Even as an indie, you do spend a lot of time tied to your desk. I’m at my most productive when I’m at my desk, because the very act of sitting down makes me feel like I should be producing work. I think I condition myself to have locations, or times of the day, in which I should be doing one thing or another. At 9am mon-fri I should be at my desk, making games.

Recently I’ve been coding ‘for fun’ in my free time, especially on my laptop. I try to draw a distinction with this work: I’m free to stop whenever I feel like it. I setup my laptop on the dining table downstairs and work from there. This change in location and discipline really helps to reduce the stress, and lets it feel like any other sort of relaxation time.

Do you use any rules to help self discipline, both in terms of productivity and also ensuring that you unwind properly?

From left to right, Terry Cavanagh, Chris Delay and myself; Hayden Scott-Baron.

Will Freeman did a spotlight on Cambridge in Develop Magazine, focusing on Cambridge based game developers such as Sony, Ninja Theory and Frontier Development. He also spoke to some indies such as Chris Delay (Introversion), Terry Cavanagh (Distractionware), and myself! We were able to talk about the merits of the growing Indie community here, and the open spirit in which we collaborate.

Develop issue #113 isn’t available as a PDF at the time of writing, but will be available shortly, so you can check it out.

I’ve been considering doing some video content for my blog, on the topic of games. Is there anything in particular you’d like to see me cover, demonstrate or speak on?