Tue
03
Jun 2014

31 May - 1 June I've been in Warsaw on Pixel Heaven. As I haven't been on previous edition, I didn't really know what to expect. Timetable was full of various activities - lectures, competitions or just opportunities to play some games. Would it be only about retro games, or also modern games? Only about indie games, or AAA games too? Is it more for gamers, or for professional game developers? What about demoscene? Either way, I decided to go there.

I'm not really into these retro platforms, so I planned to go listen to lectures about indie game development. I've seen and heard many interesting stuff there, like Adrian Chmielarz from The Astronauts presenting their game - The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - for the first time!

But as it turned out, I met so many interesting people there (some of them I haven't seen for years) that I've spent most of the time talking with someone :) It's a coincidence that just recently I've heard stories of several people who work for many (some more than 10) years in just one company. Very often that's their first job after graduating university. They speak with confidence like they know a lot about doing career. Surely after all these years they were promoted many times. But at same time, I think sometimes such people preceive possibilities and limitations of their job as something obvious, its rules as something critically important, like it was whole world. I don't think it's good attitude and I want to avoid that.

On the other hand, noone can try in his life every possibility in terms of work and career. For example, someone who already has a house and spouse and children and mortgage many not be willing to move to different city or country or try to make his living from doing a startup or indie gamedev studio. That's why I think it's so important to talk to many different people and hear their stories. Knowing how working for some other company looks like, whether your competition or in completely different business, or how totally different may someone's work and lifestyle be (e.g. freelancing, working from home, being a consultant, traveling to different countries to do different projects, making a startup) is mind-expanding because it makes you think about your own career with all its pros and cons in the context of bigger picture of what's possible.

Back to the Pixel Heaven, I recommend this party to anyone who is interested in either retro games or indie games. There is a lot of things to do all the time so noone should be bored.

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