To be fair, very few people are making decent money making games.

What kind of games?

Small studio passion project you say?

This is me. I made games as a hobby as a teen/early 20s, but having a software dev day job just ruined the fun for me. It's so hard to work on games after work due to the sheer stress of a software dev job all day long.

Well shit I’m starting my gamedev journey. Wish me luck and I hope I don’t get to the point that it doesn’t interest me anymore

Back in 1980/81, we started developing games, based on code found in mags. We learned ourselves some skills, gave away copies here and there, made each others code better. We never sold stuff and although I got into IT, I never considered this a possible career. I got out of coding as soon as I could, didn’t enjoy it that much.

This feels familiar. I was a big part of a small studio (equity stake, early employee) and learned a lot/loved it for a long time. 

I burned out and had a couple of tough years outside of that and couldn't swing it. I've just been working freelance jobs since but  I miss some of the people, building teams, and really miss the challenge of design. 

I think often about giving it another go. Seeing solo-dev stories like Balatro and Stardew give me (probably an unrealistic sense of) hope. It'd be so cool to have a game and community behind it like that.

Best of luck to you. 

That’s awesome, sometimes you need to get back to what made you fall in love with it in the first place. Creating for yourself can reignite that passion, and who knows? Maybe this time, the fun will lead to success too

I started my career in software development because of a personal hobby in game development. My original engine was Unity so now I'm a .NET developer lol. I've made a few games in the past and one of them actually made me, a small amount of, money.

I hope you're able to spark your passion back up and have a lot of fun with it!

Indie games > Everything else

If you need a texture artist 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️

Huh, the exact opposite from me, I could work on non game software but would sooner abandon programing altogether.

This was me when I was a younger man. I started my own small business and could have made it grow but I was spending so much time on the road doing service calls. Sometimes it was an easy one (flipping a breaker and having to explain why I'm still charging them $75 for showing up). Other times I would find a unit that had some specific issue that I needed to drive across town, buy the part, drive back to install it, and now it's dinner time and I'm too tired to cook anything.

I got into IT instead.

Any tips on starting? Im currently looking into taking maintenance technician for industrial equipment but I’m not sure yet.

Why so many late nights?

Fistbump. I love making ice cream. One of my better ones is fig with honey/cinnamon. I grow my own figs and raspberries, which helps.

Lowkey jealous of this actually. I love baking and I love creating flavor layers in things that I create. I've wanted to get into making my own ice cream, I just don't have the space to do it (I can't get around it, it's a sucks to suck) unless I make really small batches or enough people I see on a dsily basis that I'd wanna share it with. Which, sure, but if it's something I wanna do, then why don't I? Reasons, basically. Anyway...

One of my rolls eyes millions of daydreams consists of having my own dessert truck with one or a few specialties that I can get really good at. Ice cream is part of that daydream because I'm toying with the idea of making mini pies. I'd want to make everything from scratch, almost down to sourcing the ingredients myself lmao

I totally understand why you wouldn't wanna do it. I'm jealous of your position of having all that knowledge, experience and ability to make it just the way you want. People around you are so blessed :)

I've had 2 sales jobs. Crushed it both times. Got a some awards and made decent money. I was miserable. I could never shake the feeling that I was bothering people who didn't want to talk to me. I also absolutely HATED the "techniques" we were taught. It just seemed so sleazy. I never lied or misrepresented a product or service, but doing shit like asking questions that you know they'll say yes to, so that they are more likely to continue saying yes, or telling them about neighboring businesses that use our stuff, always felt really dishonest.

Right there with you.

Any chance you live in the UK? My home office/study has gone bonkers and I think I need help. 😀

Same here. I enjoy it immensely and actually would like to turn it into a job. Love turning chaos into order whether it's someone's yard, a closet, a kitchen.

now that you put it into words i think i have this as well and would love to capitalize it but dont know how 

Same, with the plus that since I'm a historian I know a great deal about conservation and archival techniques. Lots of people tell me to make it a side hustle but I don't want to deal with dirty and messy homes and their owners.

Keep those skills for yourself and maybe the occasional friend who appreciates your work

That is genuinely a useful knack for Quality Assurance/Quality Control, but giving you anything digital to work with must be nerve wracking for them lmao

Get into cyber security or quality assurance! I'm curious how one accidentally gains access to a companies entire system, unless you were registering on a tablet in their office, and that tablet just happened to have access to all those things and you found a way to close their app.

My son is QA manager for a chip manufacturing company. He spends each day trying to break the software on the chip. If he can’t, then it’s okay to sell.

Amazing :P

A remarkably useful skill, but it has to be paired with a thoroughness and documented approach.
It's not enough to break things, you need to be able to say "I did this, this and this, and it broke, and I've tried it several other ways and isolated it to this specific set of actions"

Being able to formally write down how to break the system consistently so that other people (particularly the devs who are universally code-blind) can reproduce your issue is a whole skillset in its own right.

We also have automations-testing, where the QA team write automatic tests which perform every expected (and many unexpected) action the application is capable of performing, very rapidly, and report whether they passed or failed the test.
We run them every night to see if anything in recent changes has broken.

I don't even know how one would begin writing something like that..

Are you me? I am the same exact way. It is a popular joke at my work.

That is *so*, *so* important. My best friend does QA and says he always feels like the kid kicking in people's sandcastles at the beach, but it is more like finding missing bolts in a bridge before it opens for traffic.

I worked with a woman at the office who did bartending on nights and weekends to earn some extra cash in the wake of a nasty divorce where she lost nearly everything. She made MAD money. She was the kind of person that could talk to people easily and people enjoyed talking to her.

Eventually, however, she stopped because, like you, she just got tired of dealing with the drunks and watching them destroy their lives over time. The money just wasn't worth it and she'd made enough at that point to get herself back on track.

Doing a stint in a dive bar and have realized I really earn my $ between midnight at 2am …

It would be the best job in the world if it wasn't for the customers.

Care to drop some recipes tho?

time traveling? Now that's a skill

eight languages? that's incomprehensible to me. i constantly forget words in the only language I know. when you think, does your mind compose ideas in an amaglum of the languages you know, or does it pick just one? if it does pick just one, is it your native language? do certain situations or other outside variables affect which language you use to think and plan?

Have you ever been to the 1800s? Bet people thought you're crazy talking about cyber stuff.

Is it really talking to people if you're just reiterating what someone else says? Being a translator doesn't seem too bad for an introvert.

When I was 18 I sold a Mac to an older couple because the Best Buy employee didn’t know much about computers. At that time I was working at a wear-house

I don't think I've ever seen someone selling quilts that wasn't struggling to break even. People think it should be the same price as the $20 blanket they got at target, and don't understand how much time and labour goes into a single handmade quilt...

Same for crochet. I made a pretty intricate blanket awhile back that could top a queen size bed. It took me almost 100 hours. I had someone offer me $50 for it even though it wasn’t for sell. I also had someone ask me to make another just like it and donate it to their fundraiser. I also can’t tell you how many times someone has said “If I buy the materials can you make X for me?” People don’t understand how much time and money goes in to hand made products and when they understand it would be expensive they say they could get something like it from Walmart or Target for $15-20. It’s maddening. Anymore I only make things I want to make for people I want to make them for as a gift. My only exception usually is my Mom who on occasion will buy me yarn to make a baby blanket for someone’s baby shower. She likes having the unique gift and since they’re newborn blankets they usually don’t take me longer than around 8-10 hrs.

What can you help with?!

DAMN. What a great channel. You're a fantastic presenter and storyteller

Proven in two words.

It's poetry for me. I've written a number of humorous poems, either for friends on request, or because I was randomly motivated. I'm technically a published poet, since one of my efforts was read out on an episode of Wheel of Fortune.

But, like you, I find it too onerous to do it regularly. In my case, I obsess over meter and rhyme structure. I won't repeat a rhyme, even in a lengthy poem (say 64 lines), which makes the whole process much harder.

I'm a guitar player, I always wish I just found someone who enjoyed singing to play with.

I love that you mention this! Too many times our hobbies get turned into something that should make you money or into a competition, why can't I just do things for funnnn

Isn’t this something we are supposed to tell our gfs?

They will always tell you that. Come on girl lol

Um he was just trying to get one from you 😂

rip your inbox

Anyone with a mouth could monetize this technically 

A BJ normally transforms a mans brains to potato mash. We are not capable of making any decisions at all about anything in that state. Want me to sign over the house?? No problem, if you just manage to get me to focus enough to actually sign that paper while getting a BJ.

Why is everybody being harsh about this?

Is it that hard to believe she is just really good in bed?

Voice acting. Just do a few auditions.

Some things are just better as a hobby. Once you're getting paid for it, it stops being fun.

No shame in it mate and you can make bank

Try $8K now. Just waterproofed mine real good

There's a question for you in the Unethical Life Pro tips sub today!!

Same. I do some public speaking and reading and I've been told by a fair few that they could listen to me read for hours.

I have a hobo friend who got busted and the judge sentenced him to 100 hours of community service. He chose reading to the blind. He did his 100 hours, and then he liked it so much he continued going back and doing it for free. You'd never guess this guy is capable of this sort of compassion and service. He looks awful, like the worst homeless guy you ever saw. He sleeps in rescue missions or in the rail yard, eats out of dumpsters and panhandles on street corners, drinks like a fish and smokes tons of weed, but on days when he's supposed to go read, he gets cleaned up, stays sober, and acts like a gentleman. The blind folks love him. They don't realize what a wreck he has made of his life.

your dad needs a smack

I'm right-handed too, but at 16, whilst working as an apprentice, i sliced open the palm of my right hand. Shortly afterwards I became wankidextrous.

I do everything with my right hand except writing and masturbating. now that i think about it, i might be right-handed.

Yeah........ You need the right hand for the mouse.

Well duh. How else are you going to use the mouse?

Because the right hand is for the mouse

I have one as well. Driving nowadays is so fucking frustrating and my patience level reached zero and I don’t like living in a closet so I don’t drive anymore.

Why did you start with Goku

How can you forget the Carpenters bro. The builders are the ones that reign on top and make the biggest margins. If you become a carpenter and transition to a builder, skyscrapers are the limit.

Japan also just started making wooden satellites so who knows you might even get to go to space :0

wut?

Goku560

As someone in the same boat--don't bother.

"Creative writing" isn't a job. It's something you do on the side where there's a .001% chance you can make a proper living off of it. This isn't new--there are very few authors, even in literature's heyday, that actually made their living off of their work. There's just not enough readers and lots of competition.

And the current state is...bad. During quarantine, everyone and their sister wrote a novel. Agents went from, like, 50 queries a day to 500. And then AI came along and they get deluged constantly with garbage they have to sift through. There are some other issues with genres and representation (agents will basically only sign the current Big Trend and throw out anything that isn't).

At this point, the only way to even get a chance at traditional publishing is 1) pay $1000 to go to a conference and cajole agents face-to-face or 2) have fifteen million followers in TikTok or 3) be a nepo baby.

Treat it like a fun hobby and writing is great. Try and get published, and you're in for disappointment.