Well, as some of you may know I participated in the GLOBAL GAME JAM and made a game in under 48 hours. I teamed up with a level designer/musician as well as someone else who wanted to help out with background art. Needless to say, after many many long hours we completed

I HATE ICE LEVELS

and the entire experience of building this game has taught me something. It's not enough to want to make something. It's not enough to grab incentive to create from entering a 48 hour marathon. It's not feasible to have a severe lack of sleep and expect your game to become what you wanted it to. I started off wanting this game to be fun, challenging and overall a tribute to Bytejacker. I ended up with a game that I felt was a bit buggy with the wall jumps but possibly still enjoyable. It was nowhere near how awesome I wanted it to be, I didn't spend tons of time on graphics or code optimization. I ended up with something much more subpar than I could have hoped. And the strange thing is now I don't know if I should expand on it simply because of the response it's received.

But then again I think, rather, I learned, it's not important what other people are saying about the game. That may sound obvious, but really its not, not unless they give you great advice on how to improve it it doesn't matter whether others like it or not. What should be truly important in a game developer's mind is that you're enjoying what you are making. And for the first time in a long while I did. I had the best 35 (i slept a bit) hours this weekend jamming with other Uni of Waterloo students and felt genuinely happy working on the project. Those feelings have died down a bit now, but as I realize this, I understand that appealing to the public is not necessarily the way to go. Make something you like. If others like it too, great. If not, who cares. I know many developers do this and more often than not they don't. So whether this be explicit to begin with, it was a wake up call for me.

Best of love to those who loved and hated I HATE ICE LEVELS.