What is your reason for being in this business?

My reason was that I did not like the playability of the availabe games so I decided even if it takes me years and years I shall make a game to my total liking.

My way to be creative.
I suck at drawing and music, so I code games :)
It's a mix of love for games from the early days and love for the feeling of achieving "something", which probably most won't notice, but you go "yuppie" for a long time :)

I love to create things, and games are simply something I wanted to create all my live... so here I'm, one fine game and one app published and wanting some more :)

I became hooked on arcade games in 1981. Really hooked. I didn't know a thing about computers at the time (very few people HAD computers back then - they were still thought of as the sorts of machines that occupied big labs with lots of reel-to-reel tapes moving behind glass. People were starting to get Atari game consoles, though, and I was baffled by the concept of how you program a computer to play games. So I taught myself to program, and shortly thereafter my parents bought me a computer. Once I pretty much maxed out the capabilities of the machine (it was a Singlair ZX80 - it didn't really have any capabilities), we preordered a Commodore 64 which was scheduled to be released within a month. It was six painful weeks, and while waiting I designed and wrote programs for games on paper - I had reams of notebook paper filled with lines of BASIC code.

Since I didn't have much money to buy many videogames for the new machine, I instead wrote my own clones for the C-64. Eventually BASIC became too slow for what I wanted to do, so I taught myself machine code. Later I found a really sweet assembler which made my life much easier - I didn't have to hard-code jump locations anymore! I still primarily wrote my code in BASIC, but I used machine-code subroutines to speed up my graphics display routines.

I eventually went to college and got a BS in Computer Science. My "dream job" was to write videogames for a living. I thought I'd try for a few game programming jobs first, and then failing that I'd go on to get some "joe" programming job. I managed to get offers to write games in my area (the game development industry was booming in Utah in the mid-90's), accepted the best, and went on to write games professionally for six years. I *LOVED* writing games, but I wasn't so keen on the games industry. I also got bored writing 'other people's games.' And ports of distant sequels of other people's games. Taking what seemed like a great opportunity at the time, I left games behind and went to doing a higher-paying "joe programmer" job, with the idea that I might try putting together my own independent game development shop once the vague, unlikely-to-be-enforced non-compete clause on my previous employment contract ran out.

It took me a couple years longer than that, but now I'm having a blast writing the games *I* want to write part-time.

Other than the fact I love video games in general, the process of making a game to my liking is amazing. To be able to build a game and enjoy the result is so satisfying that I feel like I'm lucky to pursue a career I'm so passionate about. I don't think I can even touch building applications because it's so boring and tedious. But the coolest thing is being able to enjoy something I created. Kind of like the lego I used to build and role play with!

I've always loved playing video games, and have found that the most complex, challenging, rewarding, and fun game out there is the game of game development.

It's my goal to entertain people.

I love to play games, and it always makes me feel good when I play something I've created. I just get more enjoyment out of creating something that entertains people, as opposed to apps which people find useful.

It's something I can motivate myself to do, and it's what I've always wanted to do. Besides, if I get bored of coding I can play my games without feeling guilty ;)

I read something from Chris Crawford a while back that really sums up my feelings about game making. The best type of interaction is when you can talk to a person face to face. But that's too inefficient a way to reach a large number of people -- you're limited by the number of individual conversations you can have. When you use a one-to-many platform like giving a speech, radio, or TV, you can't interact much with your audience. But the interactive nature of games allows you to have the best of both worlds. You can create an algorithmic, interactive version of your ideas that can communicate with an individual in a one-on-one manner, and this can be replicated millions of times over at little or no cost.

Over the past year or two, I came to realize (as many others like Chris Crawford have), that games can be so much more than just entertainment. Imagine having a platform where you could interactively communicate an idea to thousands or millions of players around the world. If you count the free demo versions, Dweep has probably touched over a million people in some manner. So imagine if you were given a televised speech to a million people... what would you say? Your message can be subtle or profound, meaningless or meaningful. And most of all, it can be interactive.

I never asked myself why. I was born in 1980 and there was a computer at home since 1982 (a Sinclair ZX81, then a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48+, then a 286). Basically, you could do two things with the Spectrum : play games or write games in BASIC. I did both. Everything since then was just the logical consequence of the previous step.

It's my way of maintaining my creativity as I can't be that at work!

*eyes anyone who turns out to be younger than her warily* :)

Oh, I just want to fleece people out of some cash, really :)

Originally posted by johnson
It's my goal to entertain people.

Whoah, that is WORD FOR WORD, my reason as well. I love to see people entertained by something I create..

Chaster :D