Gamedev career change
Sorry for the clickbait. I didn't actually change my career to become a game developer in my old(er) age. But lately I've been slowly losing faith in the direction of software development.
"AI" has killed the joy of programming for me. Notice I put it in quotes because let's be real, it's not true AI. It's a useful tool in many cases. I use it at work to unblock myself. Occasionally it has helped me solve tricky bugs. But I don't default to it, and I don't vibe code. It's the type of tool where you need to be a subject expert in order to control it properly and coax it into spitting out the results you're looking for. Quite a bit like a chainsaw. I wouldn't get anywhere near a chainsaw because I don't know how to use it safely. Unfortunately, the tech industry expects everyone to start using chainsaws for every task, even when a simple screwdriver will get the job done. Perhaps even worse, plenty of devs have gleefully embraced this lifestyle, happily generating orders of magnitude more code than before. Umm... let me get my AI to review your AI code.
So I keep my head down, do my job, but at the end of the day I don't have any desire to work on a side project or even blog here anymore. I don't want to be "10x more productive" (whatever the fuck that means). I want to be my usual slow, deliberate, thoughtful self. I want to think hard about a problem. I want to debate multiple solutions, each with its own pros and cons. I want to scrap the initial solution and start over. I want to refactor the code until it feels good. Occasionally I want to overengineer things. Sometimes I want to be intentionally sloppy. But I don't want AI slop.
These days I get joy from things outside of work, chiefly fitness-related stuff. It's not an exageration to call myself an athlete (amateur at that). It's a lifestyle that I have embraced for 13 years and counting. Apart from that, I'm back again enjoying gaming, mostly on the PC. I took a multi-year break from games while I worked on side projects, but that spell is broken. So I've been gaming a lot when I'm not working or exercising.
Overwhelmingly, I've become a big fan of indie games. I can't even count how many amazing games I've played over the last 2-3 years that were made by tiny teams, sometimes even by 1 person. A benefit of the times is the availability of tools (both free and paid) that empower anyone to turn ideas into games. I've taken an interest in that. In the back of my mind I've always wanted to make games, but enough horror stories from the industry have kept me safely away from even contemplating to join the toxic gaming industry. Who cares about that though? Indie developers have proven over and over again that they can beat AAA behemoths hands down, which shows that you don't need a multi-million dollar studio to be successful.
To be clear: I don't ever expect to make a commercially successful game. And if I ever launch a game on some kind of store, I would be surprised if it made more than $10. Why bother then? It's not about the money or even success, it's simply about combining the joy of coding with the joy of gaming.
A major personal inspiration for indie development is the game It Lurks Below by David Brevik (on sale as I type this on Steam for $3.99 - an absolute steal). For those who don't know (you must be young), David Brevik worked on the original Diablo series at Blizzard North. Years later he made It Lurks Below entirely on his lonesome, graphics, sound, and music included. Big respect for David's achievement's.
After some degree of research, I have arrived at the conclusion that I want to use Godot for my future game-making endeavors. You might say "but Unity" or something else, but I'm pretty convinced that Godot is the way.
Regardless, in the meantime I came across an interesting stepping stone in the form of Pico-8, a "fantasy console" that offers a fully-featured mini-development environment. It has a lot of limitations that I won't bother listing here, being intended for low-powered consoles and emulators, but that's part of the attraction. I like the idea of working with limited resources within those constraints.
So lately I've been dabbling in Pico-8, following tutorials, building along, experimenting. One of the beauties of Pico-8 is that it can export the game cartridge in a variety of formats, including HTML. This is amazing because you don't even need a physical console to play your games - you can just play them in the browser!
This is right up my alley, so I threw together a mini website for the games I make. There's just one game there now - SHMUP 1, a "complete" game, in that it has a "game over" state, but is otherwise devoid of features. It's a WIP based on a YouTube series that I'm following. I'm iterating on it, so in the off chance that you are genuinely interested, check back.
I don't know where this will take me. Godot is definitely in my future, but Pico-8 is an amazing starter platform for anyone who wants to get started with game development. I'm gonna ride this wave for the time being.