I am an individual dragon loving nobody on the internet who enjoys playing games, making 3d models, rigging/animating, and game development.(when I have the mental energy to do so...) as a millenial who is surfing the modern web, the experience I have with todays standards is poor. the character and uniqueness of sites has died. Everything has become coporate ads and templates. I despise the modern web. because of this, I am funneled into very few niche corners of the web that serve to entertain me. youtube, twitch, twitter/x, telegram, some anime sites, and a comic site are all I tend to spend my time surfing during my days idling. If I deign to learn anything, its either youtube, or stack overflow/reddit. ugh. I'm glad to see there are sites and communites out there like this to bring the soul back to the internet.
Sappy feelings aside, I am a 34 year old introverted idiot who struggles to keep up with the world and current tech as I am currently jobless, looking for work, but cannot get a job, as I have ZERO work history in corporate tech land to get anyone to look my way. Doesn't help that my entire spine is fused, and I can't do physical labor work anymore. (which is pretty much 90% of the market atm)
I have a bearded dragon named Luigi, I adopted off my nephew years ago. Luigi is now 5 years old, and is happily hanging out with me as I do... anything really. He's a chill lil dragon.
My biggest struggle with working on anything, is my ADHD, I have no issue starting a project/idea, but I can never seem to complete the though/project. I can get the bigger picture, but struggle with details, unless for some reason the details are interesting, and I end up hyperfixating on them for weeks on end as I plow through thing after thing as a result. 'Tis a curse and a blessing sometimes. I can program, model, rig, animate, yet without a reference, I fall flat on anything aesthetically good looking, as I suffer from Aphantasia. Yeah, a creator with mental blindness... try figuring that one out...
If I could manage to keep my energy for productivity high enough to actually be productive on a whim, I'm certain I'd have so many things to show you all. Alas, my hoard of fun things is... nearly nonexistant.
My fave color scheme is gold and royal purple, as it fits my dragon sona's theme. as a child I adored dragons, thinking they were the coolest thing I could cling to other than pokemon. In my early years, I was obsessed with pokemon, I mean, who wasn't during 1st gen? but as the years went on, my love for the franchise didn't waver, yet everyone else around me dropped it like some weird fad. I was alone in my likes, alienated from my friend group, ousted as the weirdo. So I clung to the only other thing that I thought nobody would deny is awesome... dragons of course! Buuut, as all us 90's school survivors know, kids are brutal. Even with my obsession shifted to something I genuinely enjoyed, it was difficult to find anyone locally who shared my passion for any one thing. So I stopped looking for connections pretty early on, which only served to harden my introversion tendencies.
I spent many years on the internet, playing old school runescape (before it was "oldschool"), and secondlife, before they added mesh imports, and everything was just "prims" smashed together. I also discovered maplestory back then, and some other chinese games, hosted on an old launcher named "ijji" which was were I learned about "gunz the duel". That game brought out my competative pvp streak, since that game actually rewarded skill, and not just pay to win/ gacha crap you see nowadays. then there was vindictus. I fell in love with that game. grindy AF, but hell, if you knew what you were doing, you could solo EVERYTHING and feel amazing for pulling it off. until they added "stamina"... you can't play after x amount of time, stop playing the game so you can come back the next day and play a little more. I ABHORE this mechanic. for every game developer reading this... take this to heart...
I do not understand the point of forcing your players to stop playing your game. At all...
Anyway, Long after those days, highschool happened, and I got into World of Warcraft during the late burning cruisade days. By the time I maxed 1 character and started getting ready to raid, the next expansion came out, and I enjoyed wasting my years away until mists. After mists, I only ever came back to play classic, and then after I maxed that, it got... hella toxic. So now comes the current day, stuck in a hell of games that just aren't the same without having friends to share it with, or anyone you KNOW locally who shares the same time slot as you, or a similar interest in the game to actually enjoy playing together... Needless to say MMO's just aren't the same anymore. So I'm left with the vast array of brain dead single player slop like incremental or survivor style experiences to while away my time, since I just can't get behind any actual story driven rpgs anymore since modern day AAA is ASS. I have a large steam library of single player games, but the only games I truely spend time playing anymore are Monster hunter, which has hit the same problem as MMO's... its ok alone, but I want people I know, to play it with... I can only play so many zeldas, so many castlevanias, so many megamans, so many marios before I break. I want to enjoy games, like I used to, like I enjoyed exploring the internet surfing through newgrounds, or ebaums world or stick death theatre. (among other random sites)
I've tried to keep myself sane over the many years of not having more than 2 friends at any given time, via gaming, learning some hobby like chainmaille, webdevelopment, game design, 3d modelling, drawing, animating... Yet, Still to this day, my 'love' for games and dragons is the only thing keeping me going. I can never reach the point of nerd-dom to where I can info dump the ever loving crap about dragons and lore and game facts for weeks on end, no. I just have a deep seated need to observe and consume dragon related media/content. I just think they're neat. But as a child, I was always asked "what do you wanna be when you grow up?", I had no clue what options there were, beacause I was holed away in my fantasy land to keep myself sane from all the bullying. They only ever said 3 options, and being the dumb shit I was back then, thought police, fireman, or doctor were the only things we COULD be, I picked "fireman, because I like fire". but since my older brother came home with an N64 with super mario 64 one day, my fascination with thinking about how games work and if I could make something myself, began to grow, deep in the back of my mind.
So now, my life long goal is to make and sell at least ONE best selling game of the year, and I can die happy. Though without anyone to actually help me get to that point... this goal is more of a pipe dream. No matter how much I attempt to do my "best" to work on a project, all I get is bombarded with "why?" or "will this really even make you money?" these are questions that only serve to prove that the person who asked this, has no interest in my progress, no interest in supporting my goal, no desire to understand. (which is strange, because generally that's exactly the purpose of asking "why" in the first place...) but in the context of when they ask this, it's never been genuine interest from the context of the conversation, it's always more of a dismissive complaint rather than a question. It hurts more than you would know when your own family is the one hittng you with this. Sadly none of my "friends" cared enough for it to really show interest to begin with other than just "hey lets play this game or that game."
If you got this far, sorry for dumping my "life recap" on ya. But also, thanks. It means you cared enough to read this much about me. I can find some solace in that much at least.