Between Solitaire and Monopoly: Finding Community in the Games Industry

Making computer games is like making trousers or writing books. Anyone can do it, but most people won't: it takes time, patience and a kind of focus which most of us have sensibly dedicated to other areas of our lives.

This is a story about impostor syndrome – something most of us know in some way. A story about being a very small player in a large industry, and about the importance of community and interaction in what is otherwise a lonely line of work.

I've been making games in some form on and off since the 90s, when I was seized with a desire to learn QBASIC. It's something I've only taken seriously since 2022, when I threw myself into making Buy Hyacinths over the course of three months. (Despite its title, this was a free game, and is about one of the first sheep to attend a human university). I was extremely fortunate when this won a bronze medal at the International Queer Games Festival, held in Melbourne in 2023. (I submitted it to the festival and then was tremendously surprised to learn it had won something, since I wasn't aware it was even nominated). Aside from that, the game got little attention, but I took the award as an indication that I shouldn't give up on my game-making.

I spent far longer working on my next game: Trans Theft Horso. The title materialised in my mind one day and for a few weeks I thought, “I'm not cool enough, trans enough, nor capable enough to make a game called Trans Theft Horso, but I wish it existed”. However, since no-one else was making the game I had in mind, and since my housemate assured me that being non-binary is trans enough, I put aside my doubts and started working out the story. Games are always story first for me.

As a solo dev, making all the ingredients (the story, the pixel art, the dialogue, the music, and then actually making them work together), this was a long and solitary process. Two and a half years, or ten times the production period of my first release. It was a very on-again, off-again process, as the further into it I got, the larger the project seemed. Any amount of hours I spent felt like negligible progress towards completion.

If I hadn't had such persistent advice and encouragement from friends, especially from my housemate Ava, this would never have borne fruit. These two points are what got me to the point of ‘it literally exists’:

• Don't say, ‘I have to work on my game today’, but ‘I'm allowed to work on my game today’, because game-making is something you have always wanted to do. Nobody is stopping you!
• When this game exists, it might actually bring some encouragement to trans folks. In game ‘gender gladness’ is the excellent quality of euphoria gained from anything from choosing your pronouns to petting a capybara. (Fun fact: the same things provide gender gladness in real life). If I could bring some real-life GGs into the world, the game was not a folly, but a triumph!

(Incidentally, I have a firm belief that ‘it literally exists’ is the most important stage of any endeavour. If you can get it up to that point, however, wonky, full success turns from ‘if’ to ‘when’, and you can afford to cool your anxieties).

I released the game last summer, on St. Swithin's Day. My hopes for it were pretty low since it was created in RPG Maker (which is a fairly easy way into game-making, meaning Steam is chock-full of rather hastily-made RPG Maker games), and since my art-style is home-baked, rather than slick. Besides, this is a talky transgender western, which may attract a niche audience. Thankfully I had a strong title on my side, and a particularly catchy song in my trailer.

Once released, I wasn't sure what would happen next. To be honest, it wasn't a lot of sales. The consequences were a rather different measure of the game. I would like to tell you about three remarkable events since release which have given me a lot of perspective and a lot of encouragement, as well as friends, contacts and a connection to a far wider world.

Event One: Adventure-X

In November, I was invited to Adventure-X, a narrative games convention in London. There were about 35 games in the official selection, and we each had a table to set up our demos for visitors to play, and had the chance to talk to the endless attendees. (I'm told there were 650 people in attendance, though this may be 325 on each day with a lot there for the whole weekend). It was a very international assortment of games and devs. My game was one of only five from the UK. When I realised that, it dawned on me how fortunate I was to have been accepted. This was a convention with an international following.

I got to talk to as many of the other game devs as I could, made new friends and contacts, and discovered some weird and fantastic games. These other indie game developers were all working to make a success in the games industry, some solo, some in teams, and with a range of success. I had come here expecting to feel like an impostor, an intruder, a lowly worm. But this was the games industry, or one bright corner of it, and I was as much a member of it as all the others here.

So were most of the attendees! Almost everyone I spoke to also made games, or wanted to make games, or claimed not to make games but later turned out to have a project they were embarrassed of which could become as real and legitimate as any I've seen. I was also delighted and surprised at the number of trans people in attendance. The most trans folk I've seen at any event which wasn't an explicitly queer one. This too was highly encouraging. I wished them gender gladness!

There were also some very interesting talks at the convention, but I missed them all because I had a table and a game to champion - but they're all up on Adventure X's YouTube. I'd rather hoped I might run into the most famous of the convention's organisers, Alistair Beckett-King (ABK) whose comedy I enjoy. Alas, he never came to talk to the people who had been invited to promote their games, so I glimpsed him only at a distance, which was a slightly disappointing. In the end, though, I was glad: this wasn’t an event about catching sight of minor celebrities, it was one about meeting fellow creative workers.

Event Two: Play Sheffield

The second event which has been a great support is a much more local one, Play Sheffield, which is a monthly meet-up of game devs and people in the industry in Sheffield. This is the smallest of the three events I’m talking about, but the most regular and the most practical. Meeting up with others in the same creative endeavour as yours is definitely how you built a community (and it's a refreshing change to get out of the house).

I’ve learnt a great deal about what software I could be using, (with advocacy of Godot and Crocotile3D and a warning away from Unity) and have heard what others are doing in this area to make their games and to promote them. It feels like exactly the place where collaborations start. We think of cities having a music community (from which collaborations, bands, combined shows and cross-promotion emerge) but this is very valid for the games industry, and any creative thing you’re doing. Sean Morley wrote an interesting piece on this for Now Then magazine, discussing the indie game scene in Sheffield, and how weird it is that we associate musicians, writers, films etc. with their location, but games are never bracketed by where they came from. Maybe this should change.

Event Three: A MAZE (Games and Playful Media Festival)

This time next week, I shall be in Berlin! This will be my first trip out of the country since 2001, since I don't really believe in holidays and cleave tightly to my computer. But Trans Theft Horso has been nominated for the grand prize at A MAZE Games and Playful Media Festival. This is a fairly notable European festival, and feels like the best reason I'll ever have to make use of my passport. I don't expect to win the award, but I intend to be there to lose in style and be part of an international community of creatives. I'm particularly intrigued to find out how broad a category “games and playful media” can be. While I'm there I'll also be giving a talk on why video games and puppet shows are the same thing.

One notable thing about this festival is that it views itself as a political event, a place to showcase the independent, the non-corporate. Games YouTubers Zeph and Ramo made a documentary called The Weird Games Manifesto at A MAZE about the crisis in the games industry. Among other things, the documentary discusses how AAA games have become immensely slow and expensive to develop, obsessed with scale and photorealism — and that this is unsustainable and bad for almost everybody. Independent, ‘weird’ and outsider games are the only places innovation can come from, just as the mid-20th-Century new wave cinema innovated on the outskirts of the industry, with low budgets, creative solutions, and the involvement of amateurs.

It’s difficult to succeed as a small-scale game maker, and one thing the documentary makes clear is the need for co-operatives of local game-makers, local collaborations, and community as a foundation. It seemed to point back to something I’ve already encountered in Sheffield: even though making games is something we do in solitude, we can do a lot more if we make time for meet-ups, communication, comparing notes and finding out what everybody else is doing.

I've come to these events believing myself to be an impostor and an intruder, but this is an unhelpful line of thought, and one which held me back a lot more than my quality or inexperience did. The best way to shake this is to meet other people in the same boat and to communicate. Even if we don't collaborate, we can go back to our solo projects with perspective and advice, and a more healthy amount of confidence. Don't give up on your dreams too readily, but maybe don't go about them in the loneliest way possible. Whatever your practice, your art or your craft, go to meet-ups (local, online or adventurous), talk to people and apply for what you can.

Trans Theft Horso is available for mac and PC on Steam and Itch. Ben will be exhibiting it next week (13th-16th May 2026) at A MAZE Festival in Berlin.

GFSC has peer-support drop-ins on our Discord on the 4th Tuesday of each month at 20.00 - an opportunity for encouragement and accountability for whatever you're working on.