{"id":349,"date":"2025-05-15T21:25:46","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T21:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/?p=349"},"modified":"2025-05-15T23:30:46","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T23:30:46","slug":"shrubb-update-1-first-shrubbdate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/?p=349","title":{"rendered":"Shrubb Update #1 – First Shrubbdate!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hey everyone! It’s been a long while since my last update, and there’s a lot that I’ve been thinking about with what’s going to happen with Vyn and Verdan<\/em>\/Shrubb Games in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to spend this update talking through my thoughts here, but here’s the headlines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) I’m going to delay Vyn and Verdan<\/em>. I’m not sure when I do want to officially release, but, after having delayed multiple times already, I don’t want to commit to a new time yet.
2) The VV Eekly Update is returning! I’m rebranding it as the Shrubb Update, or Shrubbdate <\/em><\/strong>for short! My current plan is to have an update every two months or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like I said, there’s a lot that’s been going through my head to make this decision. Before I dive into my reasoning though, I do want to apologize to everyone – it sucks having to delay Vyn and Verdan<\/em> even further! I’m really sad to let y’all down, since I’ve been promising all my friends and family that it would release soon. After some recent developments though, I do really think this is the best path forward for me personally. I’m sorry I’m being selfish here!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, I’m very sad about having to delay Vyn and Verdan. I’m definitely still planning on working on it though, but just at my own pace. That does mean that I still hope to have an official demo out Pretty Soon (TM), which I will post here about when that happens!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Goals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When I first started this project, I had two major goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I wanted to publish a game. All of the experienced game dev advice that I had been reading for learning game dev was “Publish a game!” Most advice was to publish a very small game at first, just so that you could gain experience with the whole publishing process. Publishing a game is much larger than making a game. The best way to learn was just to do the whole thing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, I wanted to create infrastructure for myself to make more games in the future. I really wanted to make a nice base for myself so that I could iterate in the future and make other games! This is the basis for Shrubb Games LLC, the company. Ideally, Shrubb Games would be able to use the infrastructure built for Vyn and Verdan<\/em> to publish even more games in the future. I knew that I wanted to target small multiplayer games, which is technically difficult and therefore a good niche for myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two goals are at odds with each other. The first goal says “just get something out.” The second goal says “do things right.” It’s difficult to do both at once!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I had been doing well enough at balancing the two goals, but things have started shifting in the past few months. With the self-imposed deadline coming soon, I had been pushing myself to publish. With a lot of the remaining things being “infrastructure”, e.g. managing player connections, main menu setup, controller support, I had been rushing a lot of that work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, I told myself that it would be OK since I would come back later. I could fix it after I had published. However, with some more thought, I realized a few things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Realizations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There were a few things that I realized, and these things came together to convince me to change route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I realized that I couldn’t keep putting in a lot of work into Vyn and Verdan along with a full time job. There are many people who have to survive with working more than one full time job, and I have the utmost respect for what they have to do. It sucks! It majorly sucks!! Fortunately for me, that is not something that I need to do. I can afford to take my time with developing Vyn and Verdan, since I don’t depend on it for my livelihood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, I realized that I can’t realistically hope to make living money with game development. When I first started Shrubb Games, my dream was to make enough money off of game development that I could live off of it. By developing a game every year or two, I would have several published games after a few years that would make passive income. However, the math doesn’t really work out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put some arbitrary numbers on this: For me, a REALLY successful game would take a year to develop and sell 1,000 copies for $10 each. After the Steam cut and taxes, that could be ~$5,000 for a year. That’s a good amount of pocket change, but it doesn’t even begin to cover living expenses for a year. And, again, that would be a REALLY successful game. More realistically, a game takes two years to develop and sells 100 copies at a sale price of $5. That doesn’t work at all! Even with several games building up, that’s just not enough to depend on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, I realized why I’m even doing this work. I’m doing this for fun – as a hobby! I find it quite satisfying setting up interesting game systems where my friends and I can play together. I also enjoy laying out infrastructure – my Real Job (TM) is as a backend infrastructure software engineer, so that’s my bread and butter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this came together to tell me: I should take more time doing this. I don’t need to pressure myself, and, honestly, not too many people will care that I’m taking more time. I should make sure that I’m satisfied with my work! After all, I’m mostly doing this for me and you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope you all will understand. One last thing – I’m also going to restart writing blog posts about game development. After pausing the VV Eekly Update, I found that my motivation has really tanked. I also realized that I really enjoy reflecting on what I’m doing. Putting my thoughts into words really helps me focus on what I want to do! However, since this is nowhere remotely near weekly anymore and because I want to extend this beyond Vyn and Verdan<\/em>, I’m rebranding!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope you enjoyed the first Shrubbdate! Please let me know your thoughts in the regular Discord or as a reply to the Substack email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey everyone! It’s been a long while since my last update, and there’s a lot that I’ve been thinking about with what’s going to happen with Vyn and Verdan\/Shrubb Games in general. I want to spend this update talking through my thoughts here, but here’s the headlines: 1) I’m going to delay Vyn and Verdan. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shrubbdate"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrubbgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}