This Is What Studying Game Theory As A Gamedev Feels

Oh. My. GOD. The ABSOLUTE POWER TRIP when you make even the TINIEST thing work in Scratch! 💅 Suddenly you're not just a beginner coder - you're a TECH OVERLORD surrounded by your empire of monitors, ready to hack the Pentagon with your block-based programming skills! The way this character is DROWNING in hardware after making what's probably just a cat sprite move two pixels to the right is the most accurate representation of beginner programmer ego I've ever witnessed. We go from "I figured out how to use an if-statement" to "I am basically Tony Stark" in 0.2 seconds flat!

The AUDACITY of Oblivion to just SIT THERE, looking all seductive while I'm trying to cram an entire semester's worth of code into my brain! 💀 The eternal struggle of every programmer – trying to focus on studying while that video game is basically SCREAMING your name from across the room. "Hey, remember all those side quests you never finished? Those NPCs are STILL waiting for you!" Meanwhile, my final exam is tomorrow and I haven't even figured out how to exit Vim yet. Priorities? WHAT PRIORITIES?!

PC gamers and the Epic Games Store have a relationship that can only be described as "transactional at best." You open it once a week to claim your free game like you're collecting coupons at a grocery store, then immediately close it and pretend it doesn't exist. The Epic launcher sits there in your taskbar, wondering if it'll ever experience the warmth of human interaction again. Spoiler alert: it won't. Not until next Thursday when they're giving away another indie game you'll add to your library of 47 unplayed titles. Steam stays open 24/7 like a loyal golden retriever, but Epic? That's the friend you only text when you need something. And honestly, Epic knows what they signed up for.

Behold, the pinnacle of game development: storing your entire storyline in a global array and using hardcoded indices to track plot points. Because who needs databases or state machines when you can just check if storyline_array[367] == 1 to determine if you've already done something? The real masterpiece is using instance_destroy() as your universal solution. Lunch with Fern? Destroy the instance. Already completed a task? Destroy the instance. Relationship problems? You guessed it— instance_destroy() . Meanwhile, poor Rhode gets the "Do Nothing" treatment. Clearly the developer's favorite character won the popularity contest. This code is basically the digital equivalent of writing your novel's plot points on sticky notes, scattering them across the floor, and numbering them randomly.

Nothing captures the soul of a developer like spending $2,000 on a gaming rig, $500 on monitors with cracked Windows wallpapers, $150 on an ergonomic chair... and then sleeping on a $20 air mattress. The code must flow, but apparently so must back pain. Ten years in the industry and I've seen this setup in at least three different apartments of junior devs who just got their first big paycheck. Who needs a proper bed when you've got 144Hz refresh rate and RGB lighting? Priorities, people!

The double whammy of tech obsolescence. First panel: Microsoft announcing Windows 10 EOL (End of Life) in October? Meh, whatever. Second panel: Steam potentially killing game compatibility on Windows 10 just like they did with Windows 7? Now you have my attention! It's the classic tech cycle - not the official EOL that forces upgrades, but when your games stop working. Twenty years in the industry and the only constant is companies finding new ways to make your perfectly functional setup obsolete. Death, taxes, and forced OS upgrades - the holy trinity of inevitable pain.