ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠

naptime ⟩ missed alarm ⟩ late to work ⟩ fired ⟩ understimulated

I don’t feel attacked, I feel seen.

Today One (aka Tarn Adams) who is making Dwarf Fortress and formerly worked on Liberal Crime Squad is way up there.

Redigit (of Super Mario Brothers X and Terraria) is another from the current era.

But if we can go oldschool, Sid Meier is a legend. Civilization and Pirates! are two absolute favorites, especially the remake of Pirates and Civs 2 & 4.

But the real OG, the man who showed me I wanted to make videogames, is Tim Sweeney. Sure, now he’s rich and famous, but back in the day, even before UnReal, he ran Epic Megagames out of his parents’ basement and sold floppies by mail. His first game, ZZT, came with the tools included to not just edit levels, but to make a whole new game of your own using the ZZT engine. By the time I discovered it there were already hundreds of user-made games being traded on BBS.

I fell in love. I joined the IRC channels and bulletin boards, I made the games I wanted, I shared them with my friends and over the Internet. It sparked a love in me that still burns today. Sweeney moved on, I moved on, but I will always owe him my regard for releasing ZZT into the world. It changed my life.

Honestly? Forty years of practice, anxiety spikes, external motivations positive and negative, fugue states… and I’m still barely getting by. I just paid $600 of late fees because I forgot to file my state income tax ten years ago. I’m sure I did them when I did my federal, I just… never sent it in? I guess???

“Numbers get bigger, spend number1 to make number2 get bigger faster, spend number2 to make number3 get bigger faster…”

Basebuilders, 4Xs, Incrementals, and Survival Crafters

Once I burn out I try to stay away as long as possible for the sake of getting other things done and having a sane sleep schedule.

Compare with RPGs, farm sims, platformers, action adventure games, and roguelikes, which I can pick up and put down much more easily without disrupting other aspects of my life.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Are you going to say why, or is this just an attempt to drive traffic to a video?