As soon as I decided to go indie, I’ve been involved in entirely too many discussion on what defines art and whether or not games are art.
My stance is simple – I believe games can be art, but I just want to make games. If people want to call it art – that’s up to them. I just want to make the games I want to make and hopefully enough people enjoy what I make that I can keep making them.
The gloriously wonderful Amanda Palmer sums it up in this little song:
The last month has been absolutely insane, perhaps the busiest month of my life.
In the past 30 days I have:
– Sent my family across Canada
– Hit two major milestones as the producer on two unannounced titles
– Left my job and home for the past two years
– Joined my family on the other side of Canada
– Roasted a turkey for Christmas dinner
– Read three books on Actionscript/Flex/Flash games
– Completed over 20 Flash Game tutorials
– Watched Avatar (only once, despite my deep desire to watch it at least 5 times in the theater)
– Filled 35 pages in my sketchbook (with actual drawings)
– Enjoyed many ‘catch-up’ lunches, coffees, dinners and evenings with old and new friends
And now I find myself suddenly in 2010. The year I’ll finally be rockin’ out flash games, making t-shirts and doing the things I’ve spent the last four years talking about doing.
2010 is not a year for resolutions for me. It is a year for action.
Tomorrow morning I will be boarding a plane for Vancouver to start working on NRD full time.
Today, I am saying good bye to my home for the past two years – the gentle island of Prince Edward Island.
Top 3 things I will miss about PEI:
The Beaches
In the past two years, I have spent more time on the beach than in the entirety of my life before moving to PEI. There are so many reasons:
– Being alone at 10AM on a gigantic beach was a regular occurrence.
– PEI is home to the warmest swimming ocean water in Canada.
– Quite simply, the beaches are unmatched in there beauty and serenity.
The People
Canada is well known for being friendly and PEI has to be the friendliest place in Canada (I hear rumors that Newfoundland is nicer – but I have my doubts) I also had a tremendous opportunity to work in super-duper awesome people at Longtail Studios. I have made a great many friends on this little island and I will miss them all.
10 Thanksgiving deserts blended together!
The Sunsets
Coming from Saskatchewan, I love the open sky and the sky on PEI is amazing. Even on a frosty winter evening, the sunsets can warm you up. Cheesy? Sure – but so awesome.
It’s surprisingly hard to say goodbye. Thanks for everything you gentle little island.
I’ll be talking a lot over the next few weeks about my plans for NRD in 2010 and why I’m moving from a career making PC/handheld/iPhone/console games for large corporations into making independent Flash games.
Mochi media recently conducted a survey of flash developers and got a good lay of the land for the current flash dev scene. The high level overview is here for your viewing pleasure:
