Welcome to the www.onegameamonth.com challenge, year four.

We are proud to celebrate 36 months of completely free gamedev funtimes!

So what's the point of making games? What is your endgoal?

This is a hit-driven industry where the vast majority don't really make much money and a few hits make the lion's share. Just like pop music, movies, or pretty much anything awesome like that.

Watching industry trends the last few years you can see that indie game development is as viable a career as being a poet, musician, artist or writer. A dream job. Not impossible, but for most, a hobby.

You can go pro at indie gamedev, but you probably won't. It hurts to recognize this, at first, but remember why you really decided to make games in the first place.

It sounded like FUN, right?

Earning money is just the public justification for your pursuit of a passion. It just validates it to your parents. But in truth, we both know it, we make games because we love games. Because we love making them.

That almost sounds more like a hobby... just realizing this makes me wonder. I wonder if it is possible to be a successful HOBBY game developer (happy, popular, well-played, inspired, content with your creative life).

Would having this as your goal give you a happier life? I guess it really depends on what you care about.

Let's take this HOBBY gamedev thought experiment a little further. I'm not saying it's the best way for everyone to life their life - just that it is something that could possibly add a lot more smiling, relaxation, and stress-free creativity in your life, if you're willing to humbly accept a smaller dream?

Imagine if you were unencumbered by the pressure, the design constraints, the demands, the stress, the fear of needing to make an almighty dollar from the next game you design. What if you secure a day job, side gig, whatever, like any self-respecting aspiring actor with dreams of making it on broadway.

What if you had no risk: your life wouldn't be ruined whether your game was a huge hit or a huge flop? Imagine how fun the making of this game would be?

You could fially let go and take a different kind of big risk, like a creative risk! Or you could simply take shortcuts like using clipart and prefabs.

Freed from the financial burden, your game would simply be the game you wanted to make. The reward would be doing it. It would be done when you felt like being done, like a painting or model or essay or new song.

Sharing it with your friends could be enough of a distribution plan...

Forget about monetization. Enjoy your hobby.

DO IT BECAUSE DOING IT IS FUN.

The January #1GAM theme word is: HOBBY.

Make a game about your favourite hobby. Carving, fishing, sports, building model ships in a bottle, puzzles, board games, reading. Why not make a game about playing videogames, where you control the person on the couch holding a gamepad? Make a game where you just draw, or just skip rocks on a pond.

There needen't be a winner or loser, or even an ending; because a hobby can go on forever. It is self-sustaining. The feedback loop is built into the experience itself. The gamification is the game itself. The achivement is the achievement itself. The experience points are worth less than the experience.

DO IT BECAUSE DOING IT IS FUN.

- Christer Kaitila aka @McFunkypants
- www.onegameamonth.com
- twitter.com/McFunkypants

Credits: Made in Photoshop using NFG's arcade font tool and Plane9 audio visualizer. Music credit: Moving Places by Stephen Lu of chibola.com - Used with permission [CC-BY-ATTR]