You can make videogames
Sometime during March of 2023 I passed the date where it had been ten years since I released the first game I ever made. Back then I called it “Telos”, because I was really into Teleonomy and I wanted it to be something about internal and external purpose in games and all that. But it also had a big floating washing machine in it and a bunch of other stuff that had nothing to do with big ideas, and much more with me being amused by adding absurd things. Did you know that back then, itch wasn’t really a thing (I don’t know if it even existed), and one way to distribute games was via Dropbox links?
Yeah, I tried doing that. It didn’t work very well.
Anyway, this isn’t really a retrospective on this game. The date just made me think a lot about my time around videogames, how things have changed, what frustrates me about today and where I see myself in this big mess of thoughts.
Ten years ago, I was in a very strange place. Up until Summer of 2012, I always assumed I would pursue an Academic career, but due to a lot of different reasons, that goal started to crumble and I found myself not really knowing what to do instead.
At the same time, I slowly began to understand that the reason why I never tried doing more creative work wasn’t so much because I wasn’t good at it, but because I was too afraid of not being good at it to actually try it.
It was also the time where “Indiegames” was arguably at its peak. It was a time where, at least from an outside perspective, it seemed that even smaller, simpler titles were able to find a place and an audience. It seemed that everyone was excited to tell others that yes, they too can make videogames, if they wanted to.
Just think about it: Something you always assumed was impossible for you, because it would require you to have a degree in computer science, access to a large group of people and probably a lot of money, suddenly becomes something that you can just do. From your home computer, with very little knowledge or training.
Indiegames promised you that you can make a videogame.
It was exciting and I wanted to be a part of it.
However, it’s also this promise where Indiegames probably failed the most. As the space got more and more commercialised and as the places that covered smaller and non-commercial titles crumbled away, so faded the idea of making games for the sake of making them.
At the risk of sounding old: We don’t talk enough about how to make games anymore and way too much about how to sell them.
This shift away from talking about the craft of making games as a way for self-expression and -actualization towards how to best sell your work, or your skills, in order to be part of the games industry at large, is probably what frustrates me the most about how things shifted over the past ten years.
Now, don’t get me wrong: Overall things in videogames are most likely better today than they were back then and I’m not here to say that independent games from the early 2010s were this magical place where anyone could make a game and become an important famous game designer just based on their work, or whatever.
It is very clear that the mess we have today is directly related to the failure of Indiegames to deliver on the promise of creating a space that is welcoming to everyone. If it even was a promise to begin with and not just a very convenient marketing message.
At the same time, I don’t think we ever would’ve gotten a place like itch.io, if it wasn’t for this promise. A place where countless people, all for different reasons express themselves through games, and most of them with small to non-existent audiences.
I don’t think we ever would’ve gotten so many tools that make game development easier.
I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten to a point where at 28 years of age, I believed I could make a videogame completely on my own, despite not knowing anything about what it takes to make one.
Ten years ago, I only had ideas. Now I can make entire games myself, and that’s a beautiful thing, despite everything else that frustrates me with this space and the world at large. I may never earn a significant amount of money with my work, I may never “get into the industry”, but as long as I have access to a computer, I can make as many games as I want and no one can stop me.
The message might not be as prevalent as it was ten years ago, but it’s still true:
You can make videogames.
Make games for yourself, make them for your friends, family, or anyone who wants to listen to what you have to say.
Making games is cool and you don’t need to be part of an industry to realise that. All you have to do is make them.