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EneasLari
EneasLari

Posted on • Updated on

Software Engineer trying to be Game Developer

Hello everyone I have been a member of this community for a while and i haven’t write my first post since then
so what e better than writing my inner thoughts for the first time, and my first blog post ever
I have been working as junior software engineer for about 1 year in two different companies.
My dream always was to become a game developer who makes educational games for kids with special needs, so this was my struggle for these
two past two years. I was quite familiar with unity through my university years so I continued using unity for this purpose.
I say struggle because I realized how difficult is to work a full time job and then continue at home programming.
First year:
My first work was demanding because i was the supporter and the programmer.
I was working for a company that is developing the invoicing system of electricity companies, such a boring and demanding company,
i never was the "give me challenges guy",i like set my own challenges. So I found a "better" job with "better" money and environment
because i got exhausted at the end. And the best part about my life was that i was living with my parents after 6 years living on my own,
"piece of cake". Despite of that I was managing to work extra hours to enhance my programming skills as I was feeling I inefficient
in a professional environment. I made several incomplete web apps using nodejs and mongodb for backend and bootstrap for frontend.
The problem was i was not making games. I was afraid of making my hand dirty with my real passion. Don’t ask me why , I don’t know.
Second Year:
After exactly one year living with my parent i moved in my own house.
The things got better in my personal life, now i was living only with my partner, i was working more logical hours and i
was getting home earlier, so i had time to work on my games. I decided to work more seriously and consistently. I made five
casual games , i added word and arithmetic games to them so it is not obvious the educational part.
The problem:
The problem was that I burned my self as I was working everyday after work and weekends. Also I felt overwhelmed and lost
in the game development chaotic world, i was reconsidering everything i was doing i was feeling insecure that i hadn’t used
good strategies, the coding , the architecture, the ui,the music, sfx,vfx and all the other things that you must do to make about
complete game with the bare minimums.
On the other hand i didn’t had a clue how i was going to make money out of it and this was a part i knew it was the most
difficult.
Part of solution:
I have a friend who is a teacher so i asked him if he was interested to get involved in my journey, he agreed and liked the idea
we got brainstormed and we improved our games, he was working on the educational part and i was developing. We had two productive
months, but again i got burned, i felt i little sick of this, so i decided to take a break and make something more creative which
will help my games. About one month ago i started modeling, low poly of course but i tried to keep a consistent style through my
models.
Today:
I have made a big number of models which are pretty simple but i like them, because they are colorful and look like toys.
Also i decided to put them in some 3dmodel stores so someone else can use them and maybe a make some money from them for those
hours i have spend and also get a real feedback.
Plan:
I plan to make more models so i can use them in my games. I don’t feel yet ready to put my hands on the games but the only sure
thing is wont give up. I just want to make more creative stuffs for now.
Thank you for your time.
PS. Sorry for my English. I try to improve them.

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