Moving Forward

I haven’t published a game in 15 years. Haven’t programmed professionally in 9 1/2 years. For most of the past decade I was too disabled by my brainrot to work. I had a part-time aide.

My “brainrot” is a nasty blend of epilepsy, peripheral neuropathy, and quite probably chronic fatigue syndrome. It is an hourly challenge to work around my cognitive limitations to get ChipWits out the door. I am about 30% as productive a programmer as I was 10 years ago.

I have been really beating myself up about missed “deadlines” for dropping a playable build. In the past when I was shipping a game it made sense to make myself feel awful for schedule slips – back when timing for Christmas release was life-or-death for a game’s sales. While working on King of Chicago I can remembering seeing the first orange Autumn leaf and my knuckles going white with stress.

In talking to friends about how ChipWits is going I find myself saying We made progress today, or We got something done, or It keeps moving forward.

I have a great deal of hope that releasing ChipWits as an ongoing beta will be the ideal way for me to get back into the game industry. I will post known bugs and features to be added and knock them off at the pace I can accomplish.

Stressing about deadlines was keeping me from enjoying rebuilding ChipWit. I am getting better at feeling good about moving forward.