ABSTRACT
Drawing on Audre Lorde's piece “Poetry is not a luxury,” this essay examines the experience of becoming a game designer and grappling with whether to try and “make a living” in this field. Becoming more involved in game design was accompanied by the realization that, for me, game design is also not a luxury, it is my way of communicating my experiences, my observations, my hopes and dreams. At the same time, making a living as a game designer is a step I have hesitated to take because it requires so much time, energy, and knowledge with limited guarantee of returns. In this essay, I reflect on my own journey of becoming a game designer and my hesitation to do this work full-time. I explore some of the different options available to analog game designers, the difficulties encountered as a creator with marginalized identities, and the ways that viewing game design as both a commercial product and an art form come into conflict.
