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I was one of five people at an indie game studio for three years, working as a gameplay programmer on a single title, a small puzzle-platformer that took way longer to finish than any of us expected. I say that like it's a complaint. It isn't. Those three years, cramped in a converted apartment with two dogs that belonged to the art director wandering between desks, were some of the best working years of my life.
We were broke a lot of the time. I took a pay cut to join, deferred more of my salary than I probably should have, ate a lot of instant noodles that first year. But I believed in the game, and more than that, I believed in the four people I was making it with, which turned out to matter more than the paycheck.
We shipped it. It did fine, not a runaway hit but fine, enough to pay everyone back their deferred salary and keep the studio alive for a next project. There was a night after launch where the five of us sat on the office floor with cheap beer, watching the first player reviews come in live, and one of them made the founder cry a little, the good kind of crying.
I left about four months after that. Not because anything went wrong. Because I'd joined that studio to learn how to ship a game from nothing, and I had done exactly that, and the next project was going to be a similar kind of puzzle game with a similar kind of team, and some part of me wanted to go try a different kind of hard — bigger team, bigger scope, systems I hadn't touched yet.
I told the founder over lunch, no big speech, just "I think I want to go try something with a bigger team next." He got it immediately. He'd started two studios before this one and knew exactly what it looks like when someone's ready to move rather than running from something.
I still get pulled into their playtests sometimes. I still have a framed print of the game's key art on my wall. Leaving a place you loved doesn't have to mean the place failed you. Sometimes it just means you got what you came for, and it was good, and it's done.
We were broke a lot of the time. I took a pay cut to join, deferred more of my salary than I probably should have, ate a lot of instant noodles that first year. But I believed in the game, and more than that, I believed in the four people I was making it with, which turned out to matter more than the paycheck.
We shipped it. It did fine, not a runaway hit but fine, enough to pay everyone back their deferred salary and keep the studio alive for a next project. There was a night after launch where the five of us sat on the office floor with cheap beer, watching the first player reviews come in live, and one of them made the founder cry a little, the good kind of crying.
I left about four months after that. Not because anything went wrong. Because I'd joined that studio to learn how to ship a game from nothing, and I had done exactly that, and the next project was going to be a similar kind of puzzle game with a similar kind of team, and some part of me wanted to go try a different kind of hard — bigger team, bigger scope, systems I hadn't touched yet.
I told the founder over lunch, no big speech, just "I think I want to go try something with a bigger team next." He got it immediately. He'd started two studios before this one and knew exactly what it looks like when someone's ready to move rather than running from something.
I still get pulled into their playtests sometimes. I still have a framed print of the game's key art on my wall. Leaving a place you loved doesn't have to mean the place failed you. Sometimes it just means you got what you came for, and it was good, and it's done.
2 comments
FreeLynx9772 · 4d ago
This matches what I heard from two other people there.
BraveSparrow6588 · 1d ago
Same experience on a different team, sadly.
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