So, why do I make games?

Yesterday, I found myself thinking, why do I make games? Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t one of those negative reflections. It was just me, trying to figure out the actual reasons why my mind keeps coming back to solo independent game development.

I’ve made games in teams, which have been awesome journeys (and some not-so-awesome ones as well). But still, I find solo development to be my cup of tea.

"To learn your own limitations and, over time, to get past them every now and then."

I guess it mostly boils down to the freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is not only a positive thing—it comes with another side of the coin as well. You are the only one questioning yourself. With bigger decisions, you can obviously lean into asking for feedback, but there are so many small decisions that you end up making on the spot. You’re not able to gather feedback for all the tiny pieces of development. Or if you did, it would ultimately mean having people back me up every hour of development.

Some decisions end up being bad ones, obviously. Especially with design and coding choices. These show up after some time, when you realize how it should have been done. In many cases, it’s already too late to switch to something else since you’ve committed to some code structure or design choice, which ultimately affects the whole game—without me even realizing it.

I guess some would call that a learning process. Maybe that’s the thing? Maybe the endless learning is what motivates and drives my passion for creating entire worlds by myself.

To some, it may even sound a little masochistic to do it that way. But the idea of being able to do it and succeed is such a powerful reason for me to keep going, keep trying, and keep making bad decisions to learn from. As a solo game developer, I’m not making anyone else’s life harder with these experiments and inevitable failures.

It enables me to stay experimental in my decisions. Not only experimental with design choices, but in choosing paths, challenges, and battles by myself. And in the end, I keep learning my own way.

So, why do I make games?

I want to be good at it, in every aspect of it. It’s such a wonderful way of expressing and challenging yourself. To learn your own limitations and, over time, to get past them every now and then.

I would even dare to call it a lifelong journey—one that doesn’t have an end goal. 

It’s just a process I’ve decided to be part of.