this was the year i decided to go all-in on one game a month, after an earlier half-hearted attempt, and many game jam “failures.”

i’d say this went pretty well, despite missing 3 of the 12 months of last year. that’s a .750 batting average, right? i actually made two games in february, which makes a year total of 10 games. i attempted many more, though—but due to either lack of time or motivation, i didn’t finish those (which makes my batting average much lower, i suppose :P).

breaking down the year in 3 categories, because why not: the technological, the social, and the inspirational.

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the technological

despite the generally good advice that one should stick to familiar tools during a game jam, i find that game jams are excellent motivation to learn new languages, engines, or other tools. which i did. sometimes it resulted in me not actually finishing a jam (hence the aforementioned advice!), but since my goal is mainly to learn, i call it a win overall.

i have OPINIONS about the tools i tried out in 2014, which might be better saved for a separate post. here’s a quick summary, though:

• cocos2d-x: nay
• phaser: nay
• pixi.js: yea
• unity: yea
• blender: argh

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the social

in 2013, i made a separate twitter account (@BearInATeaCup) for game development, but i didn’t use it much. in 2014, i started using it a LOT:

• in 2013, i posted 188 tweets
• in 2014, i posted 3869 tweets

i met a bunch of awesome folks on twitter, including the epic youtuber Jupiter Hadley, who plays ALL the game jam gams. in fact, she and i collaborated to create the website and podcast indiegamejams.com. stay tuned, there’s more yet to come from us on that site!

from the twitter game dev community, i learned, i laughed, and i had my awareness raised. there are way too many cool people i’ve met to call out individually, but pretty much everyone i follow on twitter is amazing. if i connected with you in a positive way at all last year, i sincerely thank you. i could not have done this without you.

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the inspirational

and finally, the most personal part:

at the start of 2014, i was in a creative rut. fighting walls and walls of creative blocks. i just couldn’t get it together. i kept getting that feeling that maybe i’d dried up for good: no more ideas, or inspiration, left at all. this seriously did not help with my depression.

2014 changed all that. thanks to game jams, and one game a month, i discovered that i do have a few ideas left up my sleeve, and even when i get stuck during a jam (which still happens), i am no longer afraid of being completely creatively bankrupt. i still got this. and this has helped my mood immensely. i am happiest when game devving.

footnote: looking ahead

overall, from a game dev perspective, 2014 was pretty good for me. what are my plans for 2015? nothing set in stone, but vaguely, these are the directions i’m aiming at:

• i’d like to tackle making larger works— something more substantial than a single-level game made in 72 hours or what have you. i find this challenging because i get a lot of motivation from the pressure of a short deadline. longer deadlines, not so much
• there lots of game types i’d like to try making. more 3D, for example. and something involving more text and conversation
• i’d also like to take some time to expand upon the games i’ve already made into something more polished and full
• do more to amplify the game dev voices of the marginalized. i want to find out more ways to help beyond just signal boosting on social media

if you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading! :)