Monday, April 13, 2009

Accomplishment

On a small scale, I feel like I accomplished something today. I had a to-do list with some items on it such as finishing taxes, make a shirt design for my frisbee tournament next weekend, and prepare several things for the trade show I'm heading to Vegas for tomorrow. I never thought I'd get any of it done, because the more time went by, the more things seemed to pile up.

Well, I did manage to get the design done for the shirts, and since I'm a complete photoshop amateur I also asked my sister to help make it look better. She did an AWESOME job, and with her help I think we'll actually have a really nice shirt this time!

I also finished my taxes and got them sent off electronically. I actually started them a few months ago and got most of the way through, it was just a matter of making sure I'd put everything in, which I think I did correctly. I'm getting another big chunk of money back again, not quite as big as last year, because after being laid off my withholding stopped. Still, since I never got around to changing my W-4 after last year, I'm still getting a big refund this year :)

On a larger scale, the reason I'm heading to Las Vegas tomorrow is to attend the GAMA trade show. It's a trade show for the game industry, not like one of the game conventions I normally go to. One of my oldest friends has decided to start a company to publish board games. It's something he's wanted to do for some time now, and I guess he's decided he's in a good position to do it at this time. This works out for me because for some time now I've wanted to get a board game published! I'm trying to do my best to help Mike with his company, Tasty Minstrel Games, which is starting out by publishing my space game Terra Prime, and another game I helped develop called Homesteaders.

If things go well with Tasty Minstrel Games, I believe the plan is for me to be the in-house developer. I've wanted to do game development for several years now, and I've actually been doing it already, just not getting paid (or published). I like designing games, but my strongest suit is really identifying good ideas and developing them. A year or two ago, if someone asked me to identify my dream job I probably would have said "finding good new games for a publisher and helping develop them to be published," and lo and behold, that's just what I'll be doing!

It's no engineering job, but frankly, right now those appear few and far between anyway. I would never have quit my day job to be a game designer, or a developer, or least of all a publisher, but since the recession took care of my day job for me, I'm excited to be a part of this new endeavor which I've wanted to try for so long.

I really feel like I'm on the verge of accomplishing something here - I've wanted to see my name on a game box on store shelves (and by extension, hear that people are playing and liking my games) for so long, it feels weird to finally be on the verge of having that happen. And if all goes well, I might very well get to try what might be my dream job, at least for a little while! So far it's been fun communicating with the artist on one of the games, getting to decide how I want the finished product to look.

Pretty soon (i.e. I'll be typing up info for it in the car tomorrow) Tasty Minstrel will have a website and I'll be able to direct you to it, so my faithful readers (both of them... I'm talking to you Mom and Dad!) can support us! :)

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