A fitting end to a disastrous year

Hey everybody!

GoV 1.0.5 is now done and in early access (see previous post)... over a week late, barely 9 hours before the year ends in my timezone.
Oh well, better late than never, I think.

So yeah, although I've already gone through multiple internal crises between 2022-2024 already, more than what might've been visible on the outside (except for the occasional slow/small updates), this year was definitely the one where the cracks became visible to everyone, with the HHR cancellation as the "climax".

I could write a whole essay about the how and why, and to a degree I've already done so related to HHR.

I'll repeat some of what I said before, it's not just one issue, but a combination, meaning there's no easy solution:

IMO, at this rate, my country (well, not just mine) might get nuked as early as 2027.
And the thought scares me sh*tless and depresses me, to a point that on some days I can't get anything done, because everything feels so pointless.
(I don't feel like talking about it due to how charged and controversial politics are in general nowadays, but let's just say IMO the risk is higher than what many people want to accept, and a lot of people are in denial or believe the wrong side [the likely attacker] and blame the wrong side [our own]. Classic Stockholm syndrome on a bigger scale.)
My cognitive abilities are in decline.
My memory in particular has gotten way worse over the past 3-4 years, and it was never that good to begin with.
No idea if it's long/post-COVID (had it in May 2022), early dementia, or simply the combo of aging, lack of exercise and worsening depression/burn-out, but in any case, I'm gradually getting worse and worse at focusing and remembering things, which is making my dev efforts more and more challenging.
I have some other health issues that suggest I might not get that much older, regardless of the previous 2 points.
I've outgrown the kinks I so far covered in my games.

This last point is actually a huge problem, one that I've tried to ignore for too long, and one reason why the last 2 years have gone rather poorly for me.

There used to be 4 main reasons why making 18+ games was fun for me:
- Creating hot girl models,
- making hot scenes with them,
- embedding those in a nice, fun story,
- and making money doing all that.

But now,
- money is no longer a motivation for me, because it feels the end is near
- the story I cared about most would take too long to make (HHR)
- GoV had no story,
- the scenes and situations found in my current/previous games and similar games have largely grown stale to me, and creating "more of the same boring stuff" has become such a tedious, demotivating task, that I massively struggle to get anything done at all.

In short, I'm no longer capable of making relatively vanilla stuff at any acceptable pace.
My brain is so tired of it, that it just shuts down or goes into procrastination/distraction mode every time I have to make a scene I find boring to make.
Scenes that should objectively take 2-3 hours to make at most, sometimes take me 2-3 days and drain me of all energy in the process.

What used to work, is just not working anymore.

So yeah, it's ultimately down to 2 choices for next year:

1) From now on, do only stuff that still excites me enough to keep going, even if many of you may not enjoy most of it,
2) give up for good, and end my developer career.

...That being said, if I chose 2), everybody would lose.
With option 1), I hope to have fun making games again, and at least some of you will still get something they enjoy.
And who knows, maybe there'll be enough vanilla content that some of the rest will still somewhat enjoy it, too.

Anyway, once GoV's early access ends for good, I'll pause billing for another month, afterwards I'll hopefully have something to show for.

But more importantly for today:

I wish you a Happy New Year!
Make sure to celebrate it and enjoy life as much as you can; it's precisely when life is hard and the world is in turmoil that you need to defy all that by having fun whenever you can.

In 2026, I'll try to do what I still can to contribute to that.

Cheers,

~OnionCuttingNinja

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