(Warning! This article contains subjectivity and personal experiences. If you aren’t into that, then close the tab before you get too invested. Quick! Do it now!)

When I was younger, every time my family went to the beach, I’d go to a novelty store and pick up a pad of paper and a 32-pack of crayons. I’d come home, play a few video games to get inspired, then I’d take a crayon and scrawl a level design onto one sheet. Each stage I drew was all one color to symbolize what area it was in: for example, the green stages would be the forest level, the red stages would be the lava levels, the cyan stages would be ice levels, etc.

I’d try to draw in tiny detail all the traps and the monsters the main character would face along the way. I’d draw bosses in wide stages, and on the back of the sheet I’d draw out their attack patterns. I’d put little asides to myself saying, “This boss breathes lava, but you can duck under it.”

Some might see an opportunity to tan. I saw inspiration for a water level.

I got so invested in those drawings that I forgot to keep playing the games that inspired them. I’d leave handheld games for my brother to conquer while I drew bigger and cooler levels. Back then, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was inspired, and that was all I had to understand. I just went and made it, because it was fun and because going to the beach meant getting sunburns no matter how much sunblock you lathered on.

Working for the industry is nothing like this, you’re told. You’re told that you must work unforgiving hours with no extra pay just to make one of the assets for the next big AAA game. Creatively, you might have some liberties and agency, but for the most part, if your boss doesn’t like what you’ve made, you’ve got to scrap that idea and start over. In a word, many might call it “soul-crushing victory” when all is said-and-done. So, many people opt out of that experience in lieu of doing work on their own.

“If I make this on my own, I have no one to blame but myself (and maybe my team a little).”

Independent developers, however, get very little of that feedback as they’re making their games. In fact, most devs get no feedback on what they make either because they have to keep it under wraps for fear that someone else might take their idea, or because they just don’t know anyone in the industry and they’re starting out.

For a lot of independent developers just starting out, making a game is like scrawling those drawings. They’re throwing themselves at the medium over and over again, living and breathing the workload. And that work is often very exhausting. You aren’t paid to be an start-up indie, so you have to find other ways to make ends meet while you craft your first game.

Pictured here: A reluctant coder.

For those that make something simpler, it might take a few months. For those working towards a more complex game, you’ll be working for a year or more without pay. And your working conditions are probably less than stellar.

People always point to the success stories to define the indie label in games. The Team Meat’s and the Jonathan Blow’s of video games are lauded as having innovative and universal ideas that rake in cash. Those guys became millionaires overnight, and a lot of people seek that same fame and cashflow.

And almost everyone who starts out with that as the goal either falls flat on their face, or fails to get started.

I’ve had so many people come up to me and say, “Hey, we should really make a game.” We might draw up characters and start setting plot details, or maybe we’ll start with a basic engine and try to work from there. But in the end, these projects tend to lose their steam.

For several years, I told myself that this profession was a risk. It’s risky to spend a year of your life gambling on a project that has no guarantee of paying you back. You could seriously injure yourself, or worse. “Unless you work in the industry where the pay is solid and the conditions are *slightly* better, you’re better off pursuing other outlets,” I told myself.

But, there was a nagging feeling in the back of my head that told me to keep drawing those levels, to brainstorm more ideas that would never see the light of the internet, to keep at it. I thought it was a fruitless quest.

Turns out I was wrong. Very, very wrong.