Heya friendos! First of all, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. I’m on a trip through the Netherlands and don’t have any updates on anything I’m working on. Instead, I’ll whine a bit about what capitalism is forcing me to do. If that sounds boring, see you next week!

How Am I Doing?

I’m doing well! I’m in the middle of a short vacation to visit the Netherlands for Christmas and Christmas-adjacent practices. Me and my partner took a little detour through Maastricht, which is a beautiful city in the south. The winter makes each pub a cozy little den and the town decorated itself in Christmas lights. They have the best stews, and we’ve gorged ourselves on a whole bunch of local snacks.

Now, I’m writing this from my friend’s house in Amsterdam. Tonight we’ll visit a bunch of friends for Christmas Eve, where we tend to get drunk and have a lot of yummy, homemade snacks. Looking forward to that!

What Am I Doing?

Well, not much aside from visiting family and friends. But I have been ruminating on some potential business decisions for next year. I think I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit there, because I still have to finish my Rumorweaver vertical slice, of course. But I want to share what I’m thinking about anyway, for documentation purposes, if nothing else.

The type of game projects I love to design and develop, tend to be experimental and not proven to be financially viable. That’s perfectly fine, because as of yet, financially viable has never been my priority. My priority was unfeathered creative freedom. I’ve definitely had my fair share of that this year. And it’s fantastic. Intoxicating really.

But that’s the crux, isn’t it? If I want to provide a life for myself where I can indulge in unfeathered creative freedom, I need access to resources that allow me to do that. So, I want to extend my runway by combining a few, small streams of income. That has been my plan since the start of New to Narrative, but it is not as far along as I had hoped it would be by this point. I’ve not reached the level of output required by YouTube to gain ad revenue and my Ko-fi only supplies me with some savings for new equipment and such.

The Plan

I have no doubt that even the game projects I work on now can be financially successful given the right circumstances; the right audience, boosts in exposure, correct timing of launch, etc. That being said, creating those circumstances is not really in my wheelhouse.

So, what can I do about that? Well, the method I’m thinking about right now would have me create multiple small, low-effort game projects in genres where solo developers have a decent success rate. I’d have to churn out games in a 3-month development cycle and then see if one catches on at the end of next year to further scale that up.

I can also partner up with organizations to gather funding and such, but I fear I’ll have to keep making additional income at the same time because there’s no guarantee that the process will be quick. If I spend half a year searching for funding and turning up empty-handed… That will put me in a pickle as well.

To be completely honest, neither of these options seem very attractive to me. One will force me to see games as a sellable product, which might make me fall out of love with the development process a bit. The other has me spending all my time on business and social activities and leaves me with little to be creative about. It’s something I’ll have to sit on for a while.

Why Am I Doing? (this)

Lately, I’ve been feeling that my head is full. I spend a lot of time working and thinking about work and I haven’t allowed myself the space to digest those thoughts. I’m not sure what I’m doing differently from before, but I feel like I have to put some more effort into taking some mental health breaks again.

Maybe go out on walks more. Do some meditation. More sport. That kind of stuff. Well, I’ll get to all of that next year I suppose! See you next week and happy holidays!