I have thought of it so many times, and dismissed it for various reasons. Too hard, too much cutthroat competition, not enough time, not a viable way to make money, way too many wanna-bes I don't want to get classified with them. But damnit, there is no other thing I would rather waste some spare time on than writing video games.
I think the main reason I got interested in programming and playing with computers at all was games. I would never have given a second look at my Dad's [TRS-80](http://www.kjsl.com/trs80/) if he hadn't shown me how to load up some game, he acquired from who knows where, with the data cassette drive and start playing.
> You are in a dark cave, there is a hallway to the west, another to the east and a smell > of rotting flesh from the south, you have a pocket knife, and there is a torch on the > floor.... What do you want to do?
I learned BASIC on that thing just so I could try and mimic what the authors of that wonderful game had done, and my love of programming came from video game roots.
Man, I was hooked, from then on I would have trouble with my body weight, because I would prefer to sit in front of the TRS-80, Atari, IBM PC AT, Beltron, Commodore 64, Nintendo, Sega Genesis, PlayStation, N64, PlayStation 2 than do other stuff. I mean sure I played sports, and did all kinds of other stuff, but sometimes it was a battle to pull myself from playing [*River City Ransom* ](http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/rcr.htm) one more time, "This time I'll win without buying the cowboy boots!"
Anyway, since then I have gotten degree's in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, have taken numerous programming courses, have done programming professionally, and have always thought of doing game programming, but never had the guts to follow through. Always doing what other people thought was a more viable means of making money. But hell, I have a day job. I get paid that way, if I am going to do side work, that may eventually become a way to get paid, I need to do something I have passion for.
And video games are that passion. So yeah, add me to the list of all the geeky wanna-be's who tried this. Because I am trying. My goal is to have something playable by the end of September, and hopefully sooner. And yeah I am going to the dark side to do this, because if I do want to eventually make some money on this, I need to maximize that chance. I am going to try and do this in C# with DirectX on windows.
*GASP*! I thought you hated windows?! I thought you were mister Linux. Well I got news for you, to quote a lovable scoundrel, "Look, I ain't in this for your revolution. ... I expect to be well paid. I'm in it for the money."
So I start today, actually I started about 3 days ago, but I publically start today. So watch this space, for the next revolution in gaming. :)