Small Steps

Its been almost 2 years since I last provided an update on what I have been doing. Today I want to finally share and update this post with my thoughts and progress on my career. 

I was able to land my first job under my mentor as a contractor for Carnival Cruise Lines by helping create a new casino app for them. The primary games I helped push was Pirate King's Lottery and Queen Sea Poker. with most of my time going towards Lottery. Poker was done earlier in the development life and was done mostly by a co-worker, but lottery was my baby that I was able to take care of for the last 2 years. 

It was extremely humbling to work on a project like that and day in and out make that my primary focus. While I know this isn't the biggest game in the world, I can still say I did that and show everyone work of mine. While the project has died down in terms of work at the moment I still want to get back in and try to continue my path to making something great. I know if I keep doing what I love and keep giving the passion that I have for games that one day I will get to a point of true success. 

With my journey developing PKL I met some really amazing talent and networked with people I never even knew I could. I am proud to have made it this far and experienced everything that I have. On top of all that It really is a great feeling to finally say I can move on to another project.

While working on PKL I was also lucky enough to find myself working with some highly influential people in Orlando, such as Patrick Khan at the Snap! space. I was able to work with him and other developers to put out another app in the app store called CITYunseen. While this wasn't as high up on my list of amazing apps that I want to publish it really was a fun experience to work with AR and artist to bring some really cool art pieces to life. While this job had many troubles in it's development cycle, I was still able to learn and overcome all of it and put out the best app I could. 

With that being said there was a quote I read from a book:
“Making a game is like constructing a building during an earthquake or trying to run a train as someone else is laying down track as you go...” 
― Jason Schreier, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories 

This quote could not ring more true with both projects. While in college it was really ingrained in me that games have some good foundation to start building on and that you really have a good plan while going into these projects. I could not have been more wrong. Game development is like the wild west right now with creative juices just overflowing and talent being told how and when to do things. It really is kinda a mess and developers really get the short end of the stick for all of it. Not to say there isn't good management or leads out there but they are just so hard to come by and when they do come around stake holders or investors don't like the ideas that come out of them because they don't make them money in the short term.

I really hope that the state of the game industry changes direction soon cause the amount of people trying to stick their fingers into the money pot where they shouldn't be is becoming overwhelming. One company that I am excited to see where they go is Bungie. They separated from Activision which seems to be one of those greedy hands, which means that Bungie no longer has to appease the hand that was feeding them. What does it mean for this company in the future? I don't know but if I know anything about Bungie is that they are community people who wan their gamers to really love the games they make. I hope the best for them and that they really get to make their next best game with the passion and dedication they have with all their others. Here's to one day hopefully being a part of all of that.

With all this being said, I'm currently out of a contract looking for more work and trying to see what I can accomplish in my spare time. I am currently trying to see how streaming works and learning how to market myself better when it comes to job hunting. Both of these have given me some hope as to what I can do to make a difference in this world and just how big you can really dream. Hopefully something comes from all of it soon.