Ary's Code

It was my first day at my university and I was late, I took the stairs and ran to the third floor, I was sweating everyone was looking at me for a brief moment. I got to the benches behind, took some deep breaths and I could see a set of questions on the projector, just to get induced by another surge of anxiety.

“What’s your name?”
“What is your professional goal”
“Why did you choose CSE?”
“Which programming Languages do you know already? At what level?”

My mind went blank. I need to figure out some response before he comes to me as if it was the end of the world for me. Fortunately, I know the spotlight effect and optimistic nihilism( that nothing matters in this world after heat death).

When my turn came I was mumbling because the questionnaire is an introvert’s nightmare for someone like me.
“My name is Aryan”
I looked at the slides and I don’t know why but I never tried to be unique but there I was saying this…

“I want to become an indie game developer”, I thought he’d ask something to elaborate on that but he didn’t and then I said, “I already know a little bit of C, Python, and C#.”

Which wasn’t a lie because I DID learn C# from w3schools.

The reason I wanted to become an indie game developer is solely because of my love for pixel games and unique games that aren’t just battle royale or very high-consuming graphics games and niches so specific that I have to play them before I know it. There’s a beauty in pixel games that I think not a whole lot of people see.

The other reason is that I wanted to educate people more about the plants and make engaging games that help people enjoy not only the in-game content but also their real-world counterparts. I want to help them by making people notice about plants that surround them. I want to help people to get rid of plant blindness.

He did not ask anything after that and moved to the next guy who says to make an entire new internet and that’s when he corrected that “It’s hard for people to go into a new environment, but you can modify it.”
Either he thinks I don’t know why am I even being in here or game development isn’t his expertise.

After questioning every student individually he returns to his desk and says “If you don’t have any professional goal at the moment it is absolutely fine, but that’s one of the primary reasons people fail in CSE.” And then he changed the slides and carried on talking about how his class was going to operate.

To which I was in my head “I wanted to be a botanist all my life, then I wanted to become a mechanical engineer this year and now I want to become a game developer while all others want to become fancy stuffs I don’t even know the profession of” followed by the realization “HOW DID I ENDED UP HERE?!”.

Although I find game development a fun job with all the codes and stuff. Personally finding bugs in code seems a game of itself for me as I know I have a mentor to push my limits but I also acknowledge that things will be HARD for this path. I wanted to join clubs but I guess I will do it the next semester. Either Hackathons to see my limit in programming or Entrepreneurial clubs will help me gather the idea of marketing. I also need to join the art clubs, but I will see about that later.

The reason I find the clubs mentioned above is because one, Hackathons are going to be the groundwork for the background of my yet-to-be-developed games and I will know where I am lacking. Secondly, Entrepreneurial clubs will teach or at least show the business side of publishing a game and how to handle the process. Thirdly, in the Art clubs, I’m heavily relying on the music part because music composing is another part of game-making that I need to master, and then Art which I got a leg up on because I have been making Art projects in my last year as a hobby. Which I would love to put up on the website.

Other than the trauma that was within my head when I was late on my first day in class it was probably the most important moment in my life if I hadn’t asked what I wanted to have as a professional goal I would have never said truly that I want to become an Indie game developer. I would have no direction in my life. The compass inside me aligned with what I really want in life.