Hey guys, itās been quite a while since I posted something here. Despite being pretty silent, weāve still been working on making games. I didnāt really update a lot on the social media since the beginning of this year. This is partially because our current project, at this stage, is not ready to be shown to the public yet, but the main reason is that unfortunately, my friend and only game dev teammate (he coded almost every game I designed), Matt, has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.
Matt and I have met way back in 2011 during Steamās winter sale event called āThe Great Gift Pileā. He randomly added me on steam, offering me a series of unreasonable trades. After refusing all of his ridiculous offers, I was about to delete him from my friends list, but then he asked me not to. He told me that he has read some of my game reviews and thought that we shared a similar perspective when it comes to video games.
Matt then asked me what I was doing at the time, so I told him that I was attempting to make an indie game with a IRL friend of mine. Matt wanted to join in. Matt was actually a lost spirit. He quit his college in order to become a gamedev, but then he was sort of lost as to what to do. So he just practiced his programming and art hoping that one day, he can make a game all by himself. I refused his offer, but few months later, my IRL friend had to leave due to financial concerns. Thatās when I remembered about Matt and asked him to join me as a programmer.
After that, we were engaged in game development almost everyday since then. At first, I was worried because I live in America, and Matt lives in Slovenia. We have never even seen each otherās faces. So I was concerned he would one day get demotivated and silently vanish like how most wannabe devs do. However, this never happened. No matter how difficult my demands were, and no matter how much I criticized his mistakes, Matt was always there to make something with me. He actually believed in me- a guy he has never seen, and worked with me for almost 4 years. When we started, we didnāt know that much about gamedev, but through all the suffering and pain, we learned a great deal.
Around last Christmas, we started a new project that has yet to be announced anywhere. It was Mattās favorite project so far. I was also confident in my own design of it. We showed some gifs and video clips to few of the friends we knew, and they were all excited about it. Then Matt started telling me about how he is occasionally suffering from random muscle spasms and nausea. After some diagnosis, it was made clear that he was suffering a brain tumor. Having a friend who survived easily from brain tumor, I wasnāt as worried. However, few days later Matt came to me and said itās a malignant tumor. I did some research and as I learned more, I felt something shattering in my mind. The survival rate of malignant brain tumor is around 47% at best even after a successful surgery, and thatās the most optimistic estimate. In most cases, the survival rate seems to be a lot lower.
I asked Matt what he wants to do until his surgery. I was totally ready to accept if he were to say āI will stop making games and try to do things I couldnāt do until now. I just want to enjoy my life.ā, but then Matt just said:
āWell, what else? Gamedev is the only choice hereā. I told Matt that if he wanted to stop, Iād understand, but he insisted that he wanted to keep going. He has been hard at work while also taking some medication since then.
Mattās surgery is scheduled to be around next Tuesday. I wasnāt sure if I should share this to the public, so Iāve discussed with Matt to see if itās okay with him. I think it would be nice for Matt to know before the surgery that there are people who want him to survive. He needs to know that some people are waiting for the game he had worked on to be released.
Thank for reading. Letās all hope that he will survive through this. If you want to send a personal message to Matt, his tumblr is http://mattsuperdev.tumblr.com. Please reblog and comment on this post to show your support. He used to always complain to me how I usually get all the emails and notes while he almost got none. I want to at least do this for him before the surgery.
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
gummygunk
