Every time I manage to go to GDC I have the time of my life.

This year I attended the conference as an attendee of the Amplifying New Voices program, which was an honour to be accepted to and may have been the best thing to happen to me over the week. I worked with industry veterans who were thrilled to lay themselves out and provide us with everything that they could in order to diversify games. I feel like, even since GDC 2015, the conference has become more colourful and effective at welcoming PoC, women, and people of gender and sexual diversities. There are many growing pains in the industry that reflect the growing pains of the culture around us, but I think that we’ve made some progress. Let’s keep moving forward!

I can’t even begin to talk about all of the amazing things I experienced this year, but it did help me to decide what to do with myself in my career. I realize now that I’ve lacked focus. While my passion has always been games, the work I’ve done hasn’t always reflected as much. While my blog is been about games and discussing them, my life choices have not always done the same.

In 2016 I submitted a lot of job applications toward game companies for illustration and writing work. At the same time I spent a lot of energy and consideration applying for comics jobs and anthology submissions. At the end of the year I was declined work for what would have been a lucrative game writing job, which led to me having a minor crisis about what I’m doing with my life.

I think my dilemma was in seeing how webcomposites like Those Without Shadows were typically understood as being webcomics. That may have been the case because of those authors’ networks being webcomic networks. This has resulted in me trying to get work in anthologies and comics with few credentials aside from my fanwork. I don’t have much income, so I’d just apply for anything. In retrospect this took a lot of time and energy away from more relevant jobs and my personal projects.

This is something I’m not going to do anymore.

This doesn’t mean my comic career is over, I’m just going to take heart behind the support networks that I’ve recieved in the game industry. I will no longer work hard on applications to anthologies for comics that I haven’t been explicitly invited to. (Fancomics and zines are still on the table though, because I love them.)

I feel good about taking this new direction. I hope you are all looking forward to it, too!