I’m designing a game about digestion. I have a pad of paper with details like how much glucose is in a gummi bear, how fast the glucose gets absorbed into the blood stream, where the player can place glucose receptors and how much they should cost… But I also have a pad of paper with blogging topics, games to stream, and notes on how to build a community around my game and our development. Today, instead of reading about glucose, I was learning to use a streaming software and figuring out how to set up a Patreon. Next on the list is how to make my You Tube channel seem inviting (I’ve uploaded a bunch of game videos over the years, but ever since a youtube upgrade, the first thing visitors see is “this user has no videos.” 🙂
I want to be a scientist making video games. And in fantasy land, I’m just a happy little biochemist making game balancing spreadsheets… (I do have lovely glucose absorbance and game balancing spreadsheets!) But in reality I spend a lot of time marketing, blogging, grant writing, academic paper writing, community building, fund raising, and product managing. I wish I could be a lone indie game developer, like Ndemic Studio who made Plague, Inc., and Crayon Physics (was this a lone indie?). But honestly, biochemistry, physiology and all the cool complex details take time to both research and to massage into a game design. I can code, but do you really want to wait that long?
I’m just feeling a lot of self doubt as I prepare my Patreon page. I imagine the world is populated of exactly me, and 7,874,965,825 billion people who think, “what a dummy, why she asking for money, why she doesn’t just make it herself.” More likely, the world is populated by 7,874,965,700 people who will never know who I am and 125 people who are looking at me kindly and saying, “without 20,000 followers on You Tube, a Patreon isn’t going to do ya any good.”
I think games about biochemistry are unique and fun enough that if I keep this communication thing up for a year or two “they” will come. I’m on it, y’all. I’ve fixed all my audio and visual issues with OBS (the streaming and video recording software.) I’ve got 10 blog posts planned (nicer, thoughtfuller posts than this one!)
My first stream will be me playing Immune Defense. I will share the joy I feel when I play my game… I feel like we squeezed a lot of the science experience into the game.
When shall I stream? Are any of you on Twitch? Or would y’all watch it later on YouTube anyway? Any requests for times? Any requests for games?
Good Sunday night to everyone. Have a beautiful week. I wish you all health and happiness at the molecular level.
