Game Dev Journal: Press Start

I played my first video game when I was 4. I was fascinated when I found out that I could move stuff on TV. I still remember what I felt and how I felt. It's like my strongest memory — and maybe the happiest. I was kinda used to the idea of television, my father was heavily addicted in action movies and we used to watch together a lot. But the fact of pressing some button and then stuff starts to move as you wish opened a whole new perspective of life for me. I needed to know how to make stuff like that.

I was 12 when I discovered that games are created with computers, and obviously I bothered my parents to buy one — even though I knew we couldn't afford one. But they actually did buy a computer, because they were convinced that it would be an investment on my future.

The first lesson that I learned about game development: it was hard. Not the kind of hard that I was used to. I learned english all by myself translating video games before getting a computer, so I was able to deal with some pretty tough stuff. But I drowned in my first dive in this new ocean.

The second lesson was: it took time for a game to be made. A lot of it. And I was entering in a bad moment in my life, I needed to focus on other stuff, which lead me to the...

Third lesson: it was harder to get a job. They all expected someone with a few games made, and I couldn't finish a single one.

And then I gave up for a while, going in a different direction until the pandemics. I lost my job as soon as it started, and then I came back to coding, but now for a living. I'm currently working as a web developer, but my inner child deserves to have his dreams fulfilled.

And what would make this journey different than what it was fifteen years ago? I got a plan, and I'm more stubborn than ever.

Now, the fourth lesson: I need to be an AI specialist to make the games the way I want. I like to play hard games, and hard games requires good NPCs, which leads to a strong AI system.

I'm tired of writing, so this is it by now. Next time I'm here, I'll talk about what I've been doing with AI.