New year started some time ago already, so let’s look back at the past twelve months and see what happened, good or bad. If you want to have a good laugh be sure to check my predictions and plans from 2015 and 2016 - some of them crashed into a wall pretty hard.
Bad things
Only one new game in 2017: Flood Escape. You could expect more games from the “game making studio”, but there was so many other projects going on, or waiting to start, that I had to settle with only a single new game. Plus it took a few months to publish. At least we’re happy with how the game itself ended up. And we did add an extra level to it in December.
No new series of articles for MDN. Two topics were just waiting to be written: WebVR with A-Frame and Progressive Web Apps, but even though they were sitting at the very top of my TODO list, I was constantly trying to finish other projects first before diving deep into those. It was a clear mistake and will have to be fixed in 2018.
No online shop for js13kGames t-shirts and other swag. I’ve reviewed a whole lot of potential services, but none were complete enough for my needs, which aren’t even that strict. I’ll have to think about them once again and do a few trade offs to finally launch something.
OpenHTML5Games is still just an empty domain. I wanted do create a portal for the community focusing on sharing the knowledge about HTML5 games, their source code, tutorials etc, but didn’t even have the time to launch the smallest bit from those plans.
Ok-ish things
Gamedev.js Weekly newsletter is still growing very, very slowly. I put the minimum effort in preparing the content every Friday and don’t have any free time to promote it. People tend to thank me for it from time to time though, and send some new content from them directly, or if they see something interesting that others could enjoy, so it’s not that bad.
I gave only 10 talks in 2017, out of which all in Poland, and 8 were given in Warsaw - this means I haven’t given any international talk last year, which is quite sad. I haven’t send a single CFP though as I was trying to focus on different things, so it’s totally my fault.
I did travel a bit though: went for GDC in San Francisco for the first time, and visited Austin for All Hands after 1,5 year break. Plus the local events were quite interesting too, like giving a workshop in the auditorium for 80 people, or mentoring a health-related hackathon.
Js13kGames 2017 was a success, even bigger than the previous years, but I wasn’t prepared to scale it properly as most of the things are still manual or semi-automatic, so I spent around half a year managing everything around it. I have to get more help from the community as I wouldn’t be able to pull this off the same way this year without losing my mind. It needs to change.
Good things
I did a very small project for a client - it was a KFC game where you need to throw fried chicken into the bucket… and that’s it. The project itself was very short, enjoyable and well paid. It was the only game for a client I did in 2017. I also worked with BLUR on promoting their new platform combining chat with free games as they’re focusing on helping indie devs with exposure.
We were organizing Gamedev.js Warsaw meetups regularly - during 2017 we had 9 meetups, out of which seven were regular ones and two quite special: Mozilla Developer Roadshow and js13kGames Launch Party. There was also a unique Gamedev.js Weekend full of game development: we had a workshop on Saturday and a hackathon on Sunday. New website at gamedevjs.pl have launched around the end of the year too.
Plans for 2018
Write for MDN, be even more involved in various projects around Mozilla, prepare accordingly and thoroughly for js13kGames. Try to make a few games, but don’t stress about it too much. Try to launch a few projects. Be able to earn decent money out of my work.