Short Story Summer
Sorry John Mayer, I’m No Longer Waiting on the World To Change
I’m about to wrap up my first game, and I already want to do a postmortem. This did not go well. I’ve learned a bunch, but I’m finding the problem with coding is that you can do things the wrong way and have it work. Unlike plumbing or cooking or just about anything else. If the game calls for certain things in a certain way, you can take any path you want to get there—even at the expense of things once thought to be working correctly.
I am so mad at my ladders. They are ass. Complete shit. Hard to use, easy to break, and genuinely not as good as the game they are based on. I’ve recently been playing Chained Together, and they simply made their ladders a climbable wall that plays the standard ledge climb animation. Who gives a shit if they aren’t grabbing the rungs of the ladder? It feels intuitive to use. My ladders feel like trying to cross a plank in an adventure game, and they give you a balance meter as they do it—not to challenge the user, but because climbing is a challenge in itself.
But they do work. They are functional enough that you can play a round of my game and be able to interact with them in the way I’ve more or less intended. But there are so many better ways of doing it. Splines, Chained Together methods, or a dozen others. So in a way, despite the fact that I’ve learned which path to take in the future, I spent a shitload of time doing something partially wrong. Which does have a negative effect on my momentum. And one thing I’m learning is momentum is huge.
The momentum I have with my learning is my best asset. I can’t deny that it feels great to know how to put together a simple UI, and how much more competent I’ve become with C++. These are small things that took far less time than dealing with that fucking ladder and make me enjoy the work way more. That is why my next course is going to focus on blueprint work. I do not deny that C++ is better to use and learn, because it teaches me a programming language, but also programming principles that are applicable in other engines and other industries. But I also can’t deny that working with C++ is costing me a ton of time at a point where every minute of free time is precious to me.
Life is not getting easier. Moving has been stressful. Work has been the same depressing slog as it has for the last five years. The sorrow of the past few months has given way to an intense fear. Again, I don’t want to make this a depressing devlog, but I’ve had to start meditating because of the anxiety and panic that is constantly in my life. What I wouldn’t give to have some breathing room. The amount of peace that even two thousand dollars would bring would be incredible. At the start of the year, I had savings. I was going to quit my job to reclaim my mental health and look for something I didn’t hate. A surgery and a rent increase later, I just look at my two weeks notice in my outbox, short and sweet, and regret my inability to send it.
It’s honestly worse now that people watch the videos. Everyone is so nice and supportive. It feels fake that I have a little community who not only watches my work, but gives helpful solutions and advice. I also get motivation from the other people letting me know they’ve started their own journeys to change their lives. There used to be a fear of solitude that came with leaving my job. It’s still there, as internet comments are not the loving support of my girlfriend. But now I know that even if I lost my job, my girlfriend, my ability to do things like go to friends’ weddings (incredible money sink), and had to move back in with my mom at 30, I wouldn’t be without people offering support. I know they were always there in the form of friends and family, and I will always prioritize my reallife friends over comments. But to say those same internet comments do not have a validating effect on life decisions would be a lie. And for that, I am thankful.
So at the end of the month, I move from Northern Virginia to Philadelphia. A move a role model of mine, David Lynch, made when he was ten years younger than me. He had this to say about the city of brotherly love:
"I always say, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is my biggest influence. There is something about the mood here. The fear, insanity, corruption, filth, despair, violence in the air was so beautiful to me."
My hope is that I can find the same inspiration. I only have one bro there, who I love and cherish, but he simply isn’t as interested in finding the same insanity, corruption, filth, and despair as I am. That’s not to say I’m living on Kensington Ave, but a retreat away from the world I know for fifteen months in a place that seems hostile to comfort is a great way to eliminate habits and gain the time to build new ones. My biggest one will be having a strict budget, alongside eating better and cheaper. I’m talking rice and beans piled. Build enough savings so that I can give myself six months of time to create, while also saving enough to put on a wedding somehow. Hence the removal of my friends and the reduction of my living expenses by moving to Philly.
Will any of this work? Most likely not. But my hope is that I can find another path forward with the momentum generated from this move that will at least help me find easiness. Find aloha. Find enough time to take a breath and read. I have the support of family, friends, and online strangers, which I smith into a pry bar to force open inner peace.
Now to talk about game news bullshit.
Is Xbox Joever?
No.
As my previous prediction of Xbox has proven correct, let me tell you how it’s going to go down. First, those mega studios are going to eat a bunch of shit. You no longer get ten million dollars and seven years for a AA game that doesn’t sell, like South of Midnight. Nor are you going to get one hundred million to make a demo like for Perfect Dark. People have been lamenting the overcosted bloatfest that causes modern studios to focus on microtransactions and infinite revenue to recover profits. This is why every game has skins. That is not to say Microsoft is some based chad trying to change game dev for the better. It’s just that you can’t say Microsoft has made nothing but ass for the last few years (outside of Bethesda) and then be like, “How dare they close these amazing studios!” Even Tango Softworks didn’t make its money back for spooky Tokyo game nor Jet Set Radio 3. Sega would still make Jet Set Radio if Jet Set Radio was popular enough to support a franchise.
I hate people losing their jobs. There is no “but” that makes it better. It is confusing to watch everyone enjoy these Xbox games eating shit because they hate Xbox, only to then become their most staunch defenders of the devs. Meanwhile, just about everything Xbox has been doing since announcing its games on PS5 has been pretty good, granted that is really just Bethesda being good. Elder Scrolls Remake is flames. Indiana Jones was great. Doom: Dark Ages was more Doom. South of Midnight was an unfun critical darling. Tony Hawk 4 seems to be Tony Hawk 4. What more do you want? To play a game called Everwild that you’ve never even seen? A Perfect Dark remake? Who is that for? The game came out twentyfive years ago and has been untouched since.
It sucks that this touched so many titles and so many people are affected. It is a shortsighted business decision to let that many people go instead of simply having less profit, and only a soulless corporation as big as Microsoft could do it. My hope is that they get a dummy thick severance and enough time to find something they like more. My hope for Microsoft is that they double down on Obsidian’s release structure with the studios they have left (leave Bethesda alone) and keep churning out AA games like Pentiment, Grounded, and even Avowed (if you’re into that sort of thing). I believe that is the only hope of seeing dormant IP like Spyro and Crash come back. Or getting another Crackdown.
Some people may ask the difference between wanting Spyro back compared to the girl from Perfect Dark. Or how is this different than wanting a Jet Set Radio spiritual successor? To which I will say, the last Spyro game came out seven years ago, not twentyfive, and wouldn’t cost one hundred million to make. Instead, they could make smaller, tighter games and release them on faster paces, with less risk due to only needing to get a certain number of players on Game Pass and make up the rest with sales across all consoles. Something even Sony will be doing. Horizon will come to Switch, and everyone will be like “such a smart move, Sony doesn’t compete with Nintendo,” not realizing that this means Sony now also releases its games on every platform after an exclusivity window, since computers run on Windows, and according to Sarah Bond, “Windows 11 is the future home of gaming.” No one will say this is the end for Sony. No one will worry about PS5s no longer being made. Nor will they celebrate the slow death of console exclusives (minus Nintendo). A company so anticonsumer they make Disney look like Mickey Mouse.
We have just passed the home video era for gaming and entered the streaming era. It will be an absolute gold rush for the right games. But big AAA games, while still good investments for the five studios that can pull them off, are not the right games.
