My first real programs were games. I cannot think of a single piece of code I wrote at that time that wasn't a part of a game. "Games! Day one!" to paraphrase

My first real programs were games. I cannot think of a single piece of code I wrote at that time that wasn't a part of a game. "Games! Day one!" to paraphrase David Warner from Time Bandits. I got in to the games industry at the time when a programmer, or a programmer and an artist would turn out a game in two to six months. I grew up, quite literally, in the games industry I spent a good 25+ years making games, and have dipped my toes back in once or twice in the last second or so. Having had that experience from "An army of one" making a game I wanted to make, to "a face in the crowd" of dozens to hundreds making a game that other people want, I bowed out of the industry and went on to other adventures - that usually paid more and came with far better WLB. For a while, I had a reasonably successful company where I hired old-timers of the industry to build games just like that. We didn't survive the 2008 recession unfortunately but we did have a lot of fun doing it for about six years. I've since, personally, returned to making those "army of one" games; code, design, art, music, sound. I'm not looking for commercial success anymore. I just have a really persistent itch. Last night was interesting, at dinner at the King's Head in Santa Monica, I got together with a few other veterans of the industry from SEGA, Activision, and so forth, all of us either retired or approaching that age when we see 10 or so years down the road to "it's all over." Our careers have all mostly moved on from the games industry because that industry does not favour wisdom, experience, miles on the clock or the desire to call it a day after putting in a 60 hour week. During the course of dinner the conversation turned to an interesting topic, we all felt we had five or so games still left inside of us. Not big games. Not AAA productions. Not games that required a team of hundreds working grueling hours with a marketing budget that dwarfs the GDP of a small country. A game that requires a few people to execute on, something small and easily grasped, polished to a standard that a lifetime of experience and craftsmanship brings with it. And that is what I have been doing for the past five or six years, making a few small games every year, taking a few weeks to scratch an itch, and publishing them here and there. And I also learned, that is what quite a few of my ex-colleagues have been doing too or are looking to do. Any time there is a tool like this comes along, I look and think "Wow! I can make a game and learn something new!" So... thankyou for introducing me to this.