NEW ZEALAND

Let me tell you about what was happening in Timaru, New Zealand, 2007.
I was 7 years old, and for whatever reason I found an old skateboard found in dads garage and decided I wanted to learn to skate. I used my dads BlackBerry phone to watch YouTube tutorials. Learning to skate was one of the first things I ever did in my life that gave me a strong sense of individuality, I didn't know it at 7 but skating has a huge positive impact on my self esteem and belief.

By the time I was 9, I had became quite good at it. I entered local skate competitions, spent weeks practicing my tricks and lines at the skatepark where the competition would be held. I knew everyone in the local skate community go. I was completely immersed in the world of skateboarding.

I was lucky enough to have a Dad who was into riding motorbikes, surfing and skating. My parents ran a store together called Riders HQ that sold motocross gear, surf gear, skateboards, skate shoes and clothes. I spent most of my time at the skatepark, but my parents skateshop was my home base a lot of the time where I'd hang out with my brother and friends. Upstairs there was a gaming room where we experienced some of the classic N64, PS1 and PS2 games.

Banjo Kazooie, Yoshi's Story, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, 1080° Snowboarding, Micro Machines 64, Top Gear Overdrive, Simpsons Hit & Run, Tony Hawk's Underground, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, Need for Speed: Carbon, Need for Speed: Underground 2, Burnout: Revenge, I could name so many more. One of the most exciting things for us was renting new games from the Video Ezy up the street.

AUSTRALIA

In 2011, there was a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, which we lived 2 hours away from. The earthquake happened around 1am, we awoke to our house shaking violently. Luckily our area wasn't majorly damaged, but for the rest of the year there was frequent, daily aftershocks, which freaked my mum out a bit. This influenced my parents decision to move our family to Australia, where there is less chance of earthquakes (but far more chance of floods and bushfires, I've come to learn). Australia also offered a lot more opportunity compared to New Zealand, but I think the real reason we left New Zealand was because my dad wanted some better waves to surf.

After moving to Australia around 2012, the world of skateboarding I was immersed in was suddenly gone. With no friends and a lot of time on my hands, I got heavily addicted to Minecraft (I had a Minecraft YouTube channel). It was a great creative outlet alongside Roblox which gave me some of my first experiences building worlds that other players could visit and explore. I soon developed an obession with learning to write code, I just thought it was cool. I started making 2D pixel-art games with the GameMaker Engine and made basic HTML websites for my game company, which I would constantly change the name of and create new logos for, even though I had no finished games. I loved the idea of having my own game studio and website, I think I also wanted to try impress my new friends at school.

FINDING GAME DEV

Around 15 years old (2015), I finally settled on a name for my game company: Kiwiforge. I started learning Unity because I wanted to make 3D games, my first project was a simple first person platformer. It was a hit at school, for a while, most the class was secretly playing my game in class when the teacher wasn't looking. I ended up submitting the game to Steam Greenlight and to my amazement, it was Greenlit by the community within a few months. I became insanely motivated to finish my game and started faking sick to get out of school so I could work on it all day. At 16, I released my first commercial game on Steam: Jumps. My game was met with overwhelmingly positive reviews and sold 200+ copies in the first month, 1000+ copies after a year and today its sold over 10,000 copies. This experience ignited my dream of making indie games for a living. I wasn't rich but I was making my own money as a 16 year old and I started dreaming bigger.

The momentum I had as a younger teenager slowed down in my final years of school. I became more focused on friends and partying. I continued making games but I didn't give it my full focus. Because I had some early success with Jumps, I wanted to out-do myself and make a bigger game. This led to me creating a number of large projects that I never finished. I went almost 7 years without releasing another game. But I never stopped learning, even though I didn't finish any projects during this time, I had built a massive portfolio for my age which helped me to land my first job in Games as a Junior Designer at Protostar Games in Brisbane, a mobile game focused studio founded by former Halfbrick devs Matt Knights and Dean Loades.

WORKING AT STUDIOS

I spent a little over a year working at Protostar and then got an offer to work at Toast Interactive, where I worked on their VR Platformer “Max Mustard“ for 9 months. During my short 2 years working in games, I got really frustrated with working full time on other peoples games well my projects gathered dust. So I decided to move back home with my parents and work a part time retail job so I would have more time to pursue my game dev business, Kiwiforge. This was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Late 2023, I was back home, working at Bunnings 3 days a week, with plenty of free time to dive back into working on my game projects. Pretty soon, I was a lot happier and healthier. I had lot of good experiences and learned a lot from the studios I worked at, but more importantly I became a lot less idealistic about what its like having a job in the games industry. I realised it's just another job. You get assigned tasks, you work for someone elses interest and you don't have much creative freedom. Also after spending the whole work week on the computer, it was basically impossible to work on my own games. I'm not saying I will never work in the games industry again, I certainly will. But for now, I have been creating my own games and becoming the best designer I can be so that I can earn more opportunities to collaborate with people in the future.

ART > BUSINESS

The video game industry was born in the 70s and 80s. So it's only been around 50 years since video games became a new medium and most of the people who pioneered the industry are still around today. We have only begun exploring the possibilities in games. These days, the games industry generates around $200 billion in revenue per year, more than Music and Films combined. About half the worlds population play some form of digital games, thanks to widespread smartphone and internet access.

There's a lot of things I don't like about the modern games industry. Games have always been a business... but the priorities of the big game companies today are aggressively focused on making money more than ever. Creating a special, memorable experience seems like less of a priority than ever before. I know I'm not alone in being nolstagic for the past, before the age of DLC, gambling, microtransactions and endless bugs, patches and updates. Every modern gaming console has become fundamentally worse with each generation. Everything is bloated and overcomplicated with too many features, ads and unnecessary content. I miss the simplicity of the older games and consoles.

These days most of the innovative games are made by indies. Most AAA games have become repetitive and boring, for the most part. There are now 7 COD Black Ops games. SEVEN. I enjoyed the first 2 games but I've just lost interest and had no idea that Black ops 4, 5 and 6 existed until I heard 7 was released.

I think about all the money that has been poured into AAA games that have flopped: $100,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 budgets. These games are built by massive teams of people who almost certainly have (or had) dreams of building more creative and innovative games. I like to imagine that if these absurd AAA budgets were invested into smaller, talented studios, you'd end up with far more great (and profitable) games. But maybe I'm being idealistic.

I could go on listing whats wrong with the new age of gaming, but I think you get the point. I'm always going hold gaming to the standards I grew up with, when most games were innovative and had a strong identity. I'm inspired by the games I grew up playing, like every other indie developer.

This is why I believe that indies are the heart of the games industry, most of us are doing this for the right reasons, because we love it.

INDIE GAMES

In the current age where the AAA games industry is painfully safe, indie games are a breath of fresh air. When I play indie games, I am reminded that there are so many brilliant, hardworking, creative people in the world.

In 2025, against all odds, indie games generated approximately $4.5 billion in revenue on Steam. Accounting for 25% of the total revenue that year. I will not be surprised when that percentage increases in the years to come.

THE FUTURE

With the widespread adoption of AI coding, I think we are bound to see a lot more creativity come into the field as the barrier to entry has been lowered for who can make games. In my own experience, it's certainly made development a lot easier for me, allowing me to make more ambitious projects.