Distribution Do you look at programming as a job or entertainment? As fame or anonymosity?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 16767
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Deleted member 16767

Guest
Developing one game by yourself is a pretty hard task to do if you want to get decently paid every month. Not many are using GML in your country and you can't find or don't want to find a job for it. Then do you do it for entertainment? Maybe you just want to code something cool in your free time and let others play it. Then comes the other question, when your game gets popular.

Do you accept the fame you are getting or do you want to stay anonymous because you don't want to share your private life to strangers? Some are media attention seekers, as we can see on the streaming platform twitch, but some feel really ill being in the media in person (not in software presentation).

I'm pretty much leaning to it being an entertainment but I want to stay anonymous. What about you?
 

Mr Magnus

Viking King
That's a lot of questions that aren't all asking what you think they are asking.

For one: Programming is *both* a job and a hobby for me. I'm a professional web developer and get paid to do that both as a fixed salary for a company and as a freelancer when opportunity allows. Programming does pay decently for me every month. Naturally this isn't GML programming we're talking about, but it's still programming.

I then also program silly little side projects for entertainment if I find something interesting enough that I can dedicate time to. Usually these aren't things that I end up releasing because most of them are incredibly non-functional and unpolished: if they are finished at all. My side projects are for my entertainment, and it's rare anyone else gets to see them. The only real times I release my side projects is during game jams.

If for some unknowable reasons one of my projects picks up I'd probably want to stay semi-anonymous. I don't have a whole lot of social media presence and generally try to at least somewhat distance my online presence from my real life. I'd be fine being known as a pseudonym or an abstracted avatar, but I'd probably not really use my "fame" for anything other than promoting my own projects or interacting with the community of whatever thing happened to blow up.
 

NightFrost

Member
Gamemaker is a hobby for me. I highly doubt, unless I somehow created a hit game, that making games would give me the same level of consistent income my job gives (in a profession where junior positions pretty much start at around 3000€ a month). While I might publish something at some point for more than cost of 0€, it wouldn't be to make money.

As for anonymity, that's already how I use the internet. Nobody here knows my real name, or where I live, besides the obvious somewhere in Europe because of my constant use of € and the general time of my activity. Same goes for other places where I might be talking, and I use different name in every place. Now, if I started publishing games and set up a company for it (which I believe would be a good idea for tax reasons), it would be more difficult. Corporate registry is public information so anyone would be able to check my name and address, unless I did some weird tax haven shell company shenanigans to obscure the tracks.
 

Niels

Member
I see programming mostly as a necessary evil for creating the game that I want to make...
BUT my time writing code in gamemaker did teach me tons of programming concepts that made me able to pick up python and SQL concepts really fast and propelled my career forward in a way that im now a IT professional.
 
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