WHY I ALMOST QUIT RPG MAKER (SEVERAL TIMES)

I have this weird hypocritical feeling whenever I use the program that I am what I despise, all of the people who stick a bunch of scripts/ripped resources into their games with a crappy storyline, and basically unplayable, and then go show off to my friends and they think "OHH SO AWESOME OMGOMGOMG!!!!!". Though I have never done the last one.(I try to keep rpgmaker out of my life, it justs sucks me in.)
I mean, I am sure MOST people who used rpgmaker before they had a stable job thought about game design as a career. Some might even go as far as attempting to do it with the lousy RPGMAKER.

Certain ones can be lousy, up until it allows custom, original scripting. That alone becomes a professional level game designing program if you know what to do, obviously.

I've always had a thing for making games. I've made board games, card games, text based games, all sorts of stuff through the years. I had Rpg maker for the PSX, but was utterly disheartened when trying to enter text with a controller or do art editing. I made a couple of 'games' with the stock resources, but realizing that nobody I knew could ever experience them sucked a lot of the life out of the process for me. Not to be overly crude, but there was a scene in swordfish that pretty much nailed it. With apologies to AgeTec, just substitute "Using Rpg Maker" for fly-fishing, and you've got it.

Then my life kind of took an insane left turn for a while and game making was just about the last thing on my mind at any given time. By the time things normalized for me again, I stumbled into Rpgmaker2000 and shortly thereafter 2k3 (I was kind of late to the party).

Of all the stuff I've used to make games with before and since, and I'm even one of those people who carved all the way through Andre LaMothe's weighty thousand page tome on the subject of game programming, rpg maker is easily the most approachable.

For someone who just wants to generate content instead of the framework to support that content, the rm series is top of the line. I love being able to click in the editor and make an event that says "This is a table." That is a lot quicker then allocating memory, defining pixel dimensions, setting bounding boxes, entering palette info, editing transparency, selecting layer and texture type, putting the screen into magical Mode 13H, figuring atomic weight, calculating boiling point at high elevation, utilizing the cosines of x, y, and z to get my camera to track properly, writing reams of code just to explain to the computer what the concept of 'table' means in order to get it to acknowledge that I have actually created one... etc.

I don't think I've ever actually quit it, or almost quit it. There have been times when I just didn't have time for game design (or even play for that matter), but it was never a conscious "This is total crap, I'm never using it again!"

author=supremewarrior

author=Max McGee

The way I see it whether you believe it or not, what you are doing is a hobby. Your using your own leisure time to do an activity that you somewhat enjoy, now unless you do this 24/7 without going to work or school/college/university, it is no doubt a hobby for you. If you are at home on your computer doing this for a long period of time with nothing else to do, then I guess you could say it is a "career" for you but really one should strive to do more than just make RPG Maker games for all their life... but I'm not one to tell other people what to do.

I do in fact write and design games full time without another occupation. I finished college three years ago and I don't presently have a job.

Only a tiny fraction of that writing and game design is related to rpgmaker, of course. And not the portion that pays.

All of my time is leisure time, therefore none of it is: until I can find more steady employment, the only delineation between 'leisure time' and 'work time' is one I create myself.

Well then you definitely can call that a career, good luck finding a job too. It's getting harder these days for us young people also one of the many things I am concerned about.

One of the things I'm concerned about is that I'm scared I'm no longer a young people.

I don't want to not be!