My name is David and I make games

…which blows my mind, since I'm horrible at coding and I'm self-taught with art/design. A few years ago a friend showed me Unity, and I knew I just had to make a game. I worked hard, released my first game on Steam called Home is Where One Starts…, and used that to help me land my dream job: Unity technical artist at The VOID, where I worked on VR experiences like Ghostbusters Dimension, Avengers: Damage Control, and Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire. While my game was a great portfolio piece, it didn’t exactly top the Steam best-selling chart. I realized all the stuff I did wrong in my game dev journey, and I wanted to do it right. An idea popped into my head while doing the dishes: a fox looking for the first tree on earth and learning about life and death. The First Tree was born… so I got to work.

It wasn’t easy of course. It was exhausting balancing a full-time job along with taking care of a new baby. I had to learn to let things go and compromise my vision to a degree. I had to stick with a strict schedule and work even when I hated it. My coworkers kept talking about all the awesome shows and games that were out, but I had no idea what they were talking about because every night I worked on my game. I almost gave up several times, but I stuck with it because I wanted to tell my story and share it with the world. I marketed it every week because I knew without it, my launch would 100% fail. Finally, in September 2017, I released my second game The First Tree on Steam.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. My small hobby project was being featured next to some of my favorite games like INSIDE and Divinity: Original Sin 2. It had worked: my original hook, my marketing plan, my launch blitz checklist, all of it. I was on the front page of Steam for five days, which led to my life being irreversibly changed in a big way. I used the money to put a down payment on a house, and used the rest to port my game to Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. I quit my job shortly after to become a full-time indie developer.