Been thinking about web site development a lot lately.

I used to be a freelance web site designer, which I have mixed feelings about. I liked meeting new clients, and building a rapport with them, and whipping up site designs in Illustrator and Photoshop. I liked being able to say I was a freelancer, just like I like being able to say ‘I make software for kids with autism’ now… it feels good to say that. Worthwhile.

But the actual process of turning those ideas into web sites always annoyed me.

So I’ve been thinking about that, and about game development, and how, even though I don’t find the idea of developing games to be particularly noble, I honestly enjoy the most of the tedium of game development. And I’m wondering if I might do well to treat game development like freelancing.

There are web site clients I picked up because I thought I’d love working with the client, and there are clients I picked up because they could help me pay my bills.

With game development, I’m only working on things I love to make. There aren’t any bread & butter, pay-the-bills games.

And maybe there should be.

Working on web sites I didn’t care about on a personal level was a little soul crushing. But I could work on a game that’s more than a little derivative and have lots of fun doing it, if I only let myself do so. I like playing casual games. I like playing cookie-cutter rehashes of old tropes. It’s only an overdeveloped urge to Change the World that has me working exclusively on things I find unique. And as someone who can do all the programming, graphics, and music for a game project on my own, I stand a good chance of making decent games with very little overhead.

Which is not to say that I could just flip a switch and break into the industry by doing this. It just might be worth trying.