Devoting myself full-time to Smiling Cat for fourteen months has been an amazing experience, and I am truly grateful that the opportunity to do so presented itself. It has been a period of great personal growth and self-realization, culminating last winter into the best work experience of my life so far.
After a long and arduous search, recently, toward the end of June, I started a new full-time role as a Senior Engineer at Cold Iron Studios!
This is my next big career step. Unlike the contract assignment that came before, this is a permanent, full-time role, and is a pivot from my plans to develop games independently full-time. Over the last couple of years, I’ve come to realize that while I am awesome at making games and especially at game engineering, I am disastrously terrible at marketing and selling the games I make. So, I’m repositioning myself so that I can still do the work that I love, yet make a decent living.
I have a feeling that I will have an even better work experience with Cold Iron Studios than I had on my last assignment!
Upskilling, New Prototype, and New Plugin
Back in March, I faced the the very sudden and unexpected cancellation of my AAA game development contract, despite stellar performance from the entire team that I was with. When that happened, I started actively upskilling in Unreal Engine to make myself more marketable, seeing that most of the jobs out there were for work in Unreal Engine.
There have been a couple of significant interrelated byproducts from that process. I learn best by doing, so I implemented a new game prototype in Unreal Engine. As of now the working title is “Pachinko Savior”. Yes, if this sees the light of day it would be my second pachinko themed title, but this is much different than Vintage Pachinko, and is a cross between a factory and logistics management game (like Factorio or Satisfactory or Shapez), and an incremental game (like Clicker Heroes, Cookie Clicker, or Leaf Blower Revolution).
Part of the implementation of this prototype required that I have a library for handling large, multiprecision integers, something that does not exist natively in Unreal. This became its own subproject, and the Unreal Plugin “Duke’s Big Numbers” was born. As covered in my last post, this plugin is now available in the Unreal Marketplace.
The Future of Smiling Cat Entertainment
Smiling Cat Entertainment will continue to exist, though I will once again have limited time to devote to my indie development endeavors. It will probably be somewhat less time than in years past, as I balance other needs in my life. There are other projects I want to get to that I have left undone for years as I built myself up as a game developer.
For now, all of my currently available products will continue to be sold and supported and remain available for download. Updates for older products will be on an as-needed or as-inspired basis. This includes games on Steam, Google Play, and itch.io, as well as plugins on the Unity Asset Store and Unreal Marketplace. I will evaluate this on an ongoing basis, and will give as much notice as possible if anything is to change regarding product availability.
As for new work for Smiling Cat Entertainment, I now have the freedom to take Smiling Cat’s games in a more experimental, artistic direction. My “Pachinko Savior” prototype is one example of this. I plan to share my work earlier in the process at places like itch.io, and may start doing some game jams again.
Overall there will be a more relaxed feel to Smiling Cat. Things will get done that need to get done. As for everything else, it will get done when it gets done.
The Next Few Months
Beyond releasing “Duke’s Big Numbers”, since starting my full time role, I honestly have not made any progress with other Smiling Cat projects. I have been working on getting my feet under me at the new job, and frankly, I am quite enjoying having my weekends for other pursuits right now.
Maybe I’ll post about some of those pursuits as part of the more casual Smiling Cat.
I expect that this trend will continue until I get a sudden wave of inspiration to pick up something from Smiling Cat and work on it.
Thank You
I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has supported me over the years. Without that support helping me to grow as a game developer, landing this new role would not have been possible, and I would likely still be writing insurance software.
The last several years for me have been a career dream slowly coming true. I feel that great things are in the works for the years ahead.
I’ll be back before too long with another update, until then, take care and be good to each other.