In a company I used to work in, the project I was working on was cancelled and I was laid off. I was pretty disgusted about it because finishing the project was the one thing keeping me in the company, my experience there was basically terrible for a lot of reasons, some were on me and some were on them. Anyway, now it’s clear to me that leaving was the best thing that could happen to me, and the project was never going to be finished anyway.

I was suprised to find a LinkedIn post yesterday where some of my old coworkers were announcing a new project in the company. The project is a terrible knock-off of a very popular videogame.

To be clear, I’m not against taking insipiration from other games. Maybe you end up copying some mechanics, or aesthetics. It’s ok, you can’t be 100% original and this allows to explore different ideas over the same concept. But they seem to be getting away with copying absolutely everything. The mechanics are exactly the same, the aesthetics are exactly the same, and the name of the game is almost the same.

This year I’ve been thinking a lot about what to expect from the projects I work in. I decided I don’t want to be in games at all costs. I want to work on something worth working on. And if I can’t, at least I’ll make the most honest living possible.