Introduction, Year One and Thank You! (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I'm writing this first post right before launching the iHeartGamedev Patreon. I'm feeling a bunch of emotions at this point: nervous to see everyone's reaction, excited about the future of the channel and to be able to further connect with the community, and happy for how far iHeartGamDev has come in the last year.

Considering this is the first post on the Patreon, I think it makes sense to explain a little bit about myself.

Hi! I'm Nicky. I'm 28 years old and have loved playing games for as long as I can remember. Game development is a passion that I stumbled into when I first started learning to code a few years ago. I was going through a coding bootcamp to pivot my career and ended up making a game for one of my final projects! I immediately fell for the hobby. I remember thinking, "this is what I'm here to do".

A year ago I decided to try and take a stab at what I had seen a lot of other YouTube creator doing: devlogs! I made my first devlog covering the first gamejam I ever took part in. That first gamejam and video were really fast reminders that I didn't know much of anything about making games. But "knowledge" is fortunately something that can be gained! And with that mindset, I got to work on learning how to animate characters. Not too long after that, I released my first tutorial!

Outside of GameDev and my engineering career, I've taught fitness classes for six years to people of all ages, genders and fitness-levels. I credit that with understanding the importance of being as beginner-friendly and approachable as I can with each tutorial I make. It wasn't that long ago that I didn't know anything about programming and game dev, so I know how intimidating it can be from that standpoint.

I truly hope the knowledge shared on the channel has helped you on your game development journey as much as the kindness and support the community has brought me over the past year! I will try to maintain the same level of quality and accessibility as we move forward and learn new things!

It has been an absolute whirlwind of a year: from the channel's growth, to the wonderful discussions and people met from the community, to even working with Unity! Twenty Videos released (if you include the channel trailer), majority of which were tutorials to help the Unity community!

If you're reading this, YOU are part of what made all of that happen and I cannot thank you enough! The launch of the Patreon is is so exciting as it's a large step in making dreams a reality.

Thank you again and cheers to the future! 🍻
-Nicky