The “tech” in thePadlockesTech

JULY 28th, 2026

It’s the end of the month (roughly) and 17 days since my last blog post (exactly). I’ve done some reflecting.

I have a serious love/hate relationship with game development. Most game developers do.

There is a handful of successful indie devs that have made 20-100 games and got that one special moment where everything they did makes sense and people think it is an overnight success.

There are AAA game devs who work as a part of a machine, churning out a variation of games. Sometimes high quality, sometimes low.

And then there are people like me. Trying to make it in either industry.

I’ve worked solo and on teams. I’ve done Design & Development, and I’ve done Art & Marketing. The game industry has chewed me up. I think now is the time for it to spit me out…

If you’ve followed my youTube channel, you know where this is going. Once again, I’m done with game development. Let me explain why it is this time.

I want to work on my own. I didn’t really enjoy working on teams for game dev. A lot of the “too many chefs” situation. And no one wants to take responsibility when things fail. It’s a very immature industry.

Working on my own is a lot of work. I want to make games that are like 25% of what The Legend of Zelda would be. That’s still…a tremendous amount of work for a solo dev. And, I can only somewhat come up with my own mechanics. Mostly in Blueprints, too. Last month I made so much progress on my game in Blueprints I thought I’d be able to finish it. But, then I thought, what if I made this wrong somewhere and it will be buggy and fail? So I switched to C++. It feels more efficient but it doesn’t look as good as what I had in BPs…

Game dev is hard. Unfathomly hard, with no promise of success. I think that was the main thing I learned from my first game. It is what is keeping me from doing more than 3 months of development on a single game for fear of failure. I don’t want to put so much time into something that gives me net 0 or negative results. So, once again, I’m done….

So, what will I be doing??

Well, thePadlockesTech was never supposed to just be games. I wanted to do web, IT, security, hardware, robotics, things like that. The name means secure technology, safe technology.

I’m not completely sure where I will go from here. For now, I’m taking a break from it all. I have my eye on Professor Messer’s A+ Course to get a hand in IT. I live in Dallas after all, we do have game dev companies, but we are no California or even Austin. But we do have big IT needs. Plus I don’t intend to move…

I might go that route, just learn more about IT, maybe get my A+, Network+ and Security+. Which might make sense, because everyone is chasing after Software Engineering and Game Development. It is crowded! While IT is in need of workers.

I’m going to miss making games, and knowing me, I might end up trying it again. But, for now, I’m taking a break. I might stream some game play, maybe even myself doing the courses on IT, but making the game and all that comes with it? I’m not so sure.

I feel lighter just thinking about it. I can say I already made a game mostly on my own. But, as I get older, I really need to figure out how to sustain my life. In another universe, I’m still a teen and making his 3rd game already, but in this one, I’m a little older and need to think more practically.

Ask for you, my readers. If you are still young, with no debts, no children, no responsibility, by all means, try to make some games! Don’t go drinking your life away, or partying with selfish people. Get a business started and make a name for yourself right away. If you are older, hopefully you’ve done this already, but if you did the latter and you have responsbilities now, it is time to put your nose to the grind stone and get to work. You don’t want to have nothing to show once you are done. Unless your goal is to party all the time and do nothing else, which is perfectly reasonable if you can pull it off. But, not many people can.

That’s my reflection for this month! Thank you for rocking with me, yall. Don’t forget to get it and protect it, and I will see yall next time.