In 2012 I decided to try making a videogame for the Xbox 360’s indie arcade. I missed the AI work I had done in robotics and thought videogames would be a good way to continue that work without having to spend lots of money on robot parts. While Microsoft ended up announcing the end of XNA framework and the 360’s indie store before I could finish Afterdeath, I had learned enough about making games to officially file Nonadecimal Creative in 2013.
The online storefronts are incredibly competitive so I was very fortunate to sell enough copies of my first game that Nonadecimal earned a small profit in 2014. That trend continued in 2015 and 2016 with the release of my second game, Automata Empire, enabling me to be one of the lucky few who can make videogames full-time without a day job. I’m extremely grateful to the people who supported me and promoted my work to help me get there. While my dream was never a career making videogames, I’ve always wanted to work for myself designing systems that benefit other people. Since 2015 I was able to live that dream.
Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever and a number of complications in my life changed the math. I recently took a corporate day job again, luckily as a programmer and in a highly scientific environment too. At the start of 2017, I also signed on to work with my friend on his cyberpunk FPS, Black Ice. The end goal for Nonadecimal has always been to develop a procedural narrative engine that can generate stories that adapt to the player’s choices and actions in a meaningful and intuitive way. Through my contract for Black Ice I’ll be able to focus specifically on that goal, developing a simple story and mission generator for the game that I can expand for future projects. Since the rest of the game is already heavily developed, I don’t have to worry about programming the basic foundation of a game like I’ve had to with my own games. That way I can focus on the things I enjoy: writing the game’s story, creating more sophisticated generators, and developing strategic swarm behaviors and group strategies for the game’s running, leaping, and flying enemies.
I don’t know yet what this means for Souls & Accounting, the demon corporate management game I’d been prototyping with the hope of releasing before the 2018 United States elections to remind people of corporate influence and encourage them to vote. For now I’ll continue to take things one day and month at a time until I have a better sense of what comes next in my life. I appreciate all of your support and will do my best to start posting and tweeting more frequent updates about the interesting work I’m doing for Black Ice.