Personal Development

Sometimes being able to ‘unplug’ is exactly what I need to recharge my motivation. This past weekend I did just that. Adam and I headed up to DC to attend the “Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear”. I use to live in DC so ti was great visiting and meeting up with old friends and just exploring the city. I tweeted maybe 1 or 2 times the entire weekend. My laptop never came on, and I actually didn’t randomly browse my RSS feed or facebook until I got back home in Montgomery....

One Man Left Studios is over a year old, but it’s been about 4-5 months since I’ve gone ‘full time’ indie. It’s been an awesome experience thus far and each new day brings a lot of joy and excitement. It’s really hard to describe the feeling of going from a job you simply ‘show up for’ and one that you can’t wait to start working on. But looking back to how I felt about certain aspects of the working life to what I feel now, a lot has changed:...

After reading Noel’s post on prototyping I realized I was drifting away from that mind set and getting into dangerous territory of just “thinking up a game and running with it.” Tilt to Live itself spawned into a full game from being discovered in a rough prototype. Since then we’ve just had rough documents and ideas that we wished to pursue after TTL. The past few weeks we’ve been gearing up more heavily for our next game and I’ve been getting back into the habit of whipping out fast prototypes....

While I was working at a day job for the past couple of years I was gobbling up any info I could find on going fully independent and the what it takes not only from a business perspective, but what you have to change about your personal life, ideals, and expectations in order to make it sustainable. One of things that stuck out a lot was managing my burn rate. Minimizing the amount of money leaving my account wasn’t just a matter of not buying a Starbucks coffee (I don’t even drink coffee, but you get the idea)....

Looking back at some of my old blog posts where I contemplate and muse about long term career goals; I would have never guessed 9 months later I would sitting here having accomplished one of my ‘loftier’ ones: Become a full time independent game developer. It’s been 23 days since I cut the chord and went full time indie. And the range of emotions are wild and varied as I flail about trying to get settled into a new and super exciting lifestyle....

I’ve made some serious progress as of late with Tilt To Live. The age old saying “I’m 90% done…” is rearing its head and yet it feels like there’s 90% more to go! This is a bit regurgitated, but saw an interesting bit in a post on burnout and motivation at Zen Habits: 1. Achieve in increments. When you only focus on a big goal someday, it’s easy to get burned out by the daily grind....

Tangible goals are key to any project. Without them I feel like I’m peddling up a steep hill just so I can peddle up some more. Scheduling and time logs showing time spent are great for statistical and historical purposes, but in the scheme of things can do little to save a project if you and your team lack that motivation needed to push the last mile. Countless indie games die from loss of interest....