Finding Inspiration and Planning Luck: A Story of a Solo Dev-Dad of Color

[Music] thank you thanks for coming my talk I'm Adam Karim I'm the Creator and lead developer for protojoy Delta which I'll talk about a little later I got one of my best and great hires Armand sitting in the audience one of the first environment artists I got with through a platform which I'll talk about in a bit but yeah welcome to my talk about finding inspiration and planning luck story of a solo Dev dad of color so yeah I'm Adam Karim a bit about myself I've always been like a Game Dev hobbyist like I kind of got into games just as a hobby I was like sitting around at work one day and a friend of mine was like have you heard of like this thing called unity and unreal and I was like what the heck is that and he explained to me that like regular people can make games I always thought you had to work at square or edos or something or whatever uh but no you can just be young dumb and broke and make video games specifically if you're broke because all this stuff is free now um so I do that I picked it up as a

hobby by day like I work in Tech so I work in Tech in the Bay Area out here and my background has nothing to do with games actually like I'm a mechanical engineer I decided just to pick up like game development because I was inspired by games I used to love like Mega Man X and Sonic and other franchises another important thing about me is that I'm married and I got two kids so not a lot of time is on my hands and I've also got these folks you know my family are kind of support and take care of and that's a really important factor in so why I chose this particular Game Dev path I don't necessarily want to recommend it whenever I see like single young people I'm like do it now make your game because oh boy I don't think it's harder uh and yeah this is my game protojoy Delta for those who are unfamiliar it is basically Mega Man X but in 3D that's literally the tagline and literally what got me inspired to make the game uh as you can see it's a lot of jumping and shooting just like sqlitis the sequelitis video man they should have named them jumping and shoot man that's all you do is jump and shoot like that was that just stuck with me man it's like a seminal moment in my history uh and so this is the game there's a lot of

focusing on like platforming while doing combat in parallel with each other uh and I yeah I like it thank you but I didn't start out thinking I want to make proto-droid Delta I'm going to make this Mega Man X inspired thing and it's going to be my magnum opus you know it's a general rule for any folks who are new to game development do not make your first project or your dream project because as a rule you're gonna make 100 mistakes in the first thing you make right and you're gonna make 50 mistakes in a second and 25 on the third so you don't want your baby and they think that you really want to be the thing that has the 100 mistakes because it'll look like the ugliest child ever you'd be one of those kids where it's one of those parents who's like oh he's got a good heart foreign but I found inspiration by like just looking at stuff I love as a kid right I loved like Mario Super Mario World I love like the Zelda games and 2D and I always and I love Mega Man X and I always hoped that it would make the transition from 2D to 3D the same way

these other gaming icons did and so almost like established a new like wave imagining and we're like like pillars in those in those in those genres in 3D space right damn my slide got messed up Dangs Google Slides why are you doing me like that uh the Super Metroid is supposed to be further down but that's okay uh my Mega Man never really did that right it was there were the X Games there were a couple attempts in 3D like the notorious X7 you know Burn It To The Ground but uh that did that it wasn't really what people had in mind for like oh yeah Mega Man X and 3D this is what I want to do similarly right there's tons of 2D Mega Man games and tons of 2D inspired Mega Man games like from 20xx and 30xx and and all kinds of stuff right and it seemed like everyone really is treading this 2D space it's 2D plane but the very few attempts at it in 3D and so this was a big inspiration for me was that like I love the idea of like reimagining things and differentiating oh let me go back a slide and I was like wow there's like there's only been a handful of games like this and I was convinced that I can talk about this later in detail but I was convinced that it's not that the idea of Mega Man 3

doesn't work in 3D because folks saw X7 and was like that's it can't do it in 3D go back to the 2D plane but we see games like Ratchet and Clank which are in their DNA very very similar to what Mega Knight could have been in 3D um but again I didn't just jump straight into doing the Mega Man game as a hobbyist it was a bunch of Interest I have I love Sonic I loved ape Escape as a kid I loved Mega Man Legends and so I uh made fan games of each of these different things each night just kind of tickering away and learning more about game development along the way right um and I learned some stuff through that iterating right and if anyone's interested in those fan games we can talk about afterwards just for constraints of time I didn't want to get into them too much but like I've I've found out about myself as a game developer by making those games I found that like hey this Sonic game I love it it's fun you know but I'm not very good at it the level design was not going to scale well for a single person and kind of continue to make levels out of that scale and it was very time consuming I was like huh and getting his mechanics right going up and down Hills I was like ah I like this but

I'm not so strong at this um with the Mega Man Legends game I liked it because honestly that was the game I really wanted to make was like a Mega Man you know like get me off the moon man the Mega Man Legends like three have they got canceled just kind of cut me deep and I was like if I can get better this Game Dev stuff maybe I can be the one that kind of does this but I sucked at it so it wasn't gonna be me I tell you what but I learned that from iterating that like I liked it oh I liked it I wasn't very good at it so it could sort of invest myself further in something I'm not good at was not a good recipe lastly um there was tough stuff which is basically an ape Escape inspired game you run around catch a bunch of stuffed animals that have gotten really aggressive AKA tough hence the name tough stuffed animals yes I'm a literary genius I tell myself uh but and I liked it and I was good at it right but there was another game I made that I made it in almost the fastest time and was just the most exciting to make and that was Mega Man X and zero training missions which was literally that 3D Mega Man X and I put it up on games old and itch and stuff people played it and they enjoyed it and I was like okay this

seems like it's got traction so that's the first sort of tip I guess from my journey is as we're all scoping on games and trying to find what to do particularly those new to the games like you got to find that match between what you love and what you're good at because it's not enough just to love something and you won't go far very far if all you do if you're just good at it but you don't love it and I only found that by doing a lot by making a bunch of games so spending all the time making fan games and then I'm realizing man you know it's this this is the nice little screenshot or whatever but this is the result of like two two and a half years of just like tinkering and I'm thinking to myself man I spend a lot of time with these characters and he's in these and these mechanics with stuff that at the end of the day I can only go but so far I can't sell this I can I can't like own it plus I don't know about you guys there's like a stigma in the in the game Community about like fan games you know it's like it can be legit but if it's got like fan game on it it's like ah but it's not the real thing hey and so like it's just it's unfortunate so I was like I don't you know I'm spending so much time in this taking in

so it doesn't make sense to keep down this path so it's time that I make it my own and with this Prospect now that I know what I want to make I want to make this Mega Man X and zero thing but I want to make it my own in some way I hope you don't yawn too much my friend if I'm that boring please you have the right to smack me come up to the stage smack me in the face uh and so I wanted to make it my own so as I'm said not to make game characters right you know I think of all the games that I've played and all the games the characters that we look at you see the things like ginshin impact in its huge roster we look at League of Legends because over like uh 50 or whatever Champions you look at like all the final fantasy series and I'll try to sample different images from like both Western developers like Chinese developers in in um and uh and Asian developers and such and it's like a common trend I think it's a pick up on it but they all look very similar right and when you contrast that with you know let's just grab some quick like screen grabs I just got on on on on Google searching over

what the world looks like what this audience looks like with like San Francisco looks like what the world do we actually inhabit looks like there's a strong contrast there are more colors there's more cultures and it sucks that there's this broken Link Between Worlds a sort of Riff on the Zelda reference where we when we we're allowing ourselves and injuring ourselves these fantasy worlds and creating these worlds that look increasingly not like the worlds we come from and aren't really making space for people who don't look like that so when I look at I remember as a kid my one of the first like OCS I did or whatever I tried making some anime character and then I went to kind of make his features a little more black looking like his nose little rounder like his hair a little puffier and it just felt so Raw and I was like okay let me just let me Cloud's got cool here Cloud Strife that's the hair I'm going for my hair looked up maybe now it does but back then look nothing like Cloud shot like this is not the texture of like black hair you know that's not the texture of like Arab hair or like or different like hairstyles right and so I was like well if I can make this game my own let me look at the Mega Man example right there's another example where you've got

over 30 titles I'm sorry I have to talk that heavy or whatever I wasn't trying to surprise everybody this is this is a huge inspiration for me this opportunity to create something in a way that hasn't does we don't see too much see look at the Mega Man franchise right over 30 titles hundreds of characters the protagonists are almost always guys over 90 of the time back to that Clash that broken Link Between Worlds our world population is almost 50 female and yet our games only relegate them to support characters or waifus or whatever like side dishes or whatever but various but very seldomly like you know the hero very seldomly from people to look up to and almost always white unfortunately Pharaoh skin right and that's a lot of games to be doing the same thing over and over again no I get it like a lot of these titles are Japanese titles and and cultures are different right and I do get it but the reality is that increasingly games are consumed on a global market and games are being played by people all over the world and so we're kind of long overdue that the games look more like the people who love them the games the way we love

game they love us back right so this is a fun little thought experiment this is my favorite this is a well-known character select screen right we all know this character select screen there's 64 characters on here now that's and what's interesting about it it's in a lot of ways like a celebration of icons and gaming history 30 Years of Gaming history icons right so over 30 years let's just apply some quick filters right like okay let's remove all the characters that don't have dark skin oh we lost 40 of them God dang rest in peace to homies you look good but but nah but they're gone now if you look at the what's left there is like okay there's an odd sort of this is a bit of a Common Thread they're all animals or robots are just some sort of non-human thing right or like furries so if you apply another filter okay let's take out the non-human character see what do we got left we're left with two we lost another 22. rest in peace to homies and now we went from 60 for a character selection of 64 characters to just two so someone like me like this individual the nice afro in

front of me like uh like the woman next to him right darker skinned people you look at this and if you want to play a character that looks kind of like you remind you of you you've got a bad guy in Ganondorf who's like I mean he's like really he's just like evil incarnate like right and Mr gaming watch on the funny thing watch is that he's literally black like I feel like if someone went to someone and said hey I need to add a black character to the game and he came back and said gaming watch I didn't say a black man and it's wild right and you you when you it's similarly with like and I pick on I select Smash Bros because of just how well known it is and how it represents such a long history of games and this is what people have been sort of like we've been consuming for so long right and you look at similarly with like the females in the games 64 to 12 and then often what happens if there is a girl there's a guy variant as well because you know you can't you can't you can't not do that Ice Climbers got her husband on you know we fit trainer she's got

there's a male version of that me fighter right Inkling and so it's like and so I saw my I took inspiration from this opportunity to sort of like create a space for people who seldom see themselves in gaming and create characters that people who who look like me who don't often see people looking like themselves in games can say oh yeah she looks like my mom she looks like my sister and I want to cosplay as that person I want I see myself in that person I can see myself as the hero and so that's what my cast of characters looks like it's got a number of black characters a couple of Latino uh characters as well and just trying to borrow and sample from different cultures of the people that I knew growing up and don't who often see themselves in games but I would be remiss if I didn't highlight the important thing which is at The Times They are changing right this is just a smattering of a lot of different like protagonists and lead characters seeing more female leads we're seeing more dark-skinned characters in games and it's exciting and it's encouraging but I mean come on now right this is about four years in the making right and we can't sort of rest on our Laurels and be like yes we gotta we got we got a black Inkling

made progress we're done get back to the legit we're gonna get back to things as scheduled right and so it's it's um and so it's important just to note that like number one recognize that it's great that things are improving I'm really impressed with like Omega strikers for example a Bunches of X or former like like uh yeah a former form of like Riot devs who decided to make a game and and they're very deliberate about their character design choices right to create spaces for people who usually aren't allowed at the table so I'm going to shift gears a bit now like the second half of my talk is about planning luck right so it's like I've I've found I took inspiration from games I used to play as a kid and playing Mega Man and such and I took inspiration the opportunity to create characters and create a world for the more reflective of the world that I that I've known and many people have known but then it comes down to how do you make a game how do you then actually take these ideas and then get in and start to be successful in creating what you want to do um and to do that we have to have a small lesson and probability if you think of luck as a numbers game so let's

assume Adam Kareem is absolutely abysmal at basketball I actually cannot shoot at all like my jump shot is abysmal uh it's quite terrible uh and so this is not far from the truth I do have a one percent chance of making any shot I take right yeah why was that so funny to you man hey man one percentage Unite so we're awful right so if that if you're awful at it if I only take three shots right I've got a 2.9 chance that just one of the three goes in right so how about I take a few more shots let me take 12 of them you know I'm just feeling myself that day of the Court no one's coming on just take a few more well if I take 12 attempts my my chances of success jumps 4X right and it goes to almost 11.4 still abysmal chances but you kind of see what's happening now don't make the mistake you know the the independent events the probability doesn't scale linearly it's not if you take 100 shots you're 100 chance to make it it does start to taper off but if I

was just feeling myself you know I was like hey man the kid's asleep wipes chilling I'm about to hit me a shot today and I shot a hundred times there's a 63.4 chance I make it once and then from and and for me that's my good success I just want to make it once right and so if you think of luck as your developers and going out and trying to like recruit talent to trying to make connections that'll make a difference in your projects you think of luck as actions that you take to increase the probability of success this is what it means to make your own luck this is what it means to in stack the deck in your favor so what does that look like practically coming as an outsider I was a hobbyist right I never been to GDC never been to a Pax never been anything I didn't have any gaming connections so I had to rely on social media tools Fiverr upwork platforms like that art station Discord Services connecting with people and eventually made my way to work with Indies each of these are shot with like a one percent maybe less than chance that I'll find the talent that I need where I'll find what I need for this project and so what that looks like practically is scouring Fiverr for about

two hours a day for for several months looking at everyone's portfolio putting a bunch of listings communicating constantly until I find that one who ended up being the game's lead illustrator deaf Jews and he does all the games character art took a lot of time but that's how you but but without those actions that I don't connect with that guy because art doesn't get made similarly with art station as I started working from different platforms I was like man Reddit is real bad at this like I'm not finding nobody on Reddit this is a waste of my time like Starving Artists that nonsense I feel like Twitter oh God it's the Finn Pickens out here so you start like you start like finding like taking better shots from these previous like misses you're learning okay I'm a little I have a higher chance if I move a little bit closer to the rim or from the highway chance if I move a little bit to the right so I made my way to Arch station moving a little bit to the right and now I can now post job listings and look find people who are more matches who are looking themselves for artwork artwork and to help with the game and so over a number of job listings 5 000 views over 300 applicants about an hour or so a day for like

several days for for months and eventually I land the game's lead environment artist and he himself is responsible for nearly 40 of the game's art that's how you kind of manufacture luck as I'm sort of and this is this is the over the time span of like you can sense with these months it's time to span of like years right or like long time scale of years similarly with Discord servers jumping between them similarly with with um eventually been my way to work with Indies shout out to the homies that's a great place for finding Talent that's what I found this wonderful individual Arman I think so we're gonna go with that uh and so yeah and so this is what it looks like in practice making yourself like you know making yourself lucky now a lot of people here at GDC to secure publishing deals you know that's what it's about trying to they're trying to advance your current project in the next project and for a lot of folks the thought is that you know it's a very like um the practice the theory is that it's a linear thing I went to GDC I went to Room 300 I met with some reps at Team 17 they liked the project project and we got a publishing deal or I was tweeting

you know screenshots Saturday a couple times and then someone over at devolver saw my post and was like oh we love it here's some money or like you know I launched a Kickstarter I got some funds I got some friends and then someone swooped in and said we love it here's some money but in reality it goes back to that sort of like shot taking approach where every person you meet is another shot every tweet you send is another shot each with a slight slim chance of success and so you stack the deck in your favor and you manufacture luck by just taking lots of quality shots and so particularly when it comes to networking and practice it looks like this a bunch of misses and then one hit because it really only takes one like remember that scene from like in game when like Doctor Strange is like one that's really all it takes you know in a lot of ways to make significant like the changes in your project and in your lives um I just think a lot about like Harvey Dent from like the Dark Knight who's like I'm not like yeah make my own luck because that sucker had a coin which was heads on both sides of course it's

always going to land heads but that's really what it is you do you take deliberate actions to stack the deck in your favor so what did that working look like for me in practice so I'll start off on Twitter because you know I don't know nobody and I was inspired by Gwen Fray she's another solo developer working unreal working in blueprints formerly an artist and she she launched kind by herself she was like an inspiration to me so I reached out to her similarly while I'm posting getting ready for the kickstarter um John Gavin Polson um formerly of humble sees a couple of my tweets and he's like hey game looks cool I think at this point hey I'm on that fast track you know I think hey I met I met John I'm right here baby I'm just a couple a couple minutes away from that publishing deal but in reality he connected me to someone else right and Gwen connected me to someone else so Gwen connected me to Forrest Dowling he threw out my journey ended up being like a mentor he taught me a lot about just like what to expect how to how to talk with artists how to just look the mechanics of how to run a studio because he himself is a studio head and then Justin was like just incredible in all the things he's of the leader of the media Indie Exchange in

the mix lead to Black voices in game just a great great guy all around and he connected me to the black voice and gaming Discord from there I met you know one person on the Discord it's like hey I got a programmer friend who uh who's looking for work I hired that guy and he helped with and he he was an important initial hire to kind of lay the foundation for the boss AI in the game like we sort of collaborated on that um similarly another guy started billion with his project a breeze in the clouds I was like your Art's cool you got do you know any artists finding an animator is like so hard like traditional 2D animation these days but his project was all about that so I was like this I got it something tells me he might know one and so he connected me with a team which did the animated trailer that we'll launch with and then gram of Legend is an amazing like ux designer UI designer that was also in the Discord so these things are all like helping to shape the project the project is moving along getting a bit more of its final state right but then assembly Justin was a big advocate for me being one of the first recipients of the black game developer fund that humble launched right keep in mind this long time spans between this I met Justin about like eight months later the bgdf thing happens right it's a long

time of just like taking shots and trying to manufacture luck but that then gave me enough funding to produce a compelling vertical slice about a almost a year time time kind of passes and then she humble comes back and they're like hey we like what we're seeing let's talk about a publishing deal so that's exciting yay I got published yay and it only takes one right back to that that in-game thing like Justin was that one from all those shots I took right and however it's not almost like roses once you get a publishing deal because the things that I had to keep in mind was that like uh this is me kind of freaking out because Humboldt said they like the project so much they were like we want to give you more money you're asking for a certain amount what if we gave you two or three x that and most folks would jump at the opportunity heck yeah excuse me I don't know kids gonna watch this heck yeah gee well of course yes I'll take the money thank you but I had to keep in mind my profile I work

full-time not in games I've got a wife and kids this has always been like a hobby for me that I just kind of wanted to advance and advance in advance and with the experience I learned from making the game to that point with the fan games I made I kind of knew what I was good at what I was limited by and that if I were to take this larger deal I'd be like the scope would creep tremendously like I'd possibly consider going full time which is not something I was comfortable doing now granted my story is not like a tell-off for everyone like don't you know I actually kind of advised against it but like I was I needed to retain the scope so I could retain what was important to me and protect what was important to me and so you know these little things are important to me like my wife my kids and that and being able to continue to support them with what I do full time um learning from the fan games that I worked on that like you kind of have your Niche you kind of have your Zone that you kind of know what shots you can hit so don't step out to the three-point line when you're Demar der wrote more DeMar DeRozan left left Steph Curry right you stay in the mid-range folks basketball fans got that for those who don't I don't know what the analogy is

[Laughter] um uh I don't know you're a Mage and you want to yield a great sword you won't hit you you and you will never quit so I looked at myself and for those who don't know back to the basketball reference this is what's like what's called like a heat map a lot of like Advanced analytics they tracked basically where players take shots and where they most worth their field goal percentage how often they hit those shots in their parts of the floor and it isn't one to one where everyone's gonna make more shots of close charge of the rim some people like Steph for example are exceptional the further they go from the rim and there's like a mid region when they're not so good I knew from my work to this point that I was more of a drive the lane I was more of a short range type of person given my constraints so my chances of success my sweet spot was a more limited scope and keeping the game honest to what I always intended which was going to be and that those came with some serious like design kind of concessions because it was like you know Mega Man is traditionally like

eight bosses right eight worlds but I was like well given how this has been going I think I can squeeze four right is that going to be a betrayal to the Mega Man fans are people going to really is that gonna really matter to people I don't know but that's the scope that I can handle right people there's a consideration of additional playable characters or how do you increase like the replay that I was like I'm gonna rebate by any kind of guy you know I just I like my one you know one and done type of situation and so for me I hadn't met I had to if I considered luck as taking shots that I could hit I had to keep the scope within my my range right and so fortunately it was a match it was a match Humboldt was like although we'd like the game to be bigger and we want to give you more money and we don't typically hear people say no to more money we will rock with that we'll we'll meet with we think what you're doing is is interesting enough and special and so we want to support that so that's my kind of advice there is that like you will I think all developers find themselves at a Crossroads where it's like do I make a single player multiplayer do I do I

increase is the world like is the world going to be like permanent like a single map or is it going to be like is it open world are we going to have like discrete levels and if you go back to knowing what you're good at and what you like and just holding true to like what you feel gives you a great chance of success that's my advice is to stick true to what you know you can do um what you're comfortable and which you can execute on successfully notice that you shouldn't stretch yourself a bit but not to be sort of a lord but like oh more money bigger means better it doesn't always necessarily mean better so I wanted to close the talk and open for questions after this last bit called finding inspiration volume two so as you know I'm making the game and kind of goes on the journey uh you know this ups and downs of game develop it for those who don't know porting is awful anyone's gonna support anything to anything is a terrible decision all right but we got to do it because of the monies but uh but like it's just a terrible terrible experience um oh five minutes gotcha that's my girl down there all right um and so but just generally speaking a lot of ups and downs where I felt like am I doing this am I going the right way I spending a lot of time with this boss

the game has become like a pain to kind of deal with and later during the development as I was sort of like not losing my mind because keep in mind I still have like the full-time job and we had design reviews I had to travel to Taiwan for work a bunch of other stuff and I got this thing which won't just be done um you know you get deflated and feel like man how much why should I keep up with this and then fortunately I just think about I had this moment with my kids my daughter on the left you can see there as I'm hired uh my illustrator for my comic illustrator Blaze malefica on Twitter Argentina artist uh we were doing something like adults hair is cool but you know a big thing in black community is like just doing your hair different ways you know I'm saying getting braids getting cornrows puffering now all types of things right so they'd be cool if we could just kind of toy around with just some some concepts of Delta with different hairstyles and then as we're kind of doing that I'm kind of offering like edits on the screen my daughter she's only three so I think she's like two and a half at the time she walks up to me and she says Dada me she saw herself as the hero my son

similarly with Vega another like hidden character in the game that they just revealed later in the narrative he's always liked yelling to his sister I'm Vega you're a Delta I'm veg like they see themselves and it's not like this is the first video game they've seen we play Mario we play all types of stuff we watch all kinds of all types of things but it's one of the first moments where it was just second nature she the same ways a lot of people see Cloud Strife and think that's me growing up as a kid I'm gonna be big sword spiky hair that's me all day right like she had that opportunity at three to see herself in as the hero and and and and not exposed to a world where that's not the norm right so that moment alone I was like ah you know what I'm done this game is done we're a mission accomplished Adam that your daughter loves it it's over but that was a huge second win that like wow remember that like that was one of your main drivers drivers is to create a space and to create characters in a world that addresses a lot of needs that we've done with as consumers of content consumers of games and entertainment

um and that's like I guess my parting advice for folks here is that like everyone has something about them right That You Don't See often on the big screen on the video game Space maybe you're a veteran maybe you're bilingual maybe you're disabled maybe there's something you all have something that we don't often recognize in our fantasies and it behooves you to take up the mantle and to inject yourself into those fantasies and inject creators and characters like that it doesn't always have to be you I grew up around a lot of Latino people one of one of the girls that have crushed on me elementary school her name was she was Spanish she was cool I don't know what right um and I just that was just people I knew so I was like I don't see a lot of them in games either so let me throw some of those characters in my game as well do it respectfully of course you know what I'm saying but um but you don't necessarily have to be of a community of an identity in order to advocate for it and to kind of create and add into our worlds um so that's my talk this is the last panel from the game after you pleaked the game and the epilogue plays the credits play this is the very last panel where they say together we are stronger because together we're better um and so yeah thank you for coming to

my talk and uh I'll take questions if anyone's got questions they say to come to the mic up here hello hello I in regards to earlier on in your your Ted Talk you talked about the inclusivity of games and in particular you focused on ones made primarily in Japan and China yeah in the Asian area they often do not have people of color and do you think something like that has basically shaped how they describe their characters yeah that's maybe a reason why they don't have as many people of color or other races within their games that's a fair question I would almost ask I would almost reply with a question back of are those media only consumed in Asia are those games only played in Japan it is a frame of reference right and so as we're as creators right we have the ability to imagine all kinds of things it kind of speaks similar to like the the director of the latest Final Fantasy

game right who was like we don't have black people because it's not accurate to our like historical fantasy there weren't dragons there either right so we we in some ways we allow our our imagination to be unconstrained and to be and to be inclusive all kinds of things but in other ways we're making deliberate choices to not be and so whereas yeah maybe they're from I do so your point though I do believe that people are not inherently racist or bigoted that they create stuff that they can see themselves in they create characters that see themselves and but I think we've been doing this for so long that it's it's it's it's beyond time that we now that media is consumed globally and if you're trying to get people who don't look like you're gonna pay for what you're doing and to love your content it's more it's hard time that we love them back right I hope so I think so I think the more that more people are are featured in our in our media I don't see how that would be worse I'll put it that way that's a good question I'm glad you asked this go ahead uh yeah first off uh thank you very much that was an incredible talk really wonderful thank you uh my question is

kind of very practical because you mentioned uh having a full full-time engineer job and you know a wife and two kids and so my question is just how did you you mentioned like uh you know Dev time at night how where how do you how do you make time for this that's like truly how it's um that's a fair question uh kids you kids are showing the meetings no but realistically the like like the nuts and bolts um one was that scope limitation I talked about like the game would have realistically been done in a year a year and a half had I gone full time it took me almost three years to do it because of the limited amount of time I can commit to it but the how it was mostly this I'd work in the day from about like you know eight or nine to like five or six I depend on My Wife and Kids uh for a couple hours once they went to bed I'd work on the game from like I'd say not eight or nine until about one maybe sometimes two in the morning and sleep and kind of rinse and repeat on the weekends I would I would work with my wife to like commit that like you know on set on Sundays or Daddy's Dev days so like I treat like a full-time workday vacations were work days for me um what else did we end up

doing there was a time when she went to go visit family and I got most of the boss AI completed because she went with the kids to visit on my in-laws for a month and that was a month of June like I'd stop work at five and I'd pick up Game Dev from five till I work like almost eight eight and eight basically right and so it was that's why I say I honestly advise this to people because it was very grueling but those inspirations what really powered me kind of through it but like yeah it was uh took a lot it took a lot that's amazing thank you very much thank you sorry we have to start preparing this room for the next off but if people are interested in continued discussion there's alcoves available on the other side of the floor where people can form a wrap-up room if they're interested in continuing discussing and asking yeah cool yeah I'm around thanks everybody [Music]