Category: Personal Development

When I try to squeeze game development into the rest of my life, it feels like everything encroaches on it; however, when I make game dev a big priority, I notice that other aspects of my life start to falter.

I have a regular day job, and I try to work on my own projects as well. Then I have the other aspects of my life, such as girlfriend, friends, family, cats, playing video games, reading books, keeping track of my finances, this blog, etc. It all adds up to a need for more effective uses of my time.

I know that I am sitting most of the time, which is why I am making an effort to exercise. I have read that getting your heart rate up for 30 minutes a day for at least three days a week is ok, and five days is better. I’ve been walking or running home from work, which has helped. I was 195 lbs (88.45 kg) about this time last year, and now I am 173 lbs (78.47 kg). I definitely hit my goal of losing 20 lbs, and I feel better when I breathe deeply or move quickly these days. Pickup basketball or soccer games are much more fun when you aren’t gasping for air. B-)

Physical health is important, but so is mental health. As you know, I keep track of the books I read. I’ve been trying to read a book a week, and for some time this year I was even a couple of books ahead of schedule. Since I’ve been concentrating on getting my game dev hours up, you can see that I am a few books behind.

My backup computer has failed, and I’ve yet to get it up and running even though I have had over a month. I have yet to make an appointment for a physical with my doctor or a dentist appointment for an opinion on my wisdom teeth. I have a number of tasks on my todo lists that have been there for weeks or months. There are still games that I haven’t had a chance to play. Civilization 3 is still unopened on my shelf, my Prince of Persia: Sands of Time save game has been about 50% complete for quite a few months, I haven’t gotten anywhere with DROD, and I’m still hoping to play games I have for the N64! As a game developer, I’m behind when it comes to actually playing games.

My project is moving along, especially in the past month when I have been doing a much better job of working on it. Does everything else getting put off become a natural consequence of essentially working two jobs, leaving little time for anything else, or can I be more careful about balancing my life?

One person told me that he does things in spurts. One week he’ll play games, then the next week is all work, although he didn’t say that he purposely scheduled his weeks in this way. It sounded like it was based on whim rather than conscious choice, though. Perhaps if I purposely decided that this day or week is dedicated to specific aspects of my life, I wouldn’t feel that they are getting neglected. After all, they are on my calendar, so when their time comes, they’ll be dealt with. You can’t schedule everything, of course, but for those things that you can schedule, they can get blocks of time set aside.

Exercise isn’t really something you can do in spurts. You’re either exercising or you’re not. Reading books is something you can do in spurts, though. I could probably finish my current book and a couple of other books if I dedicate an entire day or weekend to it. I could take an entire week to play video games, catching up on what I’ve been missing.

But if I schedule a week to a specific set of tasks, I then worry that it will be a month before I get to something. I don’t know if it will result in balance as it is more like consciously choosing to unbalance myself. If I play games one week, read books and articles the next, that’s two weeks in which no progress is getting made on game development. On the other hand, I could do a better job of dedicating certain days to certain tasks.

I was stressed when I was trying to work 20 hours on game dev and still expected to fit everything else into the week as well. I was setting vague and unrealistic goals without realizing it, and I don’t think I was fun to be around. I’ve been neglecting my weekly reviews, so I need to reboot my organizational tools, as I have too many calendars and lists. I need to make conscious decisions about how I am going to spend my day, my week, my month, and my year.

None of the above is really all that new. It’s just nice to remind myself once in awhile since I seem to fall in and out of it.

As I said in my weekly Thousander Club update, I was worried about making a game for IGF 2007.

Last year, I posted about my decision to enter the competition. Rereading the post, I found I became angry at myself. In October, I said “I’ll obviously need to have a game to submit, but I have the rest of the year to make one.” Well, a year is almost up, and it’s been a year since I first started working on Oracle’s Eye, and I have nothing to show for it but an engine that doesn’t play a game yet. According to my records, I’ve worked over 170 hours on game development-related tasks. I have created a simplified text-based boardgame simulation, which helped to secure my current day job and teach me about component-based development, so I guess that counts, but I am upset with myself for not having better results.

Something prevented me from acknowledging this anger at first. I think the problem was that I didn’t realize it was self-directed. It’s easy to get angry at the world, other people, or inanimate objects when you aren’t aware that your current situation is the result of your own actions. Blaming others is easy, but when you realize that you can take responsibility for your own actions, you feel empowered.

I get that. I might have taken it too far, though. I was angry at myself, but as soon as I even felt a hint of anger or frustration, I would dismiss it. “There is no point in getting angry as it is your own fault you are in that situation.” Meanwhile, my subconscious was probably screaming, “YES, YOU BEAUTIFUL MORON!” and then became even more frustrated since I wasn’t paying attention.

Sure, being angry with yourself isn’t going to be fruitful by itself, but you need to realize that there is something to be angry about in order to do something about it.

Now that I know that I am angry, what can I do about it?

I can face reality.

Last year I said would make a game and submit it to IGF, even though I had no specific game in mind to create. Months into it, I was thinking that I would make a game after I finish Oracle’s Eye. Months ago, I thought that OE might be the game to submit because there wouldn’t be time to make another. These past few weeks, I was hoping to have anything completed by the due date. Now, I think I will need to give up on my goal.

Was it too much to think that I could create a single game in a year? I don’t think so. If Game in a Day is possible, and it is, then I should be able to come up with something over an entire year. Was my project too ambitious? Maybe, but I cut a lot of features and left it with some really basic gameplay. I couldn’t seem to pull it together anyway.

Part of my problem was that I didn’t have a single focus. First I was working on OE. I found that small changes would require a lot of rework. After some time I decided that I should create a new engine to make development easier. A component-based framework would make game development almost as easy as editing a configuration file. Of course, creating one is more difficult than to hack away at a single game. The work is still there. It’s just moved from one end of development to another. I also took a little over a month to complete the boardgame simulation. While it was a good experience, I shouldn’t have taken such a long break from OE.

The bottom line: I’m not satisfied with my performance for the past year.

I’ve been taking some time to think about what I am really trying to do and how I am going to do it. I will post at least some of my plans on this blog. I’m not sure how I am going to improve my situation, but I am going to find out, and then I am going to do it. Wish me luck!