The 8 fears of a solo developer

I turned 40 earlier this year. And sometimes one has to look in the mirror with a glass of alcohol and reflect on the fears.

I can't just quit my job

If you have a family and a day job, you will never make the bold move of quitting your day job to make games. And that's perfectly reasonable. Just like not having more than 1-2 hours daily to do that. How much can you achieve in 1 hour daily? Assuming nothing will have bigger priorities at the moment.

If only I could quit my day job to make video games, I could focus more on the game and less on making a living.

But I won't because I don't know the process well enough to start earning money from games before starving.

An hour daily it is.

It can be enough if I know what I'm doing. The problem is, I'm still learning that.

I'll be too old

I joke around that I will be the Colonel Sanders of video games. Because once I make it, I will probably be 50 or 60. Sure, the perspective of being a young game-making prodigy is nice, but with every year that's not gonna happen even more.

Colonel Sanders as a video game developer

The only problem is - how many games will I have time to make?

What if it'll take me 10 years to make one game

I have many game ideas. By choice, I'm making it even worse - I note 5 ideas daily (not only games, stories, and SaaSes as well) and don't throw them away. Still, how much time does a game take? What if it's too much when the team has only one developer?

What if it's crap?

Worse than spending 10 years on one game is spending 10 years on a game that will turn out to be a crap. What then? How long does a redemption story need to happen? Another 10 years?

What if I don’t finish it at all?

Doesn’t matter if it’s due to scope creep or perfectionism or both. As much as I fear the loss of time or the final disappointment, there’s the slight possibility it might never result in an actual game.

Because, y’know…

I'm all alone and can't wear all the hats

One developer might delegate composing and graphics to some contractors. But what about design? Script? Production? Marketing? If I encounter a programming bug I can't solve, an art style I can't master, or a design problem I can't untangle… I’m on my own. I can ask about theory, but solving particular cases? Especially non-programming ones (Stack Overflow is still alive, may it live forever!).

I'm shit at marketing

I have low networking capabilities. I won’t attend any conferences. The fear of not finding an audience and gaining visibility is real. Every indie game developer has this, I think.

Then again, I do have you guys, so maybe it won’t be that bad :D

I'm aiming too high

I envy people who make puzzle games. I'm thinking about telling stories. When I play games, I rarely play low-budget games. I play expensive single-player games. This isn't a bad thing, but it does influence my imagination and a little bit of my "I'd do that better" sense. But when I sit down to make games, I shouldn't be thinking about them. Because that's not what I'll be capable of making.

To misquote Tim Robbins: LOWER YOUR STANDARDS!

It's easy to think about the big gaming market. But wouldn't it be easier to find a niche of highly engaged people? Not doing a game for everyone, but for example, for Playdate players?

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There’s a reason to write about fears. Seneka told someone, that the best way to stop fearing death is to think about the way you will die, every day. It does sound like a grim way to spend your evening meditations, until you find out it actually works! By thinking about it, you tame your fears, you make them less scary. You are not only prepared, you can also think of what can go wrong and prepare for that. Sure, it will not necessarily work on death. Well, at least once. You only die once, after all. But for all other fears… well, it might work!

An ancient Roman senator holding a laptop