I'm finally giving up and instead trying to do game developement full time. My last day working for Apple was Friday last week.

This has been something I've wanted to go for ever since I got started, but haven't had the financial stability or the courage to give it a go.

I'm not really sure I have that now either, but I'm giving it a go.

I have some money set aside and I'm hoping to get some tax credits and startup support later in the yest, so with those two things together, I should be ok to work on a game for around a year. Hopefully at that point I'll have something I can either sell or get an investment to keep working on it.

So what game am I going to make? Truth is, I don't really know. Over the last few months I've put quite a bit of work into an idea I had of a turn based 2D sidescroller with a Diablo like loot system. I liked the idea a lot, it was taking a lot of my favourite games and mixing them together, but I think I went too far into designing enemy, loot and ability systems without actually testing out whether the idea of a turnbased combat system where you are only controlling one character works well. As far as I can tell it doesn't, so it's back to the drawing board.
I've also been having a few ideas for VR games, so the first thing I'll do once I'm full time on game development will be a lot of brainstorming and prototyping to find out exactly what I'll be working on.

I've also started game development group and had two meetings with other people interested in game development in Cork. I figured it might simply be fun, but could also be a good way to stay motivated if you had someone to show your progress to.

Meanwhile I've let my webhosting of www.lonelygiantgames.com expire, though I still own the domain. I had way too expensive a hosting package considdering how little I used the homepage. I think for now I will leave it dormant, until I have something new I want to show off.

I'm also really hoping to spend the next few weeks getting a bit inspired. I've lived in Ireland for over eight years and I've seen very little of the country, so I hope to bring my sketchbook and a camera and go exporing the Irish countryside a bit and maybe find some time to read some good books.

This should also mean that this blog will become much more active. I think a weekly or fortnightly update about my game and working on my own, would be a great way for myself to take stock of how things are going.

Wish me luck...