Happy New Year & Welcome to Ottermatic!!

"I never look back, darling. It distracts me from the now." - Edna "E" Mode (The Incredibles)

So begins the year 2024 and the launch of the Ottermatic Website! The plan for this blog series is to showcase active development work, updates from the industry, highlight forums & chat groups in indie gaming, and provide a much needed vent from current solo workflows. Which reminds me, introductions are needed!

My name is Colin and I'm a 34-year-old gamer living in Central Illinois with my family. I'm happily married to my high school sweetheart, and we're navigating the adventure of parenthood with our lovely daughter and fur-baby. I founded Ottermatic in December of 2022 in an effort to bring my passion for gaming into fruition by learning the trade & entrepreneurship skills in the process.

My deep love for gaming was sparked early in my life when my siblings and I got a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for Christmas one year. Growing up playing games like Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, The Lone Ranger, and Excite Bike instilled memories I've never forgotten and cherish to this day. Like most gamers, over time this passion developed from "what other games are there to play & experience?" to "how do I get myself into a position to build them myself?".

Thus began the last year of education, trial, error, and more error. It's been an absolute blast, but with a dash of anxiety or frustration here and there. Making my way through game courses from GameDev.tv & learn.unity.com I've developed dozens of micro games in Unity and built up a comparable library of code & learned several tricks of the trade. If you ever want my advice on picking up game development or are looking for resources I've found valuable, please let me know and I'd be happy to help!

I have been incredibly blessed to work in technology for the last 9 years and gained great relationships, mentors, colleagues, and experiences that prepared me for this odyssey. My tech career began as a solo web developer building websites for local businesses while in college, continued in an IT tech internship for the local school district fixing hardware & managing a government liquidity auction site. After graduation I became a software developer on a large POS (Point-of-Sale) team working on a QR-Code based mobile payment system. After which I did a substantial role switch from developer to Product Manager and changed industries to financial technology supporting companies like Walmart, Amazon, Uber, Credit Karma, and so many more with their banking or payments needs. While incredibly challenging and not the smoothest of rides, I believe this experience has given me a great foundation for this new chapter of my life.

Soon I will be launching Ottermatic's first casual mobile game as a proof of concept for the development pipeline and will share when and where that is available for download when the time comes. After that, I'll be switching the focus back to a much larger title that's been the goal of this odyssey since the company's inception with hopes of a small reveal sometime later this year!

Here's to creating worlds, chasing dreams, and pressing 'start' on the adventures yet to come. Until next time, game on!