I stared at the blank canvas of the first post on a brand new blog. My fingers, poised above the keyboard, positively twitching with anticipation of what to write whilst my mind was frantically chasing all the pesky, elusive ideas that have invaded my thoughts for months. With every breath I took, the ideas evaporated into the aether until there were none left.
My mind was blank. Empty.
Time to close the lid, put the MacBook away and have another go tomorrow.
This blog was living proof there is nothing worse than a blank page when you was to start a new project or venture. This post, this one, humble piece of text has taken me several years to write.
But now things are different. Now I have purpose and a goal to achieve. I’m on the cusp of starting a new venture and it’s a game changer (excuse the pun).
Let me explain…
With the onset of COVID-19 in the UK I was furloughed from work. Suddenly, with so much time on my hands I started to explore other possibilities. I needed to keep active and with the possibility of losing my job I wanted to be prepared for whatever the future threw at me. Opportunities like this don’t come around that often, if ever, so it’s important to grab them by the horns and tame them when they do.
My plan was to do something I’d wanted to do for a very long time: to develop my own game, just for fun. I had all the tools I needed, the time and a few ideas. I just needed to work through it and make it happen.
But where to begin?
I wanted to avoid the pitfall of my youth. I always got bogged down writing game engine code and never completed any of the games. Clearly that was not the way to go but things have moved on a lot since those days. There are a lot more options and resources around and I chose to learn Unity. It was a 50/50 choice: Unity or Unreal.
I flipped a coin and it came up Unity.
As luck would have it when I started looking for coding examples and tutorials I found Unity had made their premium learning content available free of charge for all for three months. What’s more, they had just started a series of tutorial webinars called Create with Code Live.
As I’m sure you can guess, I soaked up as much of the content as I could over the ensuing weeks and rediscovered my love of development all over again.
This got me to thinking – could I make a career out of this? Could I develop my own games and generate enough income to support my family? A quick bit of market research and number crunching said ‘yes’ so I set about planning the future, where I wanted to position myself and how I would get there. This led me to Falmouth University and their part-time MA in Indie Game Development. The course brief was a near-perfect fit with my new venture and the timing just right. I still had time to apply and make the September intake but only just.
And that, Dear Reader, brings me to where I am today.
My application was successful and I’ve enrolled on the course. It’s Friday evening, the first module has been released and term starts on Monday.
I can’t wait 😊.
The next two years are going to be awesome. Bring it on…
Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash
