The director's cut

As a teenager, I wanted to make movies. Not "watch a lot of movies and have opinions". Actually be a filmmaker. I dreamt about it the way only a teenager can: with total confidence and zero budget.

Then programming walked onto the set and stole the lead role. (Thank you, parents, for my first computer. You have no idea what you started.) I fell for it completely, chose computer science, and made it my career.

But the love for film and storytelling never left. It just moved to the back of my brain, where it has been living rent-free ever since. Whenever I got a chance, in college and later at work, I'd sneak in and do at least a little something on the creative side.

Some people have a side hustle. I had a side longing.

I've been gaming since the day I got my own computer.

And then, during the hardest parts of my life, games kept me going. I laughed in them. I cried in them. I struggled in them, and somehow that made the struggling outside a little easier.

Nobody warns you that on some of your worst days, the thing that shows up for you might be a video game.

Lately a thought kept coming back. Those stories I once imagined for the big screen? What if they became games?

Games that feel like they belong to every common person. Less "chosen one saves the galaxy", more "regular human tries to get through the week". Honestly, the harder difficulty setting.

Then covid happened. Then AI happened. Life slowed down. Work slowed down.

And for the first time, I had the two things I'd been missing for years: time, and the kind of help I never had. Not the inciting incident any screenwriter would pitch, but here we are.