tldr: I’m a 50-year-old Software Engineer who left my FAANG job on a sabbatical to build Outsider, a sci-fi narrative videogame.
I’ve always wanted to create a game.
I moved from Brazil to the US to work at Big Tech. After a successful career as an Engineering Manager, full of tireless customer focus, end-to-end mission alignment, and vibrant 360-degree feedback, I wanted to experience solo game development. Better than yet another performance review cycle, I thought.
While FAANG can be soul-crushing at times, I had a great manager and an amazing team. The pay and benefits were fantastic. I worked on a challenging problem that silently impacted millions. However, a dream is a dream, so I left my job in August 2024 to start my game company, backed by a supportive working wife and savings. Doing that at 50 isn’t how these stories usually go, but I had to cross that one off the bucket list.
I could write a whole book about the pros and cons of becoming a solo game developer, but I’ll just say this: don’t try it if you expect to make money. It’s one of the most irrational things for a profit-minded software engineer to do, bordering on insanity. Pretty much any other option, including creating a software startup, will pay better when adjusted for risk. The motivation must come from elsewhere.
That’s why I stopped caring about profits and decided to make the game I’ve always wanted to play. I no longer wanted to live in a world without my game in it, and that kept me going through the thick and thin.
You could call my game an “interactive book with choices and a metapuzzle”, similar to Kit Williams’ fascinating Masquerade Puzzle Hunt classic, but with an optional puzzle. The game’s story revolves around an extraterrestrial who reaches out to a member of the hacker community through online chat. It sounds silly, but there’s a lot of depth and tech culture in it, including references to retro gaming, demoscene, BBSs, software piracy, cryptography and more. It’s really, pardon the cliché, a love letter to the tech community.
The development work was a lot of fun, but often brutally challenging. I maintained a 35-hour workweek to avoid early burnout, though I still had crunch stretches to meet my own deadlines. By the end, I was completely exhausted.
Writing, for instance, was much harder than I imagined. While I’ve written stories throughout my whole life, including an unpublished novella, tackling a 100K+ word novel in my second language was no walk in the park. I used AI extensively for grammar checking and research, but there’s not a single line in this game written by AI. I’m an AI enthusiast, but “AI fiction” is simply terrible.
Besides the story, I also wrote all the code and created most of its art, which relied on some external assets. I’m not particularly skilled at art, but years of hobby use of Blender and Photoshop/Affinity have helped me a great deal. As an amateur musician, I composed the game’s main theme and recorded two additional songs, including a rendition of Bach/Gounod’s Ave Maria. The rest of the soundtrack features hand-picked CC-BY works created by other artists, so I have shared my own songs under the same license.
I also “hired” my 15-year-old high schooler as an apprentice. He wants to study CS, so that was a great opportunity to show him the ropes. He was very helpful and worked one to two hours per week on odd jobs, as most interns do. I was a tough but compassionate boss, and he learned a good deal about software projects. He also worked as an advisor (“this is cringe, dad!”) and gave me his unique Gen-Z perspective.
Most of my playtesters were previous coworkers or previous direct reports. With so many boss horror stories out there, being able to rely on them was incredibly rewarding. These awesome folks read over 100K words just for a ’thank you’ and, if the rumors are true, story cameos. That’s something you can’t get with your American Express card.
I’m still unsure about my next steps. I’m considering returning to Big Tech, but the job market seems to be tough right now. Going back to income security would be nice, but I would have to partially discard the many new skills I’ve learned during Outsider’s development. Perhaps the sweet spot lies in developing a more market-focused second game. Despite the low pay, game development offers a unique blend of skills that can’t be found elsewhere in the industry. Whatever I decide, I hope to announce it to my mailing list and Discord server in the next several weeks.
If you are into science fiction, you may enjoy Outsider. This is a labor of love. I threw everything I liked into a cauldron and tweaked the seasoning until it tasted just right. It features plenty of geek humor and adventure, while also offering a multilayered story that explores serious topics, including religion, philosophy, history, and more. The metapuzzle, although optional, is quite challenging and remains unsolved as of November 12, 2025.
If you decide to support Outsider, thank you! However, more important than buying the game, I’d love to see you playing it. Bringing joy to others is why I did this, after all.