Why Game Development?
September 7, 2011
Why did I choose to become a game developer? The answer is quite simple. This is the "work" that I feel and think that I really fit in. It is something that my personality is made for. It is something that no matter how hard or tough it gets, I still enjoy doing especially when I see my ideas for games become something that others can play and have fun with.
As a kid, I used to be rewarded with video games whenever I did well at school. I did not dread nor fear those quarterly exams. To me, it just meant that I'll have a lot of new games to play with once I'm done with studying and getting high marks. Games weren't just simple toys to me back then. Games symbolized what I earned through studying hard and discipline. In other words, games were always something that brought me happiness. The idea of games to me is the same as having fun after suffering endless lectures, projects, and exams.
Naturally, I gravitated towards wanting to create my own games. As a kid back in the 80s, I didn't really know how people made games. All I knew was they came in little cartridges and you could play them on your Famicom (NES) or Atari 2600. I asked around but at that time, nobody really knew about programming. I eventually found out from a computer shop owner that games were "programmed" by programmers. The first programming language that I saw in action was QBASIC where the programmer made a ball bounce on screen. The computer shop owner was kind enough to give me a copy of QBASIC, but unfortunately I had no knowledge of how to even program. All I could make it do was print something on the screen.
Even back in elementary, the friends whom I grew up with all dreamed of becoming game developers. We would always talk about becoming "President of Nintendo!" as what we'd like to be when we grow up. Just because I loved games and wanted to make some but didn't have the programming skill for it, I usually made Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type of role playing games for us to play during recess period. Since we had no dice or we weren't allowed to bring them (I think the school thought dice were only meant for gambling, not playing), we just used pencils. We'd make the pencil stand on its tip with one finger pushing down, and then make it draw a line going forward. We'd mark where it stopped and the number beside it would be the result of what should have been the number given by the dice. Our games usually had different stories, but it usually transforms from a serious story to a comedy making fun of one of the players.
When it was time to choose a course to take for college, some people were trying to make me choose to become a doctor or even a businessman. I thought about it. Being a doctor would bring a lot of money right away, but the truth was that I'm not comfortable dealing with sick people, nor do I want to perform surgery on someone. Becoming a businessman sounded nice, but then again it wasn't really what I was interested in. My real love was for games, and I wanted to make them.
