The worst part about it is that I know I want to be a game developer full time, but a person seeking such an avenue who has only a limited number of resources only has a few paths to choose to accomplish said end. How does one reach an ends, without the correct means to do so? That has been the ever prevalent question it seems. Funding.. the dreaded reality of living in a capitalistic society seems to be the main obstacle.
Paths can include :
Going back to school - This is hard to do when reality pressing one has to work a full time job and fulfill all the other roles in ones life. Without securing loans to go to school full time and pay for other expenses, a full time job and being a father leaves little to no time for game development at all. Especially when the work that I am able to secure that pays decently enough for me to live, is usually labor work that has me no where near a computer and has me being exhausted at the end of the day.
Working Full time / part time game development - This is what I've been doing and while the most practical, it also leaves other things to be desired such as more time to concentrate on game development. Also as mentioned previously, I can't seem to land a job that is IT related either, which I would be satisfied with, this avenue is the one that I will also more then likely continue down.
Give up your worldly possessions to live in a dilapidated house and live the true bohemian life style. - This has been the path of many an artist, live for your art , be obsessive and manic in your efforts, someone says hey you have to pay bills to live here, your response is bills are for the mortal (Mom can I live with you?). Scrounge and toil to put footing into your venture, tap into friends networks wirelessly, sleep on benches, shower when there is a source of fresh water, you are a game developer. You also happen to be homeless and have a rather pungent smell about you. Plus the people that depend on you find it hard to depend on a nomad.
I've read where various people on this site have found homes with development companies and that is something that I've thought of as well. I know that I can perform some entry level position with some company some where, but I also fear that my portfolio is lacking at this point and or I don't have any industry experience. On top of that I'm mainly a self taught programmer and as such I probably am not the best engineer. On top of that, Iowa isn't really know for it's massive participation in the game industry so any potential employment with a game dev house is going to be riddled with nationwide competition, but it'd still be worth persuing.
Ok, well I'm not really sure where I was going with that but it was interesting still the same.
I haven't been working on Wrath of the Scarecrow since before the MAGIC competition. Instead I worked on redesigning some stuff for the editor and have been working to implement it. I also was attempting to setup a public wiki from my computer but for some reason MoinMoin doesn't like to run with IIS or at least the write permissions where messed up. It was easy to get python working with it though. At any rate, I ended up giving up on it after a day and a half of messing with it, and may attempt to set it up again at a later date.
In the meantime, I'm concentrating on working on the editor and I'm going to at least find some part time work so that I don't get evicted or lose my internet connection.
I'll be documenting development of the editor over the rest of this week as well, so away I go.
