Garrett Conn

I made a resolution back on 1/6/25 to try to "Spend a proportional amount of time playing games as making games" during the year. Although that resolution is awkwardly phrased, I appreciate my past self’s wording.

Roughly 8 percent of all hobby time was spent on game development. Which technically, a thousand percent, fits the definition of a proportion. It’s definitely a number and has a relation to a whole. No doubt. Obviously, not to lie to you, or myself.

The idea was to make it 50/50.

I used the Clockify app to track what I was doing when I had a stretch of time to myself that I expected to exceed 15 minutes. I then imported that into a Supabase database table to get it to look nice and appear here.

The general rule I followed was to start the timer when I expected myself to concentrate fully on one of these categories, so time playing a game with family - or futzing on my phone (game or not) were not included.

At the start it seemed pretty rare that I had a solid chunk of uninterrupted time with work, family, and other general life tasks. Tracking all this gives me an idea of the actual time I have on my hands. It was fun putting this all together. So now I know I have about 60 hours a month at my disposal - doesn't seem like a lot considering I slept or worked for 400 hours per month.

Most of this time was tracked while on a bus commuting back and forth to Boston. The bulk of the gaming time is on the Steam Deck which I primarily play during my commute. This is my main time now that I have to spend as I wish. However, there are some complications that arise from this - the bus is shaky, it can be cramped. I don't know exactly how much was bus dungeon time.

It is difficult to want to whip out a laptop and do game development. Especially after a full day in front of another laptop doing other types of development.

Development is kind of a weird word, in that it doesn't really express what a person is actually doing. When someone walks into a room, hardly ever does someone say, "I'm developing."

What it really is, is facing some unknown technical thing, doubting your ability to tackle even the smallest solution, and proceeding to clack away on a computer trying to convince it to do something. A bit of a tidal wave battle - just isn't easily dealt with on a bus.

What is crazy is the moment you think about making a game it fractals out to all these other disciplines - code, music, art, mechanics. It's just a terribly difficult thing to do - especially when you have the option of just playing a game where someone already did that part.

What is easy, and can keep your brain from shrieking, is playing around, making a little guy jump, or make a choice to inflate big number go up up up.

Around 130 hours this year, or 4 days were spent on game dev, coding, art, or other creative pursuits. Honestly, it’s less than I was hoping for, but it’s a 130 hours I hadn’t spent before.

So, I didn't really hit the goal - but I'm glad at least I had a reminder throughout the year to mix up my focus.

There is no shame in a hobby - and no shame in a hobby you can do on a commute.

I can look at these numbers and feel guilty that I’ve spent about 20 days this past year playing video games. 20 days - that’s a lot! But, I really don’t, it’s what I enjoy doing. If it was reading a book - I bet you'd be fine with it.

I'll refine the goal this year. Playing games 50% - everything else should sum up to 50%. I'm going to throw in a "Movement" category to try to remain an ambulatory human being for as long as I can. Witcher 4 isn't going to play itself after all. This will help pad the non gaming numbers and cheat the game that I just set up. Also, looking forward to dipping more into playing the piano since we got one in the living room now. I should probably read a book or two, as well.