Archive:
Eagle-eyed readers—all two of you—will have noticed that it's rare for me to work five days a week on Maenhir. Since I started making games for myself, I've been teaching, one or two days a week, for TAMK, in Tampere. Occasionally I do contract work, but only if something interesting appears or a friend needs a hand. I quite often mentor people, and sometimes I help start-ups.
Teaching covers my rent for the most part—everything else I have to cover with sales or contract work. It's the dirty secret about making games as a tiny team: hardly anyone does it full-time.
I usually have a bit of a buffer set aside, but like everyone, I'm staring into the coming winter of discontent, and I'm not feeling especially comfortable. Some of my friends are already struggling. It's becoming a bit grim, if I'm honest and a lot of companies—hello my home insurance policy—are taking the absolute piss.
I had plenty of time to think about this while dying with Covid, and I've decided to hunt out some "real" work, try and get a bit more of a buffer together, and hopfully ride out the winter. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm dropping Maenhir, but it does mean I'll have less time to commit to it.
Hence this post. I don't want to blog about the hour I spent here and there. That's too much effort for me and wouldn't have much worth for you—"oh look, I did an animation"—so I'm going to step back from the weekly updates for a bit and post as and when I finish a feature. Or enough time's passed that I have multiple little things to collate and write about.
I'm not sure how long I'll be stepping back. Probably until the end of the year. Maybe longer, but it depends on how the "real" work pans out. I hope you'll keep me in your RSS reader until I'm "back". :)
Ugh. S'all a bit depressing, innit?
