Ways to Put Off Starting Your Next Big Project, for Sanity's Sake with Nina Freeman | GduX.me

Oh my topic today is basically how to do stuff it feels useful when you're not working on like a new project so say you just ship something period of time before you actually start working on something and my name is Nina Freeman Twitter handles hentai PhD and I am a level designer at Fulbright I also that's like sort of my full-time day job and then outside of Fulbright stuff I recently omma I do sort of like side projects personal projects with different teams so I've done lots of personal games not with like one group usually it's sort of me leading the charge and then I have different collaborators on that stuff with me so some of those games Cybil which I have an image of here and

also how do you do it as another game you might be familiar with it I worked on Kimi a lost memories as a whole I'll bring up some of them during the talk oh yeah that's me uh so yeah what what am i doing would have not working out again that's what the whole point of this talk is right so I used to have this really bad habit of like rushing into a new project right away when I had finished one just like not taking any breaks um and I sort of pretty quickly earned huh actually took me a long time to figure out how bad that was for me and before I get into the details of how I learned how that was bad and how I learned to like cope with it and do more healthy things and productive things I'm will say that advice I give in this story I'm telling about myself I'm super

privileged to have like a day job where I am allowed to like do my own thing outside of work and also I can nothing in my free time if I want without having to worry about you know my income because I have that full time job some in sort of a privileged position to be able to like have that space to figure out what I want to do between projects without having to worry about money because I still am working on great stuff some of my advice might be better geared towards people who are like working full-time and trying to do their own personal projects on the side but it might also apply if you're doing your own thing full-time but I just wanted to so did I do sorry L can hear me I'll start off by telling you when I last took one of these breaks so I've shipped actually 19 games which sounds

maybe crazy but a lot of them are small a ship 19 games since I started making them in 2015 and only one of them was like a multi-year full-time project almost all of the other 18 I was working I'm outside of work one after the other after the other many trades so while I was working on Tacoma specifically which was about a three or four a year dev period from like 2015 I shipped like three or four games like while working on I was always like psyched to ship a game and come up with my next idea even when I was working on Sonoma and in the moment it felt like a really good place to be I was really happy like we're hanging games full time we're on games outside of work and it was like super awesome and felt really good for a surprisingly long time but then towards the end of that like when we were getting close to shipping coma and I had

just lost memories net I started to feel pretty burnt out as you would expect and I was like okay this maybe doesn't feel as fun anymore so I should probably like change how I'm doing things so lost my reason I came out and I shipped that scum a and then I was like I'm not working on anything right now I suddenly had no projects lined up I had no Commission work lined up I was like this is the first time I've had free time in ages so what should I do with it at first I was like I almost was like okay I'm gonna start a new thing right like maybe I'll take a month off and then I was like okay wait no the point of taking a break is to like actually put time and effort into the taking of a break but you know breaking a habit can be really hard especially when you're like used to making a game after game after game for

many years so I was like feeling disappointed in myself at first and like I wasn't having any new diet new ideas right away anyways and that made me feel kind of bad about myself I had to like sort of take a step back like okay if I'm really gonna try and take a break I need to not let like the lack of idea stress me out I need to just like focus on something else maybe even not games related although that's incredibly hard for me because I love games so I decided I'll just play more games because when you're making a lot of games turns out it's really hard to find time to play games and actually it so I started playing a lot of games so the first time in ages I got super in overwatch at this point and I was playing at and I think this happens to a lot of devs were they're like working on stuff really hard and have trouble finding time to play stuff and I think that can affect you as a designer a lot cuz like you can

learn a lot from playing other people's games and you can be really inspired by them and influence I think this goes for any medium so I think it's a real shame when like a developer feels like doesn't have time to play anything it'd be hard to like find inspiration potentially if you haven't been you know able to have fun with us I was playing a lot of games but I didn't think that that was like the perfect solution yet because I was playing the games and sort of looking at them all like very critically and maybe not having as much fun with them as I could and I was like I should be able to play games without it having to relate back to work so maybe I should take a step back from this too even though it helped with like my anxiety and my burnout I started to feel like making a new game again and I was like okay I need to like take a further step back and try and deal with this so I asked

myself if I had any other hobby like pursuit that I could use to sort of redirect my mental energy um further from playing game uh oh yeah I was like trying to play more games for a while to sort of like you know myself from working on a new project so that's sort of where I left off and I was saying that that still was like relating almost too much back to work and it was making me want to make something right away again which was bad so I was like okay this is like not the point that's this experiment so what did I try to do oh I looked at streaming which to be fair I was streaming game so I was still playing games so it's still like kind of related but I'll get into why I feel like it's not entirely so I'd been streaming on Twitch for a while on and off like for a bunch of years just

casually it was something that I was doing for fun I'm and like I mentioned before I was like super into overwatch during this break that's when I like got it and I also noticed that that game was super popular on Twitch at the time I was like I'm having a lot of fun playing this game maybe y'all like get into streaming it because it seems pretty popular and I like playing it with my friends and maybe I'll turn this into like a scheduled thing that I can do that like isn't just you know working on projects after work I was like I'll have a stream schedule and that will like sort of keep me on track towards using my time outside of my day job in a way that is like maybe more for fun than for work so I think really quickly I realized that I had super made the right choice one aspect of that being the right choice is that I'm the type of person that functions really well on a schedule so now that I had something where I was like okay I'm just gonna like randomly play games I have like

these sessions scheduled like I think I was doing probably twice a week being on switch at that point and that was like something I could look forward to something I could plan for and something that I could basically and my time thinking about instead of like coming up with a new game idea and feeling stressed but I wasn't working on it so there's that and then also the social aspect of spending time with people and talking to them about games felt super healthy for me because game development can be pretty solitary it's awesome to find a way to connect to other devs and also players of my games through something almost purely social I knew that eventually I'd get back to working on side projects in a relatively solitary way so why not work on my social skills while I'm between projects I quickly made a bunch of friends this way obviously probably some of them are in the chat right now and I also met some future collaborators through doing

regular streams and really it was just I was streaming overwatch for fun twice a week and it like basically completely eliminated all these feelings of self-doubt and anxiety that I wasn't working on my next big thing and I do want to acknowledge that there's a big part of streaming that is about performance which I super enjoy also I know it's not for everyone but I get a kick out of it because I'm like an ex high school theater nerd so streaming sort of like so it seems like it would be super related to game development but actually for me it kind of scratches that itch where I'm like enjoying performance and enjoying sort of like you know it's almost like screaming it's almost like improv in a way right and I like sort of look at it that way and it's a fun skill to exercise that isn't like directly I see a question the chat have ever thought about streaming game Deb I actually have started streaming game development in the last like Oh months

probably and I can get more into that a bit later but that's been but for most of the time I just stream games so I didn't plan on this happening but after like probably less than a year of actually having like a consisting schedule I got to I basically got an offer to become a partner was which was really cool and that basically just gives you the ability to like have subscribers and emotes and stuff and I didn't plan on this happening like it wasn't really a goal of mine either I just got this opportunity and that opportunity coming up sort of caused me to like look at all the work I'd done streaming that I wasn't thinking about his work that I was thinking about as just for fun I was like oh okay actually maybe this pursuit I've been doing and be recontextualized this more than just

the social space and then I can have like sort of longer-term benefits then it being something I only do when I'm not working on a side project it made me realize that like oh I might actually want to keep up with my stream once I start a new project and you know save time for that instead of just like stopping streaming working on stuff and coming a partner sort of made me realize that it was something that I could focus on between projects and during projects that was both healthy for me and also a sort of good benefit to like my career it helps me like grow my brand and like my community and helps me also earn a little extra money to support my own work and my side projects so it kind of checked all the boxes suddenly I was like okay weird it's like sometimes something like a hobby like that can just turn into something much bigger and really improve other aspects of your life

so now sort of to move on from that and to expand on it I've been partnered for like over a year owl and streaming consistently longer than that and I've really seen the benefits of it it's helped me connect with folks who enjoy my work more than any other outlet so more than conferences more than festivals more than Twitter more than like I don't know there's like a million social media things out there right more than all of that like twitch streaming alone has made me feel more connected to like my audience and with myself and it's given me more context to understand how I can grow as a developer and learn from the switch space which I think is becoming a more and more important part of our industry all the time um Oh as I was thinking about all this stuff and I was trimming a lot I was also watching more people streams and watching them and sort of like looking

at how they were building their communities and I found that stuff really inspiring like I like Adam Kobol stream a lot for example and it made me think of more about like the relationship of game developers with streamers I feel like humor is and youtubers and stuff have this like reputation with game developers is like not being like a real part of the industry or like being maybe like people who cause a game developers to like lose sales cuz they're like you know playing the games and then like people won't buy their game there's like you know there's all these things that like in ciphers say about streamers but actually now that I'm both I've realized they're totally not true so I really encourage you know game developers to kind of like look at twitch from a more positive lens and see like how we can kind of collaborate with this yes how you can actually really like learn a lot from streamers who are definitely like a really important part of the industry

like streamers are there like we all exist in the same ecosystem and help each other out right they're not just like walking billboards you know they're like real people with real thoughts about games they can give you really positive and interesting feedback and also help you share your game and get more visibility and then I think even more importantly any game developer can also stream and can build a really great audience in that space I know streaming isn't for everyone because performance stuff can be a real challenge for some people I know you know socially totally get it stage fright a real thing but if you feel like it suits you then I recommend like any game developer get into it because I feel like the benefits are just huge and under standing that space as a game developer is gonna become more and more important I think so I'm streaming maybe screaming gamedev

or just streaming other games and talking to people who are into your work help you forum actual meaningful connections with your community rather than being this game developer that's like you know working on they're gay and like an isolation like in a darkroom like not talking to their players like you can actually engage with people and that can I think really improve your work I mean I know for me the streaming stuff is directly improved my work because like I basically started this discord and we started doing these game jams together as a part of the stream and I ended up like making games at those game jams and like now I'm collaborating with someone I know through the stream and stuff and it's like amazing how you know if you open yourself up as a developer a little bit and stop like working on things completely by yourself you can actually like learn a lot of new things and meet new people to work with again like people who want to work solo and stuff and who don't feel comfortable putting themselves out there like this like I totally get that but if you feel

like you can it's honestly the best thing ever in my opinion so I guess yeah this is like these are sort of generally the points I want to make I know I focused a lot on streaming and I just brought up discord a little bit which is like building on that it gives you sort of more of a direct connection maybe I think cuz like there you can actually talk to people and not just like I can talk to y'all in chat and stuff but weird and like talking while I'm not streaming like has I think its own benefit too you know I've gotten lots of great feedback on my work from folks in the discord and they're just like good people so it feels good to like talk to them also I guess it gets into this weird space where it's like there can be a fuzzy line between like social spit it's like the discord in the stream or a social space for me but I'm also a game developer who's there like in rooms are like very performative so it's a blurry line between like friendship and work

but for me that's felt really healthy and good I know some people like work in personal life a little more separated and admittedly this kind of approach and you know blur that line so if that's the kind of thing you're okay with then good so long story short have this break I was gonna do to prevent myself from starting a game project and I found myself building this whole like twitch channel and community through that and then this whole discord and and everything came full circle in the best way that's in the end I started doing those game jams with the community and that is how I've started my newest personal project with my boyfriend Jake so it's kind of like I was trying to like stop myself from making games and then I found something healthy that like got me back into making games so it really did come full circle and just through that community I've been really inspired just like talking

to people who aren't just game developers for example and like you know learning more about other people's perspectives outside of the industry I think has been really inspiring for me and sometimes I feel like game developers sort of function in this little bubble where we only talk to each other so I encourage everyone to like get out there whether it's through streaming or through like whatever maybe you want to do a hobby club or something like anything that connects you with people who may or may not play your games is gonna help you and so like my slide says taking your break doesn't mean you have to do nothing you can find something you enjoy a hobby maybe it turns into something that affects your career but ultimately whatever you do will probably come full circle and end up helping you out so that's I guess my personal story around that kind of stuff and I would love to turn this into like more of a conversation with the chat or with Larry and Brandon I was just gonna

say if you wanted to turn this into more of a conversation you probably the right place because that's exactly yeah like fair my like experience of this like taking a break and finding something that was great like I know that's how I did it but the way other people do it is gonna be super different and I'm like happy to help people brainstorm and like think of other things there have been other times where I've taken breaks and other things this was just like building my stream was probably the most significant thing that I've tackled and during a great project well I find what's interesting is even in your taking a break you still wanted to do something productive right a lot of people may take a break that means like I don't want to do anything that requires my input I just want to be something stationary and receive something right i watch Game of Thrones or you know pretty much what we're gonna be doing after this but it's very important in this day and age streaming is a huge part of being a game developer

so obviously everything that we do is towards being a part of another community opening up the opportunities streaming is definitely one of those things that to interact with someone with your community in real time just like games are for the 3d industry right it's great it's actually a very insightful that you were talking about how even taking a break you found yourself kind of accidentally building up your string community and now it's something really big and something that you enjoy doing and it's a hopefully less effort right obviously in terms of it's more a more in my back door it's definitely something that takes up like doing a personal project and the stream outside of my day job is pretty sometimes but because it's on a schedule like I can plan for that stuff which bright or doable I think I feel like

power of scheduling it's like a lot so I do want to ask you then if you don't mind me jumping and do you find though that having like a set schedule for like okay today I'm gonna do like an hour of gaming when that hour is up and you're like alright you know time for discipline to kick in get me out of this chair and go back to work do you ever find that you still long for like I wanted 30 more minutes so I wanted another and if so like is your schedule set in stone where you're like no this is the schedule to success or maybe do you I guess move stuff around I guess what's the reality and you know how tight the schedule is especially if you're craving a little more of something or you feel like you're behind on something else it really depends for me I think I have gotten older I like even though I have a lot of personal projects I find I like and actually like less time working on them in my free time than I used to because I'm like better and faster at making games so I feel like it kind of depends where you're at and I find like I edged holing

solution for that stuff is like Oh bleep of the show or something or like have a deadline that I can create for myself that motivates people like get things done and that's sort of like the structure that helps me like right now Jake and I are working we're showing our game we met in May at the mix next week at e3 that was like how was the thing that like got me on it and got me you know I feel like I had some structure and ability to like actually finish and yeah so that's good and like I still keep up with my stream even when I'm like super in line I am that'd be super got it I feel like that can is really important and you're building a community and when you're like trying to sort of like don't succeed at that oh yeah wonderful so we should take that into account and

try to continue to build ours with some consistency yeah I mean is very true I mean anything that people can rely on you for even if you're building up your own stream or your branding it's showing up to work on time I mean everything that that is towards improvement you have to have some type of reliance and accountability for everybody to kind of be able to tune in and be like hey this is my favorite streamer or my favorite developer this is my time to kind of ask for advice or watch for entertainment whatever it is and it's true it's it's just anything that involves for you to get better at it you need that that consistency it makes it makes a lot of sense to me also like typically related to like how I was doing the streaming project I think it was also a good way because like I was releasing ID projects

like pretty good a bunch of those oh right and then I have this long break so I'm losing that can system releases but the stream like helps me still maintain like visibility and a connection with all who are trying to follow my work that felt like a good way to like compensate her like not releasing something for awhile and like not have having that complete schedule and I think that that's a pretty big benefit yeah although I will emphasize that like it's just yeah streaming for me is so weird cuz like it is part of my career but it's also just like such a positive social base that I think I would still I would still be doing it even if it didn't have like all those benefits like my games well I got a question for you in regards to accountability since it sounds like you know yield stream games and you'll be doing it for entertainment sake at points like you said you were playing overwatch and having a good time and you said that your communities were mixing you have people who follow your

development we're watching your stream you know do any of them ever gut check you like hey Mina when are you gonna you know what are you gonna update that thing or what do you level or rather you character see you over here you know guard the note I guess no they're like my I feel like my student community like emotionally supports me more than they like I'm like I owe them so much for like keeping me sane as I like try to work on side projects so yeah it's really nice they're all just like you know I I run the kind of stream that's like I guess pretty cozy and chill so I probably like attract people who are more chill also and it's you know a lot of people who care about work/life balance stuff in any like week and that kind of thing yeah it's good to like yeah I was saying before like sometimes game development can be solitary it's really good to have like this community

I can like talk to and be online was to remind me that like oh yeah there are people out there they like care about me and my work and like don't actually want me to like work until I hurt myself so I think that that that's another important thing important I've had that's really cool have any of the people that you met through streams for example you said like some of the people like maybe try to get involved in some way then especially pushing you or helping you with your own sanity sake but I like random artists come across your screen it's like hey I want to contribute our engineers or designers or you know other game to have collaborators like really tried to push and like say hey I want to connect on like some professional stuff unless you can see if we can do something cool or collaborate in the future I've ended up meeting up with a bunch of other developers that I met through him at like G's in stuff those hitting up in that context it's always really cool to like who I mean it's so hard to meet people I like stuff like GDC this is too many people know it's nice it's sort of

like yeah be able to reach out to me like hey hello first like let's hang out and like have our own little like thing and also the game at Jake and I are working on women may the composer is someone whose work I discovered through one of the important community game fans his name's Ryan Yoshi Tommy any of the music for a bunch of obidos games in those jams why also no and yeah now Ryan is totally doing our game Oscar and I'm like that collaboration it's like yeah you never know who you're gonna meet if you expand your social yeah I mean it uh I totally agree it wasn't until I stopped us working on the game going home and joined life that I started discovering other opportunities and a lot of that is just for people and

a little and it really just start with the people you know to introduce you to other people that you know that you know made me start thinking about other things to do within the game deaf community that doesn't directly tied to my day job and where do you feel right right now I feel like twitch is starting to look outside of just games streaming like they're starting to kind of help with game development side it seems like a very natural evolution where do you see that kind of improving in the next couple years yeah that one of the things I probably could have even gone more into it am I talking should've but one thing I've in realizing that I mentioned that arid tension between game developers and like screaming and you know acres has been around for a while I feel like that tension is naturally

thing as game developers get more familiar with streaming and s streaming like this would have acknowledged part of our industry that's like a legit thing that happens and that's not causing us all to lose money I think that as more game developers get more comfortable with that reality that there will be more like active conversations I hope it's me impel Prince first I actually heard I was talking about this to Bennett body at GDC he had actually didn't like on a panel I wish I could remember where where he was talking to some swimmers who played his game getting over it which was obviously like a big sensation yeah yeah so like you know he was part of that panel where they were like in conversation about air streams of that doing really well in their videos and then like his perspective on that as a developer and the fact that that annal was like a thing that even happened I thought was really thing is beaming and

like it's just gonna keep getting bigger and like I think that's one of those things that like game developers really just like trying to keep up with it and like you want that space what kind of cool collaboration I'm out of it I think there's a lot there that is unwrapped as of that weird like insanity many game developers have of it like being this like weird thing for us I like personally really want to like get people over that mentality and like for game developers to embrace I got a I got a good one for you here this question comes by way of size FX thanks for the great talk nina and so that was a compliment here's a question how did you come to the decision to stream twice per week on Twitch for example did your streaming research lead you to schedule yourself twice a week why not three times a week or was it purely down to your decision to fit in time to play

games for taking a break the beginning when I was starting like when I made where I was like ill in that mindset of it being purely like a hobby and something that I might not up with in the long term the two days a week sort of felt like that level of commitment that I wanted at the time and then I didn't end up changing its be more as I got more serious without it basically purely because two days a week yells pretty like it felt like the right amount for me especially since I like was starting to get into other side projects like work gets busy again blah blah blah um two days to felt to me like a good amount and I felt like oh my community it was also like show up for those like it was like working for me so I'm gonna keep it up as long as I can it's fair enough we

can take it off Larry came and put it back on group chat yeah so with all this new adventures I imagine it becomes an additional thing on top of what you mentioned you know what you were doing before because you were developing games on the side and now you're streaming and developing games and so it's like two more things or one more thing that you've added onto your plate and now you got to keep up with that too but obviously it's giving you the peace of mind and sanity and it's giving you like emotional support when you need it so it actually is kind of helping to solve the working yourself in the corner in solitaire type of mentality which a lot of indie devs are kind of going through when they decide to make games on their own what other crazy benefit have you been discovering lately now that you have like this new new venture on the side you know there's a lot to be said

for like playing games and being in a more active conversation with without them which way like you do cuz like I'm streaming a game there's the chat we're talking about it like i'll stream life is strange to you for example that's one that i've been really into and it's like my chats pretty active about like reacting to the game and talking to me about it or like i've been playing a lot of dota 2 and like that will like help me figure things out learning so it's like I think having those conversations is really cool because like see different perspectives on the game that you're playing outside of your own and you know someone's experience or how they're interpreting life is strange - it's gonna if ur a lot from mine depending on their background right and I'm just really lucky to have like a very petty community that's like no often down to

share with me like how they're feeling about the game and and getting that perspective like for me as a game designer and a writer I'm like I find that to be super valuable yeah I'm writing and making these games that a lot of people are gonna play like I need to always be thinking about know how they're gonna interpret things how they're gonna see things I want to make things that are really sensitive and thoughtful and being able to be in those conversations even about other folks in I think helps me like have like improve that skill and that oh I find that that is another like I like by continuing boys wonderfully although also sometimes I just want to play like dota or overwatch and it's like I'm not even thinking about it so it just depends on the mood I'm in I guess is so last question for me this one's hopefully gonna be a show and

support for you and what you've done but you know if I was so happen to be interested in checking out some of the games that you've made both either with Fulbright or even some of the more specifically the ones that you've pioneered and developed yourself as the main directive force and creative person behind it I don't want to call it a specific role because I don't know if necessarily exactly he was helping or you know what the I guess the pipeline was for each game and who was involved where but I'll say the games that you developed personally if I was interested in finding those where would I go to the show support and buy a couple of your games yeah yeah I appreciate that every I practice done has been like with a different team oh it's always oh but my website EEMA says not oh the chat oh and my Twitter handles hentai PhD I'm like pretty active on Twitter and like you know share updates about what I'm working on whenever anything up and you know I mentioned my discord as

being like a big part of this like unity building thing that I've been a few so folks want to join the discord also that's another place where I like share updates and also just like hang out and chat with people about whatever like I said for me a lot of it is just like socializing so yeah those are probably the best places I wouldn't Nina thank you oh I know where I can go buy some new games yeah was there anything cool or new that you're working on or excited to tell people about other than game development or Twitter ability things well game related I guess I should share Jake partner and I are gonna be at e3 next week knowing that our game we're working on my latest ID project basically a romantic comedy game about us playing through it's like a collection of yet game different unreal specialist is available yeah it's not listen we're

still working on it it's like in development so we're gonna show like believers will be talking more about that and yeah I don't know if I have anything else to plug otherwise really they've been like oh that's my MIDI who I adore I obviously wouldn't miss it all weren't the best ever hurting me ways way yeah demolition shoutouts it's which community both ours too cuz we would have had so many more technical problems if you weren't for them letting us know like hey hey stop stop stop we can't hear we came here because I just kept on going for hours oh my god that happens to me on stream all the time I'll be like muted and my chats like you're literally muted so that is a lot different it's actually pretty pretty fun it's been a very education on our part and we we are

starting to see what exactly you're talking about with the streaming community and you have inspired us to go that route and we look forward to grow in that community as well thank you so much Nina for joining us it's been a pleasure and so happy to have you on another platform thanks for doing the podcast and now thanks for being the anchor on day 3 gee that's the very first one ever we're gonna enshrine your name in stone that can't be broken and for generations and generations to come long after we're gone when the aliens show up and want to know what the humans did yeah they're gonna see that stone and be like wow gee doc stay three anchored by Nina Freeman don't know who she is but she was probably pretty awesome yeah we'll definitely keep in touch thank you thank you so much for ending G ducks on such a happy to have you thank you thank you well good luck on your game at e3 you heard here we met in May look forward to that at e3 you

can see the game that Nina and Jake have been working on it's gonna tell you know the story of their relationship through some funny dates and vignettes so that's a very interesting experience that I would love to get my hands on and check that out you know me I'm a sucker for those types of games with that said Nina I guess I'm gonna wave goodbye to you and sadly I think I might be soon waving goodbye to our audiences you [Music] [Music]