Why I'm Allowed to Start a Substack
It's mainly because I'm really smart and funny and also attractive
Update: This post gives a very incorrect impression of what I’m going to write about here. I have very little interest in writing about programming or technology or video games. This is mainly because A) these things aren’t fun to read about for the vast majority of people; B) I don’t actually have interesting things to say about them; and C) I have, and would like to have, much wider-ranging interests and passions than that which can be found through a screen. I’d rather write about my life and fundamental human experiences.
It’s still a fun read though.
Last night, I came across the code for a game that I started working on 12 years ago, at the age of 15. This alone isn’t particularly interesting (I made many games at that age, most unfinished), but this game is unique: it’s the last thing I ever truly worked on as a hobby project. In fact, the last time I worked on it was August 5th, 2012: just a day before I launched the first version of a website that would quickly become my full-time job for the next 8 years. After that point, programming (and creation in general) was my responsibility; my profession. Something was lost in that transition.
Before I became a working man at too young an age, I was an audacious little shit. I read every book I could get my hands on, and like most idiots, I naturally assumed this meant I was a gifted writer. I also wanted free video games and was afraid of the legal ramifications of piracy, so at the age of 12, I signed up for an (unpaid) position to review video games for a (now dead) site named JustPressPlay (child labor mongers). Then I just… cold emailed the developers of whatever game I wanted to play, asked for a copy of it (Ubisoft actually mailed me a physical copy of Far Cry 2), wrote a terrible review, and moved on to the next mark.
This is weird, right? That I did this? I wanted free video games, and I kind of liked writing, so naturally, I became a video game reviewer. Not to start a writing career; not to make money; but to get free video games. Doing something like this requires a level of audacity and self-assuredness that I envy at my current age, paired with a staggering amount of sheer ignorance and stupidity that I worry is still with me. I genuinely thought that a major motivator for game journalists was that the video games they reviewed were provided for free, and dammit, I was going to have a piece of that pie.
After my time as a game journalist, I started working on a flash game called Music Fall, which wasn’t fun or very good. I somehow convinced some guy on the internet to painstakingly create “tracks” (a la guitar hero — 5 rows of notes to hit) corresponding to the 5(?) songs in the game. He never got to be in the game’s credits. I’m not an artist, so I convinced a professional video game artist to create art for the game, promising 25% of the revenue from the game. He never got paid1.
I needed advice from a seasoned industry vet to figure out how to actually make money from my game, so I just sent a friend request on AIM to Edmund McMillen (famous for Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac) and picked his brain on how best to go about getting a flash game website to buy my game. When he told me that he would never sell a game for less than $20,000, I emailed Ninja Kiwi Games and instructed them to ignore my previous email asking for $200, as I had made a typo and meant to write $20,000 — and that under no circumstances should they interpret my mistake for a willingness to accept such a low sum.
They didn’t buy my game; this meant that I couldn’t buy an iPod Touch, which was the whole reason I made the game in the first place.
The point of these stories (besides entertainment) is this: I miss that young man. He was stupid, yes — good fucking lord — but he had a sense of adventure that I truly envy. He did things, so many things, just to see if he could; just to see what would happen. His complete ignorance regarding everything he charged towards served not to dismay him, nor to slow his pace; rather, it emboldened him, because he simply had no instinct which warned him of the danger of sprinting down a path concealed by fog.
Though I wish I were more like I once was, there are — of course — many good reasons I am not. As a child, I was safe. If I wrote a bad game review and lost my “job”, my only concern was my ego; if my game didn’t sell, I just didn’t get an iPod. As an adult, I have momentum which must be maintained: I cannot fail as I once could. It is no mystery that, should the consequences for failure multiply a hundredfold, so might my aversion to it.
Still, I think I’ve overcorrected. I’m the adult in Christmas movies who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.
I think that part of what spurred me on as a child was my involvement in online forums, where I was constantly sharing the things I was working on, and constantly being told that it was shit. I wrote a GUI library for XNA and spent months trying to convince people to use it for their games; nobody ever did, but it was still a lot of fun, and good experience. Sharing what I was working on motivated me to work on things, so I’m going to start sharing things here.
I also want to write more long-form pieces of text. Almost everything I write is short comments on the internet, text messages, or highly-technical explanations of code I’ve written so my coworkers can review it. I think writing — real writing — is good for the soul, so I should do more of it.
I’m probably going to start with a series of posts diving into the game I opened this post with; it’s a time capsule containing the work of my younger, less experienced mind, and I’m excited to explore its contents. I’m envisioning a mix of “look at this mistake I made”, “look at this thing I’m surprised I was able to do at that age”, “look at what I added to the game”, and “look at this graph” posts.
I’ll also post whatever the hell I feel like outside of that.
I’m also not going to answer the question posed by the title.
In fairness, the game never made any money