Why do you always do this, Casey?

Hey everyone, a few days ago, I made a post saying that the next monthly update would come on March 1st, but nothing was posted then. Aside from my discord, I've been radio silent ever since. Why is that?

Well it's for numerous reasons, the biggest ones being college and AI. I'm currently an undergraduate studying for Interactive Media and Game Design at a Polytechnic Institute, and choosing that field as a major was a mistake. However you're probably not here for that, and you're here for the monthly update, and while it's not a lot, I'll get it out of the way now.

Game Mechanics are being worked on

This is the only thing I can really talk about, but thankfully I'm more than happy to talk about it. As you saw here, in this post, I was working on a camera shot with a few placeholder items. While far from complete, focusing on making sure everything works first before working on visuals should speed things up, and the game can FINALLY PROGRESS INTO THE ALPHA STAGE of development.

What I specifically was working on was the stuff that was a lot more technical. Specifically the A.I. of the animatronics, and the camera equipment you used to defend yourself. Which is a massive aspect of the game, so once, that is complete, we should be somewhere in the alpha stages by sometime in May (Hopefully).

Now onto the depressing stuff...

If you're passionate about something, don't go to college for it.

Just a word of warning from me to you. I do encourage people to go to college, but I more so encourage them to do a field they are semi-passionate about and can get a stable job in.

I have been passionate about making and designing games since I was 8 years old. When I first got access to a piece of tech I can access google from, I immediately began looking into making, and designing games. Yes, I have been studying independently for more than a decade now, and have tried making and releasing a game since I was 13. Despite my failures, I was still passionate to be a game designer, and was hoping college would help with that.

I didn't, far from it. In fact it was, and is a depressing experience that has killed a lot of motivation for this project. I pulled a loan making me $100,000+ in debt for something I desperately wanted for a long time, only to learn something that will be replaced by AI.

My major is in Interactive Media & Design. Take note of the Design aspect of my major. Of course, some of my classes focus on Design. I've had a good design class with one fantastic teacher last semester, but I was feeling less motivated as time went on. My design class this semester, with a different teacher, made me realize why. Not only because it's work now, but despite how much you care to learn about the subject, no one else will.

Sometimes the people teaching won't care, and hold completely subjective, unfair, and vague standards. Doesn't matter if you apply what they teach you into your work, your score is whatever they deem as good design, and if it appeals to them personally. If you make something that applies design philosophies with various shades of pink, but your professor doesn't like pink, and instead likes blue, you'll be judged and your grade will tank regardless just because you made your project pink. This is bad enough, but standard, people won't like your stuff regardless of your design techniques. It gets worse though.

This professor has the balls to set a short deadline for a individual project that normally takes weeks or even months to do, and says that the short deadline is fine, because AI can just do it for you. They told that to a group of artists and designer students btw, people who are mostly aware of how AI steals from people, and how AI does not understand or adhere to basic design principles we learn in class, and will go for the bare minimum. A group of people, myself included, asked if we can do the project by hand instead, and how grading would be affected if we did that, and you know, apply the design techniques we are supposed to learn. They said that it doesn't matter, students who pour hours of hard, intense work by hand, applying all techniques, will receive the same grade as someone who puts in prompt and generates their assignment in seconds, that does not apply the techniques we learn.

This is not how you teach a design class, in fact this is just not how to teach. It's a running joke that what you learn in school won't ever apply to what you want to do in life, but to actually learn something that does, only to be told that it doesn't matter, and your passion and hard work is just a waste of time, to be dissolved to focus on quality over quantity is heart breaking. Heart breaking to learn, and heart breaking as someone who has dedicated more than half their life to studying to be a game designer. Which has killed a lot of motivation to do anything for this project at all.

Moving forward

I'll be on a semi-hiatus from gamejolt, only periodically uploading update and artwork to my account. I will no longer do monthly updates, and I will work on this game quietly behind the scene. I feel like putting less stress on myself and just making shit casually would help me get back into the swing of things.

Stress and personal health has been a relatively minor, yet still a factor of my loss of motivation to work on this project. So I am mostly doing this to take care of myself. Sorry to bring the upsetting and disappointing news. I'll be more active eventually.

See you all later

-Casey :|