Hearthlight Development Log

#0 The Moment Has Arrived

Raised by the Internet

I grew up on the internet. Really, in many ways, the internet raised me.

The internet mommy/daddy I'm referring to is the internet as it existed between 2006 and 2015. The experiences and connections I had with people online during this time were so formative for me it carved out a deep spot in my brain for fondness, emotion, nostalgia and comfort when I revisit those memories.

My parents were not attentive to me or my needs. I was a high-masking autistic kid in Texas that leaned on dissociation as my only tool to address any uncomfortable, overwhelming, or under/over-stimulating situations that I encountered every day. I felt unsafe to exist authentically for most of my childhood.

My bastion, my escape, was the beige family desktop computer and all of the people contained within it on the internet. A place I could see others vulnerability, creativity, unpopular opinions and authentic expression. It inspired me. It motivated me. I was always itching to get back to this world outside of the world I lived in. As dissappointed as I am at how my parents handled raising me, I was grateful to have the (definitely excessive) access to the computer and the internet that I did.

I wasn't just online for social reasons. I was a gamer from a young age. My first gaming experiences being a Playstation 2 with Tony Hawk Underground, SSX Tricky, Crash Team Racing, Spyro the Dragon and other iconic titles from the time. I was enthralled with these digital worlds. Then, an expansion of my perspective: my father, a tech nerd in his hayday, purchased an ethernet expansion addon for the Playstation 2 that let you play supported games online with others. I, a 9 year old, was now skating around in Tony Hawk Underground with 10 other players. Some players were crazy characters I had never seen in game before. Some players were hacking using something like GameShark to fly around, mess with other players, and get impossible combos. This is amazing, but confusing. My frist experience was an unstructured sandbox with no chat. It was an incredible idea and experience, but it still felt hollow and that it lacked the human element.

This first experience didn't last long as I soon migrated to the PC where I would not rediscover online multiplayer for a handful of years. I would grind my gamer teeth on PC titles of the era that would hold my attention for hours. Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, Zoo Tycoon, Flash Games, Saints and Sinners Bowling, Rise of Nations, Diablo 2 (probably shouldn't have been playing that). Then, something new: ToonTown Online. This Disney owned MMORPG was the first experience that would show me the real potential of online social gaming.

Running through the front door of my dad's house, throwing down my backpack, picking up the home phone and speed dialing my cousin's home phone number, the excitement was unmatched. Middle school had only gotten out 15 minutes ago and I was already home in another universe with my cousin that lived hours away. We played, progressed, laughed, failed, succeeded, made friends, and explored in a way that felt exciting and natural. The comfort of a world with rules, goals, and most importantly other people who are experiencing those same rules and goals in a collaborative way was what I was looking for; it was what I needed.

I played Toontown for a long while in my pre-teen years, getting so invested as to connect on a fan forum with others that were very into the game. Through the forum I found group events and made many many friends using the in-game secret friend code feature to unlock real unrestricted chat. By default the game limits you to communicated with pre-made chat options, but this turned the game into a real chat room where I could listen to and talk about real world things with others that were invested in this virtual universe too. Finding these connections in a place that felt safe was such an impactful experience for me and shaped how I would interact with gaming, the internet and others from then on.

It wasn't long after this (~2008) that I would discover new virtual spaces to grow the influence of this way of interacting with others. Runescape, Second Life, IMVU, Habbo Hotel, Maplestory, and even World of Warcraft (using the old 10-day trials) were all virtual worlds I was exploring and connecting with others in. I was hooked and inspired. I knew from this young age that there was something to this format that made it enable connection unlike anything around me would. I could feel the emotional kinship with many of the people I interacted with. I could feel the intensity of emotions when helping others, failing with others, even receiving online hostility from the safety of home.

Then, I stopped. I had grown up a little and had formed friendships with people around me that were based on more authentic connection than before. Many of those friendships centered around a shared interest: videogames. Sometimes this would be taking turns on a console game while hanging out together, but it quickly turned into texts being sent at the end of the school day telling each other to "hurry home so we can get online!". I was gaming online with friends from school. Friends of friends would join along and soon those friends of friends would become regulars that I would be so excited to game with when I got home from school and late nights on weekends.

A community was forming around me. In this era, as with many pre-teen boys of the time, Call of Duty was the game to be playing, and boy did I. From Modern Warfare through each of the games in the series to Black Ops 2 my dedicated group of (probably also neglected) teen boys would religiously log on to the games to play together to laugh, mess around, play seriously and just ejoy each others company and connection. It felt like I had found a tribe and it meant a lot to me.

As I grew up alongside these guys (yes only guys in this era) I grew closer to some of them. I had formed deeper relationships with some of these guys that went to other schools that I had never met in real life than all of my other friends I saw at school each day. My relationship with gaming would evolve and so would my relationship with them. While I had mostly left the computer behind in favor of my console in this moment, I had never lost that intrigue that the computer as a platform gave me years before. I learned how to hack my PS3, how to create hacked lobbies in Call of Duty where my friends and I could play around with temporary cheats. I learned how to host servers, use cheat engine in browser games, and edit hard to find config files to manipulate the games I was playing. I had lots of fun learning how these experiences were constructed and how to mess with that construction.

Enter Minecraft. This game took everything I've mentioned before to another level. One of my friends from the Call of Duty days had connected with me on our mutual interest in this new PC game Minecraft. This was the new ritual; home from school, log on to Skype, start the call and start playing Minecraft together. Hours and hours and hours were spent in joy learning, disecting, experimenting, and experiencing Minecraft with my friend. I grew close to him during this time even though again, we had never met in real life. I feel a lot of nostalgia for this moment in particular because it felt like there was infinite things to learn and try and every one of them felt like a valuable, interesting, exciting use of my time with a friend by my side that shared that excitement. I was feeling fulfilled and validated in my interests in ways I haven't before.

Many late nights trying mods, x-ray texture packs, custom servers, self-hosting (Hamachi anyone?) brought me to a new phase in this journey. My Minecraft friend and I would slowly drift apart as our interest in the game waned and I was now a teenager. While I still held onto some open ended social games like Garrys Mod, my real interest in gaming had shifted to competitive online multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends.

In high school I also took a different but more intense interest in computers and hacking. I would show up to choir class with my jailbroken iPhone 4 and two Wiimotes, toss one to a friend and begin a (admittedly distracting to the class) Mortal Kombat 2 tournament in the Bass singer section right from my phone. Another anecdote: once I discovered that the shared drive on my schools network had unrestricted access for every user on every folder (I assume for easy sharing?) I added a `.bat` script in a place I knew others around me would see called "CLICK_ME.bat". This script would infinitely open web browser instances to Nyan Cat and the only way to stop it was to force-shutdown your computer. Friends enjoyed this along with other little scripts I made, but truly this was the beginning of something bigger.

After a high-school long League of Legends addiction I would go to college for Software Engineering. During college I went down the open source and linux evangelism pipeline, becoming deeply emotionally and intellectually invested in the principles of free software and access to information. I also played a lot of Overwatch (:

Being 19 years old with a long history of loving games and a growing understanding of software and its development, I set out to make a game... about 10 times. Each time I failed to make even a MVP. I joined game jams in person and online, personal projects, and even a game development course at school. Every time I never made anything I felt comfortable calling a game. Even more sad, I never made anything that I would want to play myself. I ended college discouraged in the realm of game development and with a loving relationship with Dota 2. Me and Dota 2 are still happily married to this day <3.< /p>

It's been 6 years since then and with the development of the Godot Engine, an open source game engine, I felt inspired about once per year to make another attempt at game development. Same result. While I was beginning to grasp how game development works and how to use the tools involved, I was missing a critical piece of the puzzle:

making something that I actually want to play

One day recently, that fact clicked in my brain. I looked at myself honestly, and I don't mean that how it's often said; honesty with honest criticism. I looked at myself with honest compassion, appreciation and gratitude. I saw my strengths, interests, skills, history and a growing creative energy all at once. There was a path forming in front of me that aligned with all of these forces inside of me: I'm going to make a game that is meaningful to me. I'm going to make a game that I want to play