What Kind of People Are You?

News & General Discussion
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So I’ve been curious just what kind of people I’m dealing with here. I want to get to know the common things we all share and what sets us apart. I think getting to know what you do when you don’t do game dev is a good way to find out. I also think this is the only way I have any hopes of @hippocoder letting an off topic thread stay open.

To keep it at least somewhat related to game dev I make the rationalization that knowing what people do while not working lets you know them more intimately and knowing game devs is related to game dev.

Here we are completely off topic but still on topic asking what do you do otherwize. What did you eat for dinner, do you drive a nice car, are you growing your beard, do you like the smell of fresh dirt? How was your day? What do you do for recreation? Is your house payment to high? Did lil timmy catch a cold? Anything and everything related to you is related to game dev…maybe?

I want to know how we as a group are alike and how we are different. Im sure we are mostly different but I like to believe that only a certain type of person would even attempt making games for more than a week. Plus I like having a place to chat openly with nearly anonymous people because I feel less restricted in a social sense, I can say anything and it really doesn’t come back on me at the end of the day.

So answer the poll, tell me why you answered that way and then give me some insight on who you are outside of the game creation world. Or maybe just giggle at me because hippocoder locked this immediately, we will see.

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I will start it off. I chose hobby/whats game dev/ other because I really enjoy doing it, Im so new im clueless, and I havent released a game so dont consider myself a fully fledged dev yet.

Ive been tinkering about 8 months and love unity. I have a good deal of fun with it. I’m 37 and American. I live in a very rural area and work for a local farm that grows grain. For fun other than game dev I ride motorcycles in the dirt. I love it. Im currently riding a Honda cr250r and am constantly working on my home track. It will never be finished but grows every day. Im married for 19 years and have an 11 year old daughter. I ate hot dogs for dinner…ur turn to share.:stuck_out_tongue:

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I grew up on a farm long ago and am still a country boy at heart despite having always found computers and video games fascinating since VIC-20 and Intellivision days.

Worked many different jobs over the years including being a janitor, a medical equipment technician, a distribution manager at a newspaper and of course software engineer. I enjoyed them all. Each job was interesting in its own way. I also started and ran my own businesses several times from back when I was a kid up til about 10 years ago.

I work for an IT company but I work from my home these days. I greatly enjoy manual work and being outside. I do a fair amount of walking and jogging but not nearly like I was a year or two ago (40 to 50 miles per week). Same for working out. I enjoy it a lot but haven’t been into it like I was. My record several months ago was knocking out 400 push ups in one evening. Then I slacked again. Lol I am just this week in fact getting back into the fitness thing.

I make a good living now. Wasn’t always that way of course. Had my down times. longest most extreme was 4 months eating nothing but ramen noodles and drinking water. Those days are long gone. Not rich for sure but am comfortable.

Have 2 dogs I spend time with. Never been married. Just hit level 50 earlier this year. I can finally assign some more skill points!! :slight_smile: Let’s see… I also like driving around in my old truck with the music cranked. Kind of mini road trips just no place in particular. I go on hikes here and there randomly. Into digital photography and often combine a hike or drive with that.

Dinner hasn’t come yet. When it does I might have soup and sandwich, a grilled chicken salad or maybe some ribs. No idea yet. Tonight I hope to spend some time on my current game project. Oh I checked Hobbyist. Been doing this for decades purely for fun. Although I am now slowly working toward a Steam release until that happens I won’t call myself an indie.

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I’m a 19 yo male engineering student from Belgium. I started using Unity maybe in 2014, but definitely not on a daily basis. Sometimes I don’t touch unity for a few months, and other times I use it every day for over a week long. Since uni, spare time has gotten less common, so I usually work like crazy on my projects during holidays.

I started developing assets since December 2015, and have released 3 since. 2 of them are still actively being developed. I don’t have much interest in creating games right now, but who knows, maybe some day. I started earning a little money with my assets since last April, and it has been a welcome extra source of money.

Last year I started playing games for the first time actually. Before that I never really played any games. Never had a playstation/Xbox or other console, and my pc hardware was always on the lower end. I got a new laptop last year, so I started playing some guys that were always on my wish list, it was like a new world opening before my eyes. Since then I played gta v, dishonored, portal 1 and 2 and bioshock. Next on the list or bioshock 2 and infinite, dishonored 2 and a replay of gta v.

To get a bit more personal. I have a girlfriend who I love very much, we’ve been together for 2 years now. She bought me the bioshock series for my birthday :slight_smile: I’m a big fan of the music of Logic and Childish Gambino, but lately I’ve been listening to some different styles like Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, the notorious B.I.G, Manchester orchestra etc. Recommendations are welcome. For the past few years I’ve also been battling mental health issues, and last month I decided to go see a therapist for the first time. Don’t know why I waited so long.

Last year I gained some weight that I want to lose right now, but I feel like I don’t really have that much control over my weight, pretty clueless over those things. I tried cutting out carbs and that gave me some results, so maybe I should keep doing that, don’t really know, tips are welcome! @GarBenjamin 400 push ups is crazy! I could do like 10 push ups max, and then I trained every night and got to 70 push ups in one go, never got to 100 though.

I ate some spinach with chicken as dinner tonight, and then I had a chocolate milk.

I like this thread initiative @FrankenCreations

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I grew up in South Africa, and since there was no game industry there I became a web/software developer, although I always wanted to make games, more specifically my childhood dream of remaking the arcade/NES classic ‘Ironman Super Offroad’.

I dabbled in DirectX and XNA for a few years but when Unity 3.0 came out, for the first time I believed I would be able to make my game a reality, and now 8 years later, it is now pretty much completed (its been in soft launch for 6 months) and I’m now preparing for global launch.

I do contract work to pay the bills, and I work on my game when I have some spare time, which is quite a lot since I’m not married, nor do I have any children.

But to be honest I’m over coding. I’ve been doing it for 20 years professionally now, and now I want to open up a cafe, or a Texas style BBQ restaurant, or some other business that doesn’t involve sitting glued to a computer screen all day. I also want to start a family and just live a ‘normal’ life.

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Hey this is great…exactly what I was looking for. @GarBenjamin Im glad to see another farmboy in the list. I have never worked in the computer industry other than a couple years as a graphic designer which was fun but sitting at a desk got old fast. @Meltdown I grew up in Houston Texas and love bbq. @alexanderameye dont get too upset about weight, its health that matters. My advice is to find something physical you love doing and do it. Bicycles are a good thing or hiking, anything you do because its fun you will keep doing. I have been extremely heavy in the past and it was always during times of stress when I was busy with just making ends meet and depressed so I didnt do those physical things I enjoyed and my gut showed it. Happiness and an enjoyable physical activity were the things that got me back trim again.

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My story is rather gloomy but at least I’m not depressed or anything (yet), for which I feel glad.

I just turned 40 and have been working as a software engineer for the past 20 years. I’ve never married but I have parents. My family is quite poor, so I’ve spent all my money on supporting my parents and now I have no savings, no insurance, no house of my own, and so on.

For the past few years, I’ve been working at home - which is a rented room about 2m x 2m in size - working for a start up company. I almost never go out except when I have to buy groceries, rarely meeting anyone, but work all day long which have made me lose all motivation of my current work.

That’s where Unity comes to play, my only real hobby right now. I stumbled upon Unity about an year ago when I heard it was available on Linux for free. And soon, I decided I might try making a game with it, but I had to spent a few months dabbling with Blender and some assets I bought at the store first, because art was the weakest part for me.

About 6 months ago, I finally decided it’s time to start my real project and I have been working on it every weekends since then. Even though I have quite a solid plan about the programming part, I still have only vague ideas as to what kind of a game I want to build.

I don’t intend to make money with it, but I still want to make something I can feel proud of when I grow older. I don’t know how many more years I’ll be able to work like that because of my unstable financial situation and unhealthy lifestyle.

So even though I’m very well aware that it’s much better to try small projects and take lessons from them, I had to go for a single project on which I must put everything I know.

So far, it’s been going well. In just less than 6 months, I’ve made over 350 commits already even though I’ve mostly worked on weekends. But sometimes I can’t help but feeling hopeless, because I know that there’s so much work needed to make such a game (a Second Life style MMO or an open world sandbox), especially when I decided to use as little non-open source assets as possible.

At least, I’m enjoying doing it. The only problem is the fun of working on my game project has made it even harder to keep motivated in my real job, and as both my work and hobby involves programming it means I’m sitting in front of my computer all day and every day, which shouldn’t be good for my health.

I just wish my current project at work would suceed and somehow improve my financial situation soon. At least I hope anything worse wouldn’t happen until I can go back to more normal lifestyle.

But until then, I think I have no choice but to keep going on. It’s a good thing that I still have something I can enjoy and feel good about myself. And that opportunity was given to me by getting to know Unity, for which I feel really glad.

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Grew up in a smallish city in NZ, but my parents were farmers before I was born. So I don’t quite fit into country or city stereotypes.

I tend to be fairly academically gifted. Breezed through highschool and was awarded Dux without putting in much effort. On the downside the ease that I accomplish things has left me with a pretty poor work ethic, which I am currently trying to train out of myself.

Was raised Mormon and did the whole missionary thing. Spent two years in Australia convincing people to convert. Met my wife there and brought her home to NZ. Built a house out of recycled car tyres, just because. Lived in it with my wife and parents for a couple of years while I finished my chemical engineering degree. Then we started having kids and decided it was time to move into a real house of our own.

Worked as a chemical engineer in AgChemicals. Did that for five years in two different companies in two different countries. Then I moved into coatings, focusing on continuous improvement. Currently I’m in training to move into a production manager role. I’ve also quit being a Mormon and consider myself an atheist.

Outside of work I have a variety of hobbies that I flit between as the mood takes me. I have a novella that is currently waiting for me to do a final check of the proof before it goes on sale on Amazon. I am an active participant in the local LARP community. I run a youtube channel with Unity tutorials. I post on internet forums a lot. And of course I occasionally make games.

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Just wow. I am getting more than I ever expected and I would like to thank you. Its amazing how people can just open up and give a life story to complete strangers on the internet. I was expecting more of a here’s what I’m up to this week kind of off topic thread about whatever strikes your current fancy. Since we went down this path I will follow along gladly.

I spent my early childhood in a rural area near Houston TX. I have early memories of room to roam and no neighbors. Around 10 years old my parents divorced and I stayed with my father who soon after married up a class and moved into a nice residential subdivision in a neighborhood with cute little square yards and concrete streets.

By age 14 me and my father weren’t on speaking terms and I moved in with my mother who lived in an apartment in an industrial area. School was particularly harsh on a fat kid with social problems. My freshman year of high school, 9th grade, contained over 9,000 other freshmen.

At age 16 I was no longer in school and working full time. I never graduated but it was ok because I was making good money. I had talked my way into a graphic design job at a small company and was doing good. The company went south after a couple years and I was hung. I went to work with my brother in a buisness he started.

I was set and going so I wasn’t worried about who would hire me. We were making good money even though the work wasnt my favorite thing. Then the stress of the transportation industry got to me. The 10 hours a day at a desk listening to people griping on the phone. It just got to be too much and I couldn’t deal with it. At this point I was living in an apartment in a very populated area very near Houston making fairly good annual salary. I broke one day, just snapped and bailed out.

I moved to the exact middle of nowhere. I owned almost nothing and had to restart from square one at 24 years old. My wife was pregnant and I needed income. With no highschool diploma things were limited. I went to work at a grain storage facility and was making good enough money to keep a payment on a double wide trailer on a 1 acre lot. That job lasted a few years. Long story short my boss told me I wouldn’t quit and I proved him wrong.

I’ve been at my current job almost 8 years. I got lucky and found a good place to be. A local farmer hired me and we clicked. We work well together. I don’t mind hard labor, working with a shovel. I like fixing broken mechanical things, its relaxing like a manly jigsaw puzzle. I have always spent spare time studying the things that interest me even though I never officially finished school. I have always tinkered with electronics and computers.

Working for a single person instead of a company seems to be my thing. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t get my GED until I was 30. I am valued for how well I figure out new things because something is always new. Its always some new computer system in the gps guided equipment or the logic slice on the controller for our grain dryer or someone says “I dunno it just don’t work”. Sure the boss can call the people that service this equipment and spend twice the money and time but he doesn’t so I get treated well.

Snap forward to today. Me, my boss, his wife and son, my wife and daughter are all fairly close. Better than a typical employee employer relationship. If i got arrested right now he would have me out by morning. When I fell on the dirtbike and my humerus exploded he drove me to the hospital to get it screwed back together. I payed the trailer off and sold it. I bought a house waay out of any town. So far out of town it dosent qualify as city limits or township it’s just county. Nearest town with a recordable population has 155 people. I own around 10 acres. I get to play as loud as I want however I like and no neighbors to complain. Across the gravel road from my house is a couple thousand acres of farmland that my boss owns. I built a motocross circuit in my yard and no one cares. Things are pretty good

In my off time I ride the dirtbike when I can during daylight hours but I cant ride for hours on end 2 days in a row like I could when I was 18. On rest days or days where weather is a factor which is more common in the winter I’ve taken up unity. I have always been comfortable with computers and I’ve always played games. I took some programming when I was in school and had a fairly good grip on turbo pascal. I have always learned new things easy. I bought a semi heavy gaming computer to play on and to give my daugter a good machine to learn on. I started tinkering around with programming again about a year ago and realized it still felt natural to me. I found Unity and now I’m hooked.

Now for my intended topic of what is going on right now this week. Its harvest season on the farm and we are working long hours. I do get a day off work still once in a while. Our crop of soybeans was not quite ready for harvest yet so I had both days off last weekend. The weather was warm and the dirtbike was calling me. I should have spent some time on my game but I figured I have several months of cold wet winter to do that. I spent a full day Saturday doing maintenance which needs to be done more frequently on a race machine than you would think. Something always needs tended to, tires dont last for miles they last for hours. Sunday I rode all day in the track I built in the yard. I went back to work yesterday still sore from it. Now its 6:20 AM the wife is getting the kid ready for school and Im drinking coffe getting ready for work. I hope you guys have a good day or night whichever it is for you and again thanks for the real and open responses.

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Man, this thread is full of people who had hard lives/character building experiences. I just don’t have the qualifications to post here.

Grew up in a small village in ex-yu countryside. Played outside a lot. Always had dogs around house.
Became antisocial in the kindergarten.
Then we got a computer and I gained faith in my new digital overlords.
Played games a lot, then it was time to pick a highscool. “Yeh ok, computer engineer”.
Became a massive weeb to fill my freetime.
Picked up hardware knowledge, programming skills, some database stuff, some IT stuff, etc…

Then it was time to pick college because everyone told me “you can’t a job without one”.
So I continued with computer engineering college. Except is was boring this time because I didn’t see much new stuff. Decided to quit being a weeb and started writing small projects in every language and environment I could get my hands on. These we probably the only reason I got a job. Put EVERYTHING on your resumés people, I’m serious.

I am now 24, still antisocial and hold an R&D job at EE company where I happily slam away at the keyboard.
Fiddling with unity was probably my most prominent hobby for the past 6 months, but I picked it up much earlier. 2014, I think.

Sorry I didn’t lose home/parents/job and/or end up having to start life from 0 with a pregnant partner.

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Voted “Mega pro big money high power AAA studio” because it’s what I am, just … relatively you know? :smile: Btw this is not offtopic.

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Same.

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I choose “Solo indie with a day job” but the day job and game job is under my own company so yeah a special case I guess. Me and my brother are working on a VR game released on Steam sep 2 2016 to Early access. Started work in May 2016 so pretty fast to EA (too fast if you look in the mirror).

My other business is running a IT consultant company, which makes alot more cash than the game currently :stuck_out_tongue: Live in Stockholm (Capital of Sweden) and is a real city slicker, get really upset when I go outside of my city life bubble and there is no brunch to be offered :stuck_out_tongue:

37 years old, living together with my girlfriend for 11 years, we have two kids together (bastards since we are not married), 2 and 5 years old. Have a master degree in computer science, worked 10 years as a Programmer and later System architect for a firm in Stockholm, started my own business in 2015. Working 16 hours per day, 8 as a System architect at a major Broker firm and 8 hours on the game each night, and try to be a good father and “husband” in between.

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This week I’m working my butt off as a production manager. The boss went on long service leave for a couple of months and handed the factory over to me. Now I’ve got 30 guys and millions of dollars of production riding on my decisions. Its a challenging position, but I’m enjoying it. We have a great team, which helps a lot.

Today my wife made cup cakes which I took to the shift safety meeting. Cupcakes make everyone happy. Everyone should have cupcakes at work meetings.

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I agree…cupcakes are one of my weaknesses.

I just have to say that you work at it harder than I ever want to. It sounds like your a man on a mission. I just have to coast sometimes. I hear stories like yours and think to myself “man I should try harder” but then a dozen cupcakes and 3 hours of binge watching netflix later the thought passes.:smile: Really though I do love cupcakes.

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Someone out there, somewhere hates cupcakes. Never seen such a person though.

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I dislike icing, so I don’t ever eat cupcakes or cake.

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To be fair about it, I didn’t have to start over, I chose it. I am not the kind of person who can take verbal abuse and keep my mouth shut. Dealing with truck drivers lying about where they were and shippers lying about what they were up to then being the one in the middle where everyone placed the blame for the other ends mistakes took its toll on me personally. Some people can seperate work from life but I could not. I chose to run away before it broke me completely. My brother still owns the buisness and makes more money in a year than I will in 10 so it can be done. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t find out about our child on the way until a couple months after the fallout and just did what I could with the choices I had made.

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I have been involved in video games for a long time now ( 7+ years )

I am not a coder however though, I manage independent gaming studios and am active angle investor

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That’s obtuse. :wink:

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