How To Become A Game Dev (While Working A Full Time Job)

all yeah I'm Debbie I'm from Utah I have a family in a 9 to5 and I know like when you were making pinstripe you didn't have the most healthy relationship between the two but I'm just wondering if you ever found like a balance or if like I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and become a full-time zombie yeah well there's different places you can be healthy you can be healthy with your schedule but unhealthy with your mind or your heart right so for me when I was making pinstrip my schedule was fine like I wasn't I had time in my day and my schedule was I would get up at 5: in the morning and work on pinstripe now nowadays I I get up early and I work out because I have the time I think everybody should be getting up early in the morning and doing something before they work if you can sacrifice an hour in your morning to make a game that's that's wonderful or sacrifice that hour of lunch break or sacrifice that hour after work before you go home or sacrifice that hour before bed my schedule I would say was healthy because I had time the problem was my brain was not healthy so there's

different ways to be healthy my brain was always running you could see smoke coming out of my ears because I was constantly thinking about my game and I know all of you in the chat who are making games right now and deie you included you probably know that feeling of like I wish I could shut my brain off and stop thinking about this game but I can't do you know what I'm talking about absolutely yeah yeah and it's so do you have kids no I just have like a I mean I got loads of pets I consider them my my kids yeah so you know the thing is is that hopefully with your pet you know they don't need you to talk to them and actually like verbalize all your feelings so you could probably get away with being a little bit unhealthy with your the how much you're thinking about your game I think it's for those for those of you in the chat who have kids like your kids maybe your pets do know Debbie but I know with my kids they know when I'm not all there and so to create a healthy schedule in order for it to be healthy for you to answer your question in order for it to be healthy for you

I've always found creating expectations and you can actually do this with pets create expectations about where you're going to be and what you're going to be doing and with if you have kids or you have a wife or you have a husband create expectations of where you're going to be and when you're going to be in your office with the door closed and then be sure to set those expectations and then fulfill those expectations AKA make a schedule it's really that simple people they they love to think that they can start a schedule but they don't stick to it and so for you I would highly recommend finding 2 hours a day can you find two hours a day absolutely yeah you can find it somewhere in the morning at lunch in the evening and then your next question is why I don't want that to interrupt my flow so for me my flow is let's say I was working a day job and then I was like well I need to work on my game so I'm going to work on my game right before I get off work that is a terrible idea like at 5:30 p.m. if I were to work on my game for an hour at 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 and then I go downstairs and try and hang out with with my kids it's a terrible terrible

idea it's going to interrupt your flow as a parent if you're working on your game and then you try and go be social immediately after working on your game you kind of turn into an a-hole so you want to try and figure out in your schedule where's the best spot to put Game Dev because it's going to be frustrating I'm going to have difficulty not thinking about it so what I tend to do is I think maybe I can put a workout or a run immediately after working on the game so that I can get it all out of my system so Debbie that's what I would do do you have a schedule that you've committed to I I I do currently yeah it's not the greatest but it does it for now yeah and do you feel like it's causing an imbalance in your life yeah yeah kind of making me go crazy right now I basically am like only sleeping like four to five hours a day M yeah and then I feel like I can't you know commit all of my energy to Game Dev you know my passion because I'm not you know all the way there yeah let's try to figure this out during your day job are you working

a day job yeah okay are you working 8 hours 9 10 uh 8 to 9 hours okay 8 to 9 hours so you know I don't think there's a reason why you should be not getting sleep to be blunt with you because I think that if you're working 9 hours a day why not just find one to 2 hours and cap yourself at 2 hours of Game Dev MH and get some sleep you can have a life you can have a life it's totally possible for me I spend an hour and a half of my extra time outside of work hours like working out or doing a run or something thing and I have three kids you know three kids and a wife and so I've got all these social responsibilities yet I still have a life right I'm still getting 8 hours of sleep a day it really has to do with budgeting your time and really writing it down and committing to it so for me if I were you I'd be going okay if I have to work 8 nine hours a day at my desktop I'm going to max out cap my working on my game at like 2 hours because the Temptation is I'm going to work for 2 hours and then you can't stop do you know that feeling m oh yeah you can't stop and you work

till midnight or 2 in the morning and you're and then you get up the next morning and you're demotivated so it's not a balanced lifestyle and I think it's a really really good question so it's kind of weird for me to say this I usually say try and commit to a minimum hour I think you need to max out at 2 hours and be done it's just not going to it's not going to be a long-term strategy for you and by the way if you're like me and you always dreamt of making an indie game as a full-time job I have a free webinar below that goes into exactly how to make six figures with just a demo I was just like you for years I thought I had to make a game in its entirety before getting a paycheck but there's actually three ways to make six figures before even finishing your game I've done this multiple times so check it out below if you do want to go full-time Indie and thanks for watching