Hi, I’m Greg Wohlwend and I am a workaholic.

This will probably be a bit long winded but writing this post has help solidify how I’ve been feeling lately about being a independent game developer. Please bear with my emo.

When I transferred from the University of Iowa to Iowa State University to pursue a degree in graphic design something switched on inside of me. The challenges that the rigorous ISU design program posed brought out the best in me. I arrived on campus at the beginning of the spring semester with little choice but to complete the year-long curriculum within half the time recommended [1 semester]. Since you can [and probably should] spend all your free time polishing your projects to make sure you have the best shot at being accepted when you hand in that all important portfolio at the end of the year, spending a full year instead of 1 semester will help your chances.

That’s what I did. I spent 95% of my waking life working. When summer came around I took a much needed break, but after a couple months I received my acceptance letter and then it all started again. Only a few days later I sat down to think about designing a game. I’d always loved games, but I never thought it was possible. After accomplishing what often seemed like an impossible task [acceptance into the graphic design program] and seeing that ISU offered an experimental game development workshop, I thought maybe it wasn’t so impossible after all. So that was the end of “breaks” for me. I chose to tackle one of the most time consuming majors at ISU while simultaneously home-brewing some kind of game development education in my off-time.

In the back of my head I knew I’d never get a break between the two, but that was ok with me. In the cocoon of college it made sense. Everyone around me had their heads down with me and we banded together to get through it. It was great! I had a like-minded support group that enjoyed the same things I did. Working creatively is extremely fulfilling and often fun. So that’s what I did for the next 4 years.

The first 2 years were jammed with graphic design. What was previously 2 classes full of projects and endless polish, was now 3 and a half classes. It was certainly tough, but nothing my workaholic attitude couldn’t handle. After awhile though, classes got easier which made more room for game development. My first two semesters in game dev were mainly about research and design documentation. The stuff that isn’t game development, but I had to get that out of my system. It was still all-consuming though and it took up most of my nights and weekends. I took a couple jobs, mostly 20/week during the school year doing web-dev which carried on into the summer. I worked 5 jobs my junior summer. Some of it was freelance, others were part-time wage work. All of them were design related and consuming. As an incoming senior I found a spot at the Virtual Reality Applications Center [VRAC] which marked the shift from mostly graphic design to mostly game development. Now it was time to start the real work.

I was scheduled for 40hrs/week but I spent way more there. I met people at VRAC that I’d been looking for for years at ISU. Capable people who wanted to make games, not just talk about making them. It was an infectious environment and like everything else, I binged. It went so well that it spawned our first game, Dinowaurs. In the early morning twilight of VRAC we fashioned our pitch to Adult Swim and Kongregate. A few months later we would founded intuition and I would spend my last semester at ISU as a part-time student and a more-than-full time game developer.

After graduation, Dinowaurs continued at break-neck speed. What I didn’t have time to realize then was that I was working at the same pace, if not harder, but my support group was dwindling. What once was dozens of peers was now 3 or 4 and they were all decidedly male. Instead of working inside a lively and social community, I was working within a mostly “incestuous” family. That’s not giving the situation enough credit, but it’s a good way to get across the idea that it wasn’t healthy.

We released Dinowaurs, marched on and released a bunch of smaller games. That was a lot of fun but it didn’t exactly help the situation. In some ways it hurt us. The success of Effing Hail and acclaim for Gray washed over the fact that we had no friends or social life other than on the internet. The worst part about this whole thing though was that we were oblivious. Sure we knew we had no friends and we made cracks about it in a self-deprecating way, because we really do have friends. Great friends that may be few, but they are close and awesome. But we never hung out with them, we were too involved in the projects for a number of reasons but I think for me it was mostly about escaping the reality that life had changed drastically and I didn’t want to face that.

Just recently I came home from IndieCade. It was the most fun I’ve had since I went to Rome for a semester. The level of camaraderie and love that permeated the place was incredible and I wish I could have bottled it somehow so I would never run out. But that was really the issue when I got back. Returning to my gray Iowa world with no indie-love, no lively social life, and no avocado-tomato-on-everything restaurants really gave me the perspective I needed to realize just how gray and awful my life had become.

After I got back I felt like never making a game again. I hated the idea of making games. I didn’t want to work on anything. I opened up Illustrator to see about a new idea I had and I couldn’t even use the pen tool without getting disgusted. I’d never felt so miserable and I had no idea why. On top of it all I was sick. It wasn’t until I took a few days to think about my life and put everything in perspective that I realized why I was so miserable. I mean, the whole time I was thinking “man, I’m making games, that’s awesome!” It is awesome, but that doesn’t make us super-human. Just because I enjoy my work a great deal doesn’t mean it’s not destructive to constantly be working. In fact it makes it more dangerous since there’s no rational justification for stopping something you like doing.

So, after realizing all of this, I made some new rules.

1. Leave my laptop at work.
2. Never turn down an opportunity to hang out with friends.
3. Always take weekends off. Always.
4. Wake up with the Sun.
5. Exercise.

I’m not sure if this will help, but I think half the battle here was realizing that you can’t just work and work and work and work. Eventually you’ll go to an IndieCade and realize your life sucks and have to change it.