Glad you got that hustle and made it happen! I sorta fell into what I now know was my real dream after rough shit happened...
I worked my ass off, but the college bills hit me hard before the pay ever could. Like you said ..."Fuck. College." Couldn't pay it so had to resort to industrial work in WV to not go under. Everyone wanted to pay me in experience in the game industry after college
*fucking eyeroll*. The last couple of indy things I was a part of the dudes hardly even had functional design documents for their games. I ended up having to rewrite and do a ton of design stuff for em on the gameplay itself. Eventually, I realized that the percentage who get to lead the show is incredibly small, and that out of those they still have to answer to their publisher and the share holder's wallets.
Thing is it opened me up to a truth...I didn't want to be a part of someone else's stuff trying to make uncreative ideas better with my own creativity. I'm a niche gamer as is. I don't FPS, I'm sick of the sameyness most things have in the industry, and I swear to god most game studios forgot what a silhouette test was for... And here I was...suddenly completely financially secure and with the experience and skill to make whatever niche thing I wanted with or without someone else's company.
A part of me still wishes the paydays had come faster and I didn't have to be around so much redneckery in industry, but every day I come home and all the bills are paid and I get to make what I truly like and answer to no one. It'd be nice to one day have more people and crew, but I'll be damned if someone else has to go through what I did and work on something that doesn't pay them when what they truly need is a paycheck. I'll work with folks who dont need my thing to come out or go hungry and thats it.
In the end, I found my place. Indie. Its slow, its a lot of work, and it gets lonely at times. Its great fun though and its 100% uncompromised and for me I discovered that was my real dream. To get what I want because I'm a greedy bastard
I'm really thankful for QisTopTier though. His insight is keeping this thing on the rails. He became the perfect partner since he plays fucking everything hardcore. Makes him a treasure trove of concepts and movelist ideas to couple with my own ideas and grow into various art and characters. We feed off each other I think. I can code some, do concept like mad, animate 2d or 3d, and I learn software pretty fast, but with all that its kind of hard to do more than play a bit here and there and take notes. I aint got the time for the grind and thats where he comes and saves my ass from the fact that I can't do everything on my own. Without him constantly filling in gaps and analyzing ideas things would go out of control on designs and such quick. Especially once we start doin frame count stuff on attacks.
Here's to living your dreamsand working your asses off