Forward
On February 17th, 2025, my friend James Carlson (Jim) passed away just four days after his 50th birthday. Although Jim had many interests, one we shared, and I encouraged him on many occasions to cultivate, was Game Development.
The purpose of this post is to fondly recount the good times we’d shared, joking, plugging away at silly game ideas, and daydreaming about what it would be like to do this for a living…
I don’t think either of us really believed we’d make a career out of it… At best, I’d impart technical skills that might have helped him to escape the endless procession of entry-level, dead-end jobs he’d often lamented. At worst, it would have been a pleasant distraction.
In the Beginning…
“We should make him eat acorns!”
– James R. Carlson, 2/13/1975-2/17/2025
Jim and I met online in late 2014 when he logged on to an MMO I was active on to tell us that his brother had died in a car accident. I befriended Jim, and we eventually began corresponding over email. Later that year, Jim announced that he’d hit rock bottom and dreaded the new job he was starting at a Pizza and Fried Chicken buffet restaurant. We brainstormed other career ideas he might pursue, and after a couple of false starts, he decided to try his hand at blogging.
I created a website (www.porkcircus.com) for him, and for the next couple of weeks, Jim posted, and I edited (formatted, corrected spelling and grammar, etc.). Jim had a real talent for off-the-wall commentary that would give Matthew Inman a run for his money… For the next couple of weeks, we posted articles, recipes, [mis]quotes, and so on. I had a backlog of post ideas, kept a regular publishing schedule, and got a lot of enjoyment out of it for a brief while.
Unfortunately, Jim’s interest in the project waned within a couple of weeks, and his contributions only accounted for about 1/7th of the total posts, not including the half-dozen he’d started but never finished.
2016 was a tumultuous year for me. I worked 80 hours a week trying to shape up the Project Management Office of a corrupt Saudi solutions broker, but ultimately failed. Unable to find a new job, I took my savings and returned to the US. Unemployed and with nothing but time, I decided to try to teach myself game development in earnest. After completing the GPC (or at least as much as I could), and as Eric had dropped out, I decided to engage Jim.
On January 28th, 2017, Jim and I spent about 6 hours on a Google Hangouts call, developing the first iteration of what would become Porker: The Quest for Tastiness. While Jim drank beer and shouted suggestions and obscenities, I furiously coded, photoshopped Creative Commons-licensed artwork, and edited royalty-free sound effects. Over the next couple of days, we had:
- An Objective: Collect Acorns to increase your “Tastiness” score
- A Win Condition: Complete all five levels
- A Lose Condition: Lose all of your lives by colliding with dangerous obstacles
My goal was to publish a game, ANY game, no matter how simple, as long as it was complete and playable. I couldn’t rightly call myself a ‘Game Developer’ until I’d published a Game, and following the advice of the Extra Credits series on the topic, I did just that and moved on.
Fleeting Fame
A couple of weeks later, I discovered that someone had created a Let’s Play video for Porker, which inspired me to expand on it further. My mind raced with the possibility of it becoming a viral hit, but at the time, I’d been out of work for nearly a year, and my savings were dwindling. Somehow, around mid-April of ’17, I managed to complete and republish Porker. My “marketing campaign” didn’t go anywhere, and Jim had problems of his own…
Return to Reality
By May, I’d started a new job, and for the rest of the year, I was catching up on half a decade of advancements in Enterprise Information Technology… By December, I was dabbling with the GPC again, coming to grips with the reality of being a solo game developer, and itching to start creating again.
Jim and I flirted with the idea of a sequel, “Porker II: The Adventure Begins,” which was intended to be a top-down Legend of Zelda-style [primitive] Action RPG. I’d begun creating tilesets for it:
Unable to pique Jim’s interest, I partnered with a co-worker, Jason (an application developer by trade), instead, and we created Milk Smugglers. Unfortunately, it was never published for reasons not worth dredging up.
Intermittent Interests
Jim and I never formally resumed our work on Porker II, but over the years, we would occasionally kick around the idea and brainstorm what that might look like. James was also a big fan of Shoot ’em Ups (SHMUPs), and while I was beginning work on Purgatory Purgers, Jim took a passing interest in creating SHMUP…
“damn you, went and got me interested in learning make a game again. think im going to set myself a September chgallenge. One shootey space game. Scroller type. Have score, enemies, a couple power ups, gui, home screen. all basic. I’ll use inkscape shapes as place holders if i have to. but the real challenge will come from not using a follow along tutorial – but actually read the documents and do it myself.”
– Jim, August 31, 2023
Unfortunately, Jim opted to use Godot rather than GameMaker, so I was unable to assist him with the code. However, I did create some graphics for him:
Although Jim never got a working prototype up and running, I managed to put together a quick and dirty GameMaker game using the assets I’d created for him. The final result looked like this:
The style I was going for was a Terry Gilliam-style cutout animation, the sort of thing you’d find in a Monty Python episode. Jim had a terrible habit of never finishing anything he started, and this, too, was no exception. Still, it was an amusing diversion while it lasted!
Regrets
In December last year, I began working on a new SHMUP using modified graphics from Milk Smugglers. Over the Christmas holiday, I managed to get the basic engine, movement, power-ups, a few enemies, and other features working, but I ran out of time and abandoned the project.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever pick it back up. I might make it a tribute to his memory. On the other hand, it troubles me that he’d never get a chance to play it…
