Even though it is near the end of the statement, I’ll start with the “powered by a healthy body” part.

As a game developer, I find I sit at my computer a lot. In fact, most of my waking day is spent sitting in front of the computer. When I had a day job, I had the option of walking to work, or at least getting up to walk to lunch or go to a meeting. I once took a pedometer and found that in a given day, I easily maintained about 5,000 steps without trying too hard. I got a bicycle and used it to travel to and from work so I could get some extra exercise in.

When I went full-time indie back in the summer of 2010, however, I obviously had a much shorter commute to get to work. My office is about 20 seconds from my bedroom, and rush hour turns it into a 30 second commute, usually because there is a cat pile-up in the doorway. I didn’t have to go anywhere for meetings, and lunch was also half a minute away at most since the kitchen was nearby. One day late last year I decided to pull out the old pedometer to find out how many steps I took in an average day, and I was barely hitting 2,000. And I haven’t used my bicycle since I haven’t needed to.

Now, I knew I should change things. Even before the Internet blew up last year about how dangerous sitting is, I had read about the health problems you can get for being too sedentary. And yet, I never did anything sustainable to fix my situation. Joining a gym was too expensive for my indie budget, and I felt like any moment not spent working was wasted time. So I sat and worked.

Impact of an Unhealthy Body

I wrote about an experience I had with a pulled back muscle in The Perils of the Sedentary Indie. Shortly before I was scheduled to go to GDC in 2011, I was visiting family in Chicago. I have a niece, and while playing with her, I felt a small twinge in my back. At first, it was ignorable. I stretched my arms over my head, but in the end, it just got worse and worse until I couldn’t move my arms, legs, or head without feeling a lot of pain. My weekend family visit turned into a physically painful week-long bed-ridden stay. It hurt to sit for more than a few moments, so I stood, and when I couldn’t do that, all I could do was lie down. And that entire week, I wasn’t able to play with my niece as much as I wanted to. In fact, when I tried to stand up, I guess I looked so awkward and in so much pain that it frightened her to see me like that.

A couple of months later, I was going to help my fiancée’s sister move out of her college apartment after graduation, and my back started acting up again. Right when I’m supposed to help carry heavy things, I was the most useless. It wasn’t as bad as that week with my family, so I could still walk and carry some things, but I felt terrible that I couldn’t be more help.

I was also getting sick more frequently than I could recall. I would get one-day colds, fevers, and stuffy heads, the kinds of sickness that suck the motivation to work right out of you. When you’re working at a day job with benefits, they pay you to stay home and get better, but when you’re on your own, each day you don’t work is another day further from your goals.

My Body as the Vehicle for Everything Else in My LIfe

Now, I’ve read a lot about the benefits of keeping your body in shape. Besides avoiding injuries and sickness, being more physically capable, and looking great in jeans, exercise also helps your brain. You think more clearly. You’re more creative. You feel more positive, which helps with motivation. So why wasn’t I taking care of myself?

Frankly, your health just isn’t that urgent…until it is. When you’re bed-ridden due to an injury or a germ, you can’t help but realize that if you had taken the time to take better care of yourself, you wouldn’t be in this mess. I imagine that the same could be said for people who have suffered heart attacks or other major setbacks. For years, you feel “fine enough” until you suddenly feel horrible.

Still, knowing that you should take care of yourself when you’re capable of doing so isn’t enough. We’d all be exercising regularly and eating right if that were the case.

For me, what changed was when I sat down and came up with my Life on Purpose statement. There was a lot I wanted to be and do, but I needed my body to be healthy. After all, it’s the vehicle of my life. A broken down car without any gas in it isn’t going to get you to where you want to go very fast. I can be the most creative person in the world, but if I’m sick or unable to sit down at my desk without being in a world of pain, I couldn’t channel that creativity into game development.

Habits for the Body

I’ve been doing yoga three days a week, although I wasn’t always consistent. Still, since I started doing yoga, I’ve yet to pull my back muscles. Even when I could feel a pain in my hip (probably from sitting too long), a session of yoga helps tremendously.

Earlier this year, I decided that to start, I would walk every day. I found that a path near the cemetery is about a mile, so I walk two miles by the end of the return trip. In January, I took a walk a total of five days, which was not a great start. But in February I did 13 days. In March I did 15. Both are still a far cry from walking every day.

In April I did 19. I was surprised because I felt I was doing very well last month. I checked, and I found that the only days I missed in April were a few days at the beginning of the month and weekends. So while I wasn’t walking every day like I wanted, I was walking five days a week consistently before the end of the month. It was progress.

So far this month, I have missed one day of walking, which was last Saturday. Weekends require more discipline because weekends have a lot less structure than my regular weekdays do. It can be hard to plan a walk when I don’t know what is happening. My goal for May is to make sure I don’t miss any more days.

Ok, so my habit isn’t quite perfect. I’m not walking every single day like I said I was going to. But it is still my goal, and progress towards that goal is still beneficial. I have probably walked more in the last few months than I have in the year prior.

I’ve even taken up running. A friend told me about the Couch to 5k program, and while I don’t have a strong desire to run in a 5k, it did sound like a good plan to follow to get back into shape. Walking is nice and all, but running will get my heart beating faster and get me ready for the days I have to keep up with my nieces (they love to run around in circles).

I installed the RunKeeper app on my phone, programmed in the first couple of weeks of the plan, and off I went. It’s like having a digital coach telling you when to switch intervals, so now along with walking on Tuesday and Thursday, I run Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Since starting at the beginning of April, I haven’t missed a day of running yet.

So between yoga and regular walking and running, my body is healthier than it has been in a long time. I’ve lost a bit of weight, feel and look stronger, and no longer worry as much about getting hurt just from picking up my nieces or playing games with them.

Starting

Looking back, I’m glad I started these habits. At the beginning of the year, I was an amateur yoga practitioner. Today, I’m a walker and a runner, too. Today, I have months of progress behind me. When I started, I was struggling with a lot of issues, such as finances and work, as well as worrying about my health. I realized that no matter how good or bad things get, or how much I can’t control, I can dedicate time to those things that I can control.

And no matter what my goals are, no matter how my purpose might change, I was going to need my body. And I can control how much exercise I get. I can control what I allow myself to eat. I can control the time I spend on maintaining a body that will help me achieve my goals.

By creating regular exercise habits, I make it inevitable that I’ll have a body capable of powering the rest of my life on purpose.

Living on Purpose: Powered By a Healthy Body is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Back in 2009, the International Game Developers Assocation (IGDA) announced the launch of the IGDA Healthcare Program.

When I became a full-time indie game developer, I was going to lose my employer-provided insurance, so I turned to the IGDA’s program to get coverage instead of trying to find my own insurance on my own. Basically, they teamed up with Association Health Programs, and AHP is able to negotiate a block/group rate for you in your state with a quality insurance provider.

Aside from the fact that insurance companies have opaque policies (“Let me get this straight. A medical professional says there is nothing wrong with my ankle, and you still insist there is a preexisting condition? And you won’t cover the visit I had with the doctor who said that there is no condition in the first place because of this supposed preexisting condition?”) and are hard to deal with in general, I’ve been quite pleased with the IGDA’s program. I’ve had decent coverage at a decent price for more than a year now.

Granted, I’m single (for now), have no children (for now), and am generally healthy. I don’t know what the rates might look like for your specific situation. Or mine in the near future. The coverage is not nearly as comprehensive as my previous employer’s, but it’s a bit better than catastrophic insurance.

But I bring this up because whenever I mention the program in conversation, so many people say “Oh, the IGDA has a healthcare program? I had no idea.”

So now you know.

Did You Know The IGDA Has a Healthcare Plan? is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

There were three priests playing pool. One of the priests asked the others, “If you knew that the world was going to end in the next 10 minutes, what would you do?”

One priest answered, “I’d go to the church and lead the people in prayer. I’m sure there will be plenty who are afraid or lost, and I would want to be there with them to pray for forgiveness and strength.”

The next priest said, “I’d go home and pray alone, as Jesus suggested was best in the gospel according to Matthew. I’d shut myself in my room, and I’d pray for forgiveness and strength.”

The two looked at the third priest and asked him what he would do. He replied, “I’d finish this game.”

The End of the World is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

It’s now Day 6 of that weekend due to a pulled back muscle, and I blame my niece.

More accurately, I blame myself for not taking care of my body better. I’ve been super focused on making progress on Stop That Hero! end game victory and defeat conditions, especially in the last few weeks. In terms of my health, though, I felt under the weather in the previous week, and sitting at my desk for many, many hours on end is punishing on your posture.

Driving for 7 hours to Chicago last Friday didn’t help.

Then I saw my niece, and while playing with her, I discovered that jumping up and down makes her giggle. If you have a niece, you know that her laugh is one of the best sounds in the world, and so you keep doing whatever it is that makes her laugh. So I kept jumping up and down for much longer than I’ve ever done in what is probably years.

And throughout the rest of that day, I went from feeling perfectly fine to feeling a light twinge in my back to being unable to move my arms, legs, and head easily.

I was in a lot of pain, and driving for another 7 hours was not going to happen until I could sit for longer than 5 minutes without feeling like I was being tortured.

The Difference Between Having a Job and Owning Your Business

Now, if I was still working at a Day Job, I’d most likely get paid time off, and here would be an excuse to actually take advantage of it! One of the benefits of a good job is that they pay you if you can’t work, bizarrely enough.

But since I’m an indie developer who isn’t finished creating his first game yet, let alone earning income from sales of said game, every day I’m unable to work equates to money lost. I’m burning through savings as it is, and the productivity hit from being sick or injured isn’t helpful.

When you’re sick, you feel miserable and unmotivated. Maybe you can do only half of a day’s work today? When you’re injured, it can either be no problem (I don’t need my ankle to type code), or it can be debilitating (if you’re in extreme pain when you lift your arm, you probably shouldn’t be mousing with it).

But either way, if you run your own business and are unable to be productive, it’s frustrating. It’s especially damaging if you don’t have an automatic selling system in place. Ideally, if I had games to sell, I could make money while I sleep, or while I’m on vacation, or even while I’m unable to work. Until then, it’s almost as if you are carrying the entire business on a tightrope, and you’re just trying to make it across to the other side before you fall. My savings are providing me with a safety net, but I’d rather the money go towards more productive uses.

While I haven’t been able to work on code this last week, I did take advantage of the downtime to catch up on an Internet business marketing audio course I’ve been meaning to finish. I brought my game development notebook with me, so I spent some time going through it and remembering how Stop That Hero! has progressed, as well as thinking about the future direction of the project.

In the end, I tried to make the most of my situation, so this last week wasn’t a total productivity loss, but it’s still frustrating that I couldn’t get back to work.

Taking Care of Your Indie Self

Days before I pulled my back muscle, I recall thinking, “Self, it’s been some time since you last did a good stretching session or even went for a walk. You should probably start getting your body moving again before you regret it.”

And I said, “Ok, Self, sure. I’ll get moving as soon as I finish working on the combat mechanics.”

There’s lots of excuses for not taking care of yourself. Gym memberships are too expensive to justify when you have no income. It’s too cold to go outside. Driving downtown to the excellent Des Moines skywalk system to walk indoors is too inconvenient. You woke up too late (again), blowing past your scheduled exercise time.

But in the end, they’re excuses, and eventually your body pays for your health debt.

If I was more strict about taking an hour every morning to do stretches and exercises, maybe my back muscles wouldn’t have been so shocked by all the sudden jumping and movement, and I wouldn’t have lost a week of productivity. Maybe if I didn’t care about feeling silly, I could have at least walked up and down the stairs within the building I live in.

And if nothing else, the mental clarity that exercise brings should be enough of an incentive if I insist on having workaholic tendencies.

Cliff Harris of Positech Games advocates archery as some fun physical exercise. David Michael, author of The Indie Game Development Survival Guide, lifts weights. A colleague of mine makes an effort to walk periodically throughout the week (and I should really take up his offer to join him once I recover).

Even with daily exercise, it might not be enough. Noel Llopis writes about his standing desk experiment and the news that sitting for prolonged periods of time can be deadly. I’ve been wanting a standing desk myself, if only for the change in posture.

How do you take care of your physical health as an indie game developer? How much of a priority do you give to exercise in your life?

The Perils of the Sedentary Indie is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

One big part of this kind of learning is the idea that your subconscious mind needs time to let things sink in while you aren’t thinking about the topic. You sometimes get the most insight into a textbook after you wake up in the morning. In the following video, there’s a mention about taking time to let hunches and ideas incubate which I think goes along with this idea.

The video argues that exposure to lots of ideas and thoughts is the primary driver for innovation. Not all of this exposure leads to good ideas, but “chance favors the connected mind.” Having all of these various thoughts in your head, you might get overwhelmed thinking about them purposefully and actively, but incubation time, getting away from problems, seems to help. I’ve woken up from a good night’s sleep with awareness of program bugs I introduced into my project before I went to bed, and usually the fixes for those bugs came along as well. B-)

I think I’m focusing much more on the incubation aspect than the video did, but I believe spending time away from a problem can help solutions develop in your mind and develop good ideas.

I think I’ll go for a walk now.

Where Good Ideas Come From is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Last Monday, I gave my two weeks’ notice to my day job. I’m going to run GBGames, LLC full-time.

After 5 years of part-time development and not much to show for it, I was frustrated. I had no urgency. I found myself losing focus often, even after I admonished myself for doing so. Week after week, I’d get disappointed in my lack of productivity. I’d identify the problem as a lack of seriousness or a lack of clarity or a lack of efficiency, and I’d claim, “No more! This time, it’s for real!”, but then I’d find myself at the end of another week with little to no forward progress and hardly any change to my work habits.

Well, no more! This time, it’s for real! B-)

I’m cutting myself off from the peace of mind of a regular income from a salaried position, with nice benefits, at a really good company, with great coworkers. I could work in much worse environments. I was able to spend money on food, clothes, utilities, and toys without generally worrying if I had enough money to cover it. The people were great, and the company policies were what you thought of when you thought of best-practices.

So why walk away from that? Because I’m also cutting myself off from an obligation to be anywhere for 40-60 hours a week. Those hours are mine now. I have the freedom to use them however I want. Instead of being a cog in an otherwise pretty great wheel, I’m making my own wheel.

Of course, with that freedom comes great responsibility. I’m solely responsible for the success or failure of my business. My future income depends more on my marketing, sales, creativity, and productive output than the time I spend sitting at a desk. It’s going to be hard work, and I’ll encounter challenges the likes of which I’ve never seen.

But it’s time. I have an opportunity to make a mark on the world. I am done with feeling like the lion’s share of my attention is being given to what I should to be doing to the detriment of what I want to be doing. I’m only going to get older. I turn 29 in a couple of months, and before I know it, I’ll be 30. And then 40. And 50. And so on. If I’m going to run my business full-time, it might as well be now, when I have less responsibilities and obligations. I’ve prepared for years to do it. I’m as ready as I’m going to be.

Let’s go, World. I’m ready to rock.

(Photo: Empty Cube | CC BY 2.0)

Going Full-Time Indie is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Let’s look back on 2009 first. I created an index card and kept it with me throughout the year to remind me what I wanted to focus on:

My four main focii: being more decisive, creating more value, delivering more value, and being healthier.

Being more decisive was meant to remind me that I need to be more active in my pursuits if I expect to make a difference. I may want to run my own business and create games, but unless I make bigger and better decisions, I’ll continue to get mediocre results.

Creating and delivering more value? Those two were inspired by Steve Pavlina’s article How to Make Lots of Money During a Recession. Creating and delivering real value to customers is the best, most sustainable way to earn a living. You can probably trick people into parting with their money, but if you can deliver your creations to people who are willing to pay for it, you’ll be well ahead.

And finally, being healthier. I wanted to lose weight and feel as fit as I did when I was in high school.

So how did I do in each focus last year? Miserably.

At the beginning of the year, I was able to leverage the work of outsourced contractors to create a Facebook game, Sea Friends. You can read the post-mortem, but here are the key highlights:

• It was the most aggressive schedule I have worked on outside of 48-hour game development competitions.
• I learned a lot about what I can accomplish by leveraging other people’s time.
• I got a taste of what life is like when you put everything else on hold and dedicate your time and resources to a single pursuit.

That last bit, however, got me in the end. I spent way longer recovering from this project than I would have liked. Between a day job and working on this project, I had no time for relaxing. I couldn’t afford idle time or time spent on anything that wasn’t getting that game finished. I paid someone else to shovel my car out of the snow during this time because I couldn’t afford the time to do it myself! So I needed to take time off, and unfortunately that downtime lasted much longer than anticipated.

And as for Sea Friends, it’s not a very good game, but it still had a few hundred daily active users as recently as a few weeks ago. I could have spent time improving it, but between feeling burnt out and the proprietary nature of the Flash file, I couldn’t motivate myself to do so. I’m not proud of it, allowing those two things to stop me, but it’s what happened.

After Sea Friends, I had a whole year to release a new game, but outside of Ludum Dare competition entries, I didn’t finish anything. So much for creating and delivering value.

I suppose I’m being overly negative. Late last year, I also invested in an online educational course on Internet business development, and since my focus has been there for the past few months, that’s why there has been a drop in the Thousander Club entries (and blog entries in general!). What I’ve been learning there should help me not only with GBGames but also a different website I started.

The focus that resulted in definite improvement was the focus on being healthier. I went from 188 lbs in February to a peak of 192 lbs in May down to 180 lbs in December. That’s a net loss of 8 lbs, and 12 lbs were lost between May and the end of the year! I’ve also been playing soccer, so I’m feeling more fit in general, too. Aside from a pulled hamstring in October, I’ve been improving my health slowly but surely.

So if 2009 was a mediocre year for me, what makes me think that 2010 will be any different?

Because I’ll be leveraging Purpose, Discipline, and Habits this time around.

Last year, each focus was practically the equivalent of a bad New Year’s Resolution. They were vague, and I didn’t do anything to change my life so that each focus played a big role. Yeah, I had a reminder in the form of that index card, but what was it reminding me to do or be?

I realized I didn’t want a repeat of a mediocre year, and so I decided I was going to make changes to my life to ensure it.

First, I didn’t want to feel aimless, drifting from one interesting project to the next without accomplishing anything. I needed to figure out what I really wanted out of my life. I needed to figure out my purpose.

Using the exercises in the book Life on Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life, I was able to get a good start with this statement:

A Life on Purpose is a joyful life of freedom, continuous learning, encouraged and supported creativity, insatiable curiosity, and prolific creation, all driven by passion and a desire for excellence, powered by a healthy body and soul.

Bam. It’s great to have something to help me make decisions. If it doesn’t lead to more freedom and fun, I’m not interested. If being that person’s friend is discouraging and stifles my creativity and curiosity, I don’t want that friendship. If my heart isn’t in it and I can’t improve, why should I bother doing the same old same old? And if my health deteriorates because of it, why should I accept it as a fact of life?

Ok, so what do I want? Generally, I want to be a prolific creator. I want to be a lifelong learner. I want to be fit and healthy. I want to be a leader and role-model. I want to live a life of passion.

I’ve identified four major goals that I want to accomplish this coming year, and while I won’t be able to list all of them here, they all pass my “Is it a match for my purpose?” test.

One goal is to earn regular revenue from GBGames. So far, the only revenue I’ve ever earned is from ads, and it was never significant in the first place. I could basically pay for web hosting. With the recession, my revenues have dropped.

So how do I plan on changing things this year? Hasn’t my goal always been to earn revenue from GBGames? Yes, but I never gave my business the attention it needed. This year, I’m taking steps to change my life so that I can give it that attention.

There is a quote I like about discipline: “Discipline is remembering what you want.” A lot of people fail at keeping New Year’s resolutions because they think they need to dedicate all of their will power to accomplish it and they burn out. Will power is great for short bursts of focus, but it’s the wrong tool to use for the long haul. Discipline is the right tool. Will power will let you do things to change your environment so that discipline is easier to maintain. For instance, if you want to lose weight, using will power to avoid eating all of the junk food you keep in your home every day is a poor use of the will. A better use? Dedicating an afternoon of throwing away your junk food, shopping for healthier food, and planning healthy meals. Now you have healthy meals and snacks because you used your will power to change your environment to match your goals. Set your life up in a way that makes it easy to remember what you want out of it.

How do you do so? You install some good habits. If you can get yourself to go for a walk every single day after dinner without fail, you’re a long way along your goal of becoming more fit, and each day it becomes harder to fail.

So how do I leverage my purpose, discipline, and habits to help me accomplish my goal of earning revenue for GBGames this year? Frankly, my business plan is still being formed, and it’s the subject of another blog post. That said, in previous years, my business has suffered because it was always an afterthought. Development hours were squeezed into weeks full of non-development. 2010 will be the year that I gear my daily actions and habits toward improving my business. I’ve already taken stock of my current situation, and I’ve identified what needs to change. While I feel behind already, this work was important and needed to be done to pave the way for the rest of the year.

In previous years, I believe I have written inspirational posts about how things were going to change, but I never stuck by those convictions. This year feels different. It is different. I’ve hit a point where what I knew intellectually about the connection between action and results is now intuitively known as well.

While I intend to write more about my plans, for now, days after Groundhog’s Day, here’s to 2010!

Happy New Year! is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

There was an MK vs DC tournament, and if you were eliminated, you could buy back in for a donation amount that doubled each round. It started with only 18 people and doubled in size before Round 1 finished. Considering I haven’t played a Mortal Kombat game in years, I think I put in a respectable showing as Batman, even though I was eliminated three different times and only won once. The ultimate winner of the tournament received a PSP.

One attendee uploaded pictures for the event at Flickr.

Besides the tournament, there was an auction for games. I won three DS games, and there were more than a number of Xbox 360 and PS3 titles that went home with some healthy bidders. The mantra that night was “For the kids!”

Game-loving Chicagoans had fun and raised money for a good cause. For the kids, FTW!

Chicago for Child’s Play Charitable and Fun is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

From http://www.childsplaycharity.org/events.php:

December 9th 2008

Chicago, IL. (Plan B Chicago, 1635 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60647) Dawdle.com and Midway Games are sponsoring the first-ever Child’s Play fundraiser in Chicago! Join us for gaming, booze, and prizes! We’ll have a gaming contest (game TBA) and some other special items. Totally inspired by Funde Razor, we’re doing our part to raise the spirits of some very deserving kids.

To learn more, please go to http://www.dawdle.com/childsplay. To purchase your ticket, please visit to http://childsplay.eventbrite.com/

I’ll be attending, and so should you! Check http://www.childsplaycharity.org/events.php for Child’s Play events in your area.

Chicago for Child’s Play Charity is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

For revenge, GirlFlash decided to host Mini LD48 #2.

also, sorry if I am interrupting anybodies Independence day plans, but I’m English and this is how I get even =p

I won’t be participating. Well, maybe I’ll participate. It feels like a challenge.

Anyway, Independence Day is not only an excuse for grills, a day off from the day job, and time with friends. It is also a great time to reflect on what it means to be an indie game developer. Indies exist in many industries. Indie film, indie music, indie TV shows, indie books, and indie poetry all exist. Indie games are a natural addition. What drives people to forgo steady incomes and decent benefits and go indie? The urge to create something can be quite strong, and an indie might know that that something won’t get created unless he or she does the creating. The major Hollywood studios won’t green light all films, and the major game publishers won’t make all games. For quite a lot of people, these aren’t hurdles. The film or game will get made anyway. Funding comes from MasterCard and Visa. Sleep can be optional on some days. Poor substitutes for the high quality production equipment can be used to great effect. And the film or game will be finished.

The indie life. It’s exciting, it’s emotional, and it’s full of drama. There can be lean times. There’s the potential for great success, and there’s the risk of losing it all. But would you trade it for anything else?

If you’re already doing your own thing your own way, you probably have your own independence day to celebrate. If you’re still supporting your efforts through your day job as I am, then perhaps you’re looking forward to creating your own independence, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day! is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development