About
My name is Anh Huy and this is a short bio about my journey to being a solo game developer working from home.
I’ve always had two passions growing up, science and gaming, it was either be a researcher or a game developer. My education led me to become a scientist (PhD, Molecular Biology) and up to 2013, I was a postdoctoral researcher in Switzerland.
However, the work/life balance isn’t great as an academic research scientist. Also, the uncertain future, academia politics and chasing grant funding was not something that I was happy with.
On top of those issues, I have a young family, with two small babies. I wanted to spend more time with them, watch and guide them as they grow up. I had to shift into a new career that allows me to take care of my family financially but also allow me the time or presence to raise my kids directly.
So I turned to my old passion, gaming.
I saw an opportunity with game development, because despite all the concerns around the “Indie-apocalypse”, it’s never been easier to publish games and reach the masses.
I had/have this believe that if I “make a good game, it will sell”. My reasoning was simple enough, if I, somewhat of a geek (hence, Halfgeek) who enjoys gaming, there must be many gamers out there like me, with similar taste!
In early 2013, I resigned as a researcher in Geneva and returned to Melbourne to begin a new journey.
I started with a blank slate, with only my nostalgic gaming memories growing up as a guide and inspiration. With each game that I create, I’ve learnt so much from the process and it inspires me to create that next game, bolder in scope as a personal challenge.
As to the huge risk in quitting a very well paid job, changing career and forsaking many years of education, whether it was a stupid/naive idea or the right one, time will tell…
Email: halfgeekstudios@gmail.com
Twitter: @AH_Phan
These are my science research publications:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0140753
http://www.plantcell.org/content/23/6/2209.abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22086333
My daily routine consists of working on my projects alongside my baby daughter (7yrs) and son (5yrs).
Being a solo game-developer from home has its perks! 🙂
My eldest daughter when she was ~2.5 years old.
Daughter at ~3 years old and Son at ~1.5 years old.
Daughter at ~4 years old.
Update: December 2018
Early in 2018, we had another baby girl.
3rd time lucky? 🙂
This was so inspiring, honest and simple. I’m professional developer myself for 20 years now with family. You’ve made some tough choices. I guess that is what defines us in life after all. Definitely nice to hear that it is possible to live from game development and have normal family life. I wish you and your family all the best. Cheers
Thanks Siniša. It’s possible, but difficult, though that’s life. Something to think about is Australia tends to have higher costs of living than most places, so if one were to think about going into gamedev, and they live in low cost countries, it is much more easier because the majority of the income on Steam, Google, Apple etc is USD.