The Indie Game Dev Time Budget

Ah yes, the ancient stone tablet IDE. Because nothing says "I'm a serious developer" like carving your collision detection algorithms into limestone. Modern IDEs with their "syntax highlighting" and "error detection" are clearly for the weak. Real programmers chisel their bugs directly into rock so they're permanent, just like their technical debt.

Game dev discovers the ancient marketing algorithm: if everyone you know wishlists your game, and everyone THEY know does the same, you'll achieve exponential growth until the entire planet owns your indie platformer. It's foolproof math, really. Just need your mom, her book club, their extended families, and approximately 8.2 billion strangers to click one button. The cat's expression perfectly captures that moment when you realize your "viral marketing strategy" requires solving a recursive function where the base case is "literally everyone on Earth." Fun fact: Steam wishlists actually DO help with visibility in their algorithm, but the platform has around 120 million active users, not 8.2 billion. So you'd need to convince every human, including uncontacted tribes and newborns, to create Steam accounts first. Priorities.

The skeleton weightlifter speaks to the eternal cycle of developer optimism! You start each weekend thinking "This is it—I'm finally going to finish that side project!" Then reality hits: 48 hours later, you've got another GitHub repo gathering digital dust. It's the dev equivalent of buying gym equipment that becomes an expensive clothes hanger. The real workout was the mental gymnastics we performed convincing ourselves we'd actually complete something this time.

That awkward handshake when Epic Games Store is profusely thanking you for a purchase you never made while you're just there to snag that free weekly game. It's like getting a formal "Thank you for your business" email after using a 100% discount coupon. The client-server relationship has never been more uncomfortably one-sided!

The meme shows John Carmack (legendary DOOM creator) wearing an Oculus VR headset with a valve on his glasses, while someone mocks his C programming style. What they don't realize is that Carmack's procedural "functions only" approach created one of the most influential games ever while modern devs are still arguing about design patterns and class hierarchies. Sure, laugh at the lack of OOP while he's over there revolutionizing an entire industry with "just functions." Classic case of a junior dev criticizing senior code they don't understand yet.

When your code crashes so hard it burns the image of Arthur Morgan into your TV. That's not a bug, that's a $444 feature. At least now you have a permanent companion to judge your spaghetti code with that signature cowboy disappointment. Still cheaper than therapy for most developers.