Getting ready for the big demo.

Last week was the big Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. We sent two of our teammates there to pitch our game to 12 publishers. It sounds like we got a very positive response and now we are preparing to send a playable demo to those publishers for them to evaluate. If publishers like our game they may be willing to provide us with funding to increase the scope of the game as well as assistance with releasing and marketing the game. Right now we are working hard to get the game into an acceptable state to send to publishers. We intend to send out the playable demo on Monday March 13th. From there we will have to wait. Within a month we should have a good idea of whether our game will get picked up by a publisher. I've never worked so hard before in my life, but it feels good working towards a clear goal. It is also very motivating knowing that if we do well, good things will happen directly to us. I think everyone should try working on a small project like this at least once during their career.

Continuing to make video games for a living.

I'm continuing to work on the game as I settle in to my new life in Japan. I still haven't gotten my working visa (don't tell the government) so I'm still on a tourist visa, but that should get taken care of in the next few weeks. My working hours continue to make it difficult to photograph during the weekday. It's also been a while since I worked up the courage to go out and ask people if I can take their portrait. Though that kind of photography is a bit scary at first, the results have been my favorite photos so far. If you haven't seen my street portrait work, you can find it here: https://500px.com/swsteffes.

In general I haven't been taking many photos recently. I've really been enjoying my work and I have a sense that if I put in the time to improve my skills I could go on to do more and more interesting things. It seems to me that most people in the video game industry are doing it because they love it and so are willing to work really hard to make their dream a reality. Because of this, to stand out in programming, or any other aspect of video game creation, you have to be really good at what you do. I often think about how many of these people could take their skills to other industries and make a fortune. But they chose video games because they would rather do what they love for a living than make lots of money doing something they don't care about. I don't think I could have imagined ending up in this position when I was a little kid playing games on my family's Power Mac. Every day I try to be thankful for the many opportunities I had the chance to take that led me to where I am now.