Sometimes, if you want to play, you have to bring your own toys. And with that, I have established Orbital Arcade, LLC as my new studio for software and games. It’s been a long road to get here…
In a lot of ways, this feels full-circle: Twenty-five years ago (whew!), I was new to tech and in my 20s, and wanted to make software. Full of optimism, I went out and created DigitalFlux Entertainment, LLC, and started working on plugins for one of the 3D modelling apps of the time: trueSpace.
Things (almost) took off! Within a year, my work was noticed enough that the owner of trueSpace offered a publishing contract to get my plugin into a bundle that they would be selling. What could go wrong? My ducks had lined up…
Unfortunately, the ducks did not stay lined up. In short order, I figured out that additional plugins added to the bundle diluted my royalties, and the economy in the country at the time (the day after I inked the deal from my cubicle in downtown Manhattan happened to be 9/11) reduced the amount of sales I made to about a third of what I had estimated. Still, I forged ahead, selling plugins, taking contracts, and gradually moving towards game development.
By about 2004, I had decided to try my hand at game development, and brought my plugin development along for the ride, creating plugins to export from trueSpace and gameSpace to the Torque Game Engine, made by GarageGames. The focus of Digital Flux Entertainment drifted more into games, and by 2007, I was pushing with an indie team to try and get Epic Frontiers, an MMO with a brand new IP in front of publishers for a demo.
As happens to many indie projects, development on Epic Frontiers petered out in 2010, despite impressing the publishers I demoed for. I did release smaller games in 2008 and 2014, and a game-related tool in 2011, but after that, DigitalFlux took a back seat to my new career as a game development consultant. I closed the company down around 2014.
With the exception of the first year, plugin sales had never generated enough revenue on its own, and had become a nice little side hustle alongside my career in tech support. By 2008, the Great Recession put an end to that career, and I found myself doing game development. It worked better than plugin development ever did.
It worked well enough to help raise my family, and even though I lived in New York, I made nearly 15 years of remote contracts work, way before the Pandemic made it cool. Or even remotely common. If you’re in game development, you know that’s a bit of a lift on its own. But…
Also, if you’re in game development, you know the state of the industry right now. The past few years have been rough, contracts are harder to find, and startups fizzle out faster. With an established family and responsibilities here, I cannot simply uproot and move with the game jobs, as many do.
The realization came to be bit by bit as I worked on a project that I was using to learn more about web apps, mobile, and scratch an itch that I’ve had for a while.
Simply this: Jobs and contracts are hard to come by right now- but just because I don’t get replies doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do things. Hell, I’ve put out over a dozen products on my own, and almost a dozen others working in the games industry. I have every skill I need, and all the experience from my previous efforts to learn from. I did it before, and I can do it again. And so…
Introducing both Orbital Arcade, LLC and it’s first product: WayNotes!
Coming full-circle, I’m starting with tools again, and I’m using all of my hard-won lessons in getting WayNotes out the door. Click the link to get it, and read more about it here.
And because all of my tools grow out of personal needs, I’m using WayNotes as my design journal for the next games and tools soon to be in development.
Time to get rolling! 🙂
