Hey everyone, it’s been a while since I posted anything here. (You can find my main devlogs on IndieDB)

I thought I’d share my newest devlog on here since it’s of a more personal nature than usual.

Limiting Social Media

As an indie game developer I had been incorporating more and more social media in my free time.

My thought process was that by being active on social media I could find some good marketing opportunities for my game, Assembly RTS along the way. This has been been true to a limited extent.

However, I recently noticed that, even though I didn’t expose myself to the dark side of social media (drama, politics etc.) and preferred checking out what other game developers and artists are working on, it had an overall harmful effect on me.

Being exposed to so much superficial communications had a negative impact. Once I noticed this, I made some pretty big changes on how I spend my free time.

I made the decision to log out of all social media platforms including Discord and YouTube and to not give them a single look for a whole week. Additionally, I forced myself to not play any video games in my free time, except for real-time strategy games.

So how did it go? I feel great, and there have been so many positive benefits!

Good Sleep

During the past few months I have been struggling to fall asleep at night. While I was no longer using social media the problem lessened significantly. Getting a good amount of sleep is a big game changer. Concentration levels and overall well-being are way up!

Writing Music Again

I caught myself by surprise as I started writing music again in my free time. A most welcome change!

I have been trying to write music after work without success because of a lack of energy and motivation. Now that I have reduced all the elements from my life that satisfy a low-key addiction to instant gratification it felt very natural to start writing music again. Now wouldn’t that be awesome? If I could write the soundtrack for Assembly RTS myself, in my free time!?

RTS Games

I also found a brand new liking for real-time strategy games. Believe it or not, even though I’m working on a real-time strategy game myself I barely played any games in this genre during 2023. The main reason for this was a severe lack of energy after a hard day of work.

However, now that I have much more energy, I have come to enjoy the singleplayer campaigns of Empire Earth and C&C3: Tiberium Wars very much.

I actually never played the single player campaigns of strategy games very far. It must have been due to a lack of patience that I generally preferred the multiplayer aspect of strategy games.

Life Without Instant Gratification

Now that I feel much less like a dopamine addict I’m looking forward to an even more interesting and fulfilling future.

Who would have thought that cutting out all forms of instant entertainment would have such a positive effect in such a short amount of time. I honestly expected that I would feel absolutely miserable without my ‘fix’, but after a few days often feeling a sense of withdrawal and boredom I now feel better than ever before.

I highly encourage all of you to try this experiment yourself and to cut out all forms of social media and other forms of instant gratification out of your life. You might be surprised.

Social Media Going Forward

From now on my plan is to utilize social media on Fridays only. This is the day on which I usually post my devlog on IndieDB and occasionally do other marketing-related stuff.

I’m not sure how severely I should keep limiting my Discord use in the future because I utilized that platform to quickly gather advice on various topics whenever I needed it. I’ll have to give that some more thought. Perhaps I should use old school forums for that purpose instead, to limit the risk of being distracted.

Please let me know your thoughts on this topic!