Making Games
Some of this resonated with me, some did not. I don&#x27;t think there was an insecurity I needed salve for as a motivation for writing games. Neither do I think that programming generally has been a &quot;power trip&quot; for me.<p>But like the author I came to see my writing of games as satisfying an artistic (and also a technical need) I suppose I have. Why express yourself artistically in software? Maybe because I am not as skilled at painting or music to hope to express myself in that regard.<p>And I think early on, perhaps still, I wrote games to make tangible the idea for a game that <i>I</i> would like to play. (That others might also enjoy the game should not come as a surprise.)<p>In fact, plenty of times when learning I can program, I have had non-programmers tell me about their own great idea for a game and ask if I could write it. I feel a little uncomfortable when they do because frankly it&#x27;s difficult for me to be inspired by someone else&#x27;s idea. Often, I tell them, &quot;Why don&#x27;t you teach yourself to program?&quot; I know how dickish that sounds but in fact I am essentially telling them to take the exact path that I took myself, ha ha.<p>:<p>I agree indie game writing is art.<p>When I first wrote shareware when I was in college any money that showed up (maybe $10 a month) went directly to buying a pizza and two cokes for my then-girlfriend and I that Friday night. It just seemed like gravy.<p>But when programming became a career for me, and the internet added a more realistic means to monetize software, there did come in this creeping expectation of making enough to &quot;live on&quot; from games. I am coming to see now that this kind of ruins it for me.<p>Having recently retired, I used my time to rewrite one of my early shareware games for Steam. It was fun to go back to C for the nostalgia, fun to modernize the game using a cross-platform library (SDL), fun to see 60 fps so easy....<p>But I sunk $1000 into the thing if you count buying a Steam Deck, paying Steam $100, and the various controllers and such I purchased (for the oft-neglected PC&#x27;s I pressed into game-development service — I am normally a Mac guy but I wanted to try cross-platform). All told I have made about $570 from the game and I don&#x27;t expect to make much more.<p>I think I&#x27;ll write another game or two for Steam but, and perhaps this is a healthy mindset, I don&#x27;t expect to make any money doing it. But in a way I feel I am slowly coming back to my college days and can begin to look at any sort of recompense as ... having paid for the Steam Deck at least.<p>I am glad the author has come around to a similar conclusion. I think it can make game-writing fun again. (I am also glad the author seems to have exorcised some childhood demons in the process — congrats.)