The Indie Game Magazine September 2014 | Issue 41 | Page 12

very much an eye opener when you start doing
that. I’d hate to think of how much Arnthak “owes”
me. Scary.
The next project is essentially done but needs
some more content, but that’s sitting on about 16
hours as well, which is great.
IGM: What challenges did you face (or are you
facing) with game development, if any?
Kale: I’m... very privileged in most regards. I’m
white, male & middle aged (awww, I’m middle
aged now. Damn), so I don’t face any of the
horrible “women shouldn’t be doing gamedev”
crap I see other devs facing. So, from that perspective, I do ok. The challenges I’ve faced have been mostly
internal: Depression, anxiety, burn out, loss and need to retrain skills (I did a lot of coding in University, but
had forgotten how to do so by the time I got back into gamedev).
Depression is a really heavy hitter. For me, it was a very subtle thing that I didn’t realize the extent of until
it was a significant problem - one evening I ended up in the fetal position crying on my bathroom floor for
a really small thing (I lost an hour’s work). I’d been working at a company that had a horrendous corporate
culture, doing stupid amounts of hours for them and on Arnthak, and it was just a path to ruin. It wasn’t until
I was made redundant and got therapy that I started to come back. It’s about a year later, and I still don’t feel
like I’m 100% here.
Impostor syndrome can really get to you as well, at times, so that factors into the above three things too.
Some days, they just sit and cycle through your head.
Luckily, I have this super strong support network. I’d fight to the death for you all if necessary. If you’re
out there and have problems with \