So your brother creates games while you create Donald Trump and Star Wars fan fics?
Yikes
I wanted to become a game designer as well. In fact I've done some art for DLC expansions and created a game in Unity 3D at university in which you could 3D scan your own character (basically any object) and use it in a game world.
Kinda like Skylanders but before Skylanders existed. I also created a game during my studies in which you had to scare away the smokers from the entrance and the building with a water gun in UE3. Using the "Der Untergang" meme with Hitler ranting about smoking bans as a viral trailer video (which not everyone liked).
My brother who had been making maps ever since he got his hands on the Duke 3D map editor had by then worked on Half Life and Source mods such as The Specialists, Insurgency (when it was still a mod) and Counter Strike maps.
Some his mod scene friends decided to set-up their own studio and he joined. They released a game (Nuclear Dawn) which was an RTS/FPS hybrid game made by about 10 developers running on Source.
It worked quite well but FPS games lost popularity. One of the founders wanted to get into the app/game business instead because it was taking off and he wanted to abandon Source development.
So they made one app and published another which both bombed. The money guy decided that they should make a Metroid killer. After all that was probably 'easy'. So "Dark Matter" was born.
Which famously had no ending because they were bankrupt before it could be finished.
He was really bummed out by the whole thing to say the least. About 3 or 4 years of what should have been the start of a great career ruined by bad decisions from management (after all Nuclear Dawn really had great potential had they kept working on it).
At that time I was looking at my own prospects. I was doing an internship in home automation. We were building something like Google Home but of course a much crappier version. In fact I found the whole home automation market devoid of any inspiration.
It was mostly about selling the cheap ass lights, switches and sensors. Pushing the plastic and keeping costs down (they still haven't upgraded the device they made 10 years ago and they're still using the app design I did during my internship).
My bro had worked his ass off and seemingly got nothing in return except a depression and an unfinished game to his name. So I figured I wouldn't go into the game industry. In my spare time I used to write for the biggest Nintendo review/fan site of the Netherlands. I've also met Yoshihiro Ono, Jason VandenBerghe and a few other devs at various events. I had become quite good at online marketing and had developed my own webdesign skills but our site was purely a bunch of students writing reviews for the free games and good times. The owner had no plans to make it into a real business. I'm also partly responsbile for the success of a few friends in that field such as NintenDaan.
Who with his medical conditions always felt like he should keep a low profile. I told him to tell anyone that kept him down to go fuck themselves.
In any case the web was just getting interesting with the use of Javascript animations, better devices and the responsive boom. So I found a job in that field and celebrated my 6th anniversary this year.
Luckily my brother landed on his feet too. He had kept in touch with the INS guys which had troubles of their own. They gave him all they could spare in terms of salary (which wasn't much) to try and fix their maps. He agreed because at that time he was unemployed anyway. He managed to fix Insurgency Source with a number of updates and patches and greatly expanded the map roster plus he trained and improved their level design team. Sales went up, their game got noticed in a positive way by the steady stream of free DLC and within months they were back on their feet and expanding again.
For me working on games is appealing but the working culture isn't. He's basically working 18 hours a day to ship a game. The final day of development he got up at 9 and went to bed at 6 the next morning.
Which is why I always want to kick people in the dick who call developers 'lazy'. Sure, I do work overtime sometimes to make a deadline but nothing like game developers.
I'm happy my bro has found his success and happiness. He hasn't had the most easy life suffering from depressions from a young age which he kept secret until 2017.
But he has proven that even someone with PTSD or a similiar condition can still achieve great things.
