From Cassette Mixtapes to Creature AI: The Long Road to Making the Game I Always Wanted

Most people assume I started making a game because Ark frustrated me. And yes: Ark did frustrate me. It showed me a world that looked alive but didn’t behave alive, a survival experience that felt like a checklist instead of an ecosystem, a game that was terribly unoptimized and devs that didn't care about fixing bugs that have been around for 10+ years. It made me ask a lot of questions I couldn’t un‑ask.

But Ark wasn’t the beginning. It was just the moment everything finally aligned. The truth is, I’ve been orbiting game development for almost twenty‑five years, and creating worlds for nearly three decades. This game isn’t a new dream, it’s the culmination of everything I’ve been doing since I was a kid.

Growing Up a Gamer

I’ve been a gamer since I was four years old. Long before I ever thought about making a game, I was glued to controllers, handhelds, and anything with pixels. Plenty of games shaped my early years: platformers, action games, RPGs, but Final Fantasy VII was the turning point.

It wasn’t the first game I loved, but it was the first game that hit me emotionally. It arrived at a vulnerable moment in my life, right after my parents split, and it became more than entertainment. It was escape, comfort, and immersion all at once. It showed me that games could be cinematic, atmospheric, and deeply human.

Final Fantasy VII didn’t make me a gamer. It made me a hardcore gamer... the kind who cared about worlds, systems, and emotional impact. That seed never stopped growing.

The First Medium: Music

Before I ever touched a game engine, I learned how to build worlds through sound.

It started with cassette electronica mixtapes I made for kids at school. All were crude, experimental, but full of intention. I didn’t realize it then, but I was already learning pacing, tension, atmosphere, and emotional arcs. Then came MTV Music Generator on PlayStation, my first taste of a DAW. Then came FL Studio, turntables, and shows.

Over the next 27 years, my music became something real. I played parties and shows across:
Ohio
Kentucky
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Florida
Cape Verde
I even held a radio slot on the UK’s Innersense Radio, broadcasting across the Atlantic.

My Drum & Bass music under Lifelink was signed to multiple labels:
You So Fat Records
Synergist Recordings
Electric Recordings
Dangerous New Age
Live and Dangerous
Nocid Business Recordings
Non Human Recordings

Eventually, I released solely through my own imprint, Lifelink Music, because the industry changed. Social media and independent platforms made labels unnecessary. I didn’t need a gatekeeper. I didn’t need permission.

That independence, that willingness to build my own path, would become the backbone of my game development journey.

The Midwest "Raver Kid" Who Played D&D

One of the funniest contradictions in my life is that I was the “raver kid” with a huge social circle, the one attending and playing at parties, handing out mixtapes, and living inside the Midwest "Rave Scene"- but at the same time, I was also the kid who loved Dungeons & Dragons with the bros whether at someone's house, at school, or at the local hobby shop (RIP Acme Games and Eastside Games).

I’d spend one night mixing records, surrounded by people, lights, and energy… and the next night sitting around a table with my friends, rolling dice, arguing about spell slots, and getting lost in a world we built together.

I wasn’t trying to be two different people. I just genuinely loved both worlds. And because of that, I was able to build a bridge between nerds and non‑nerds.

D&D showed me world‑building, systems, narrative stakes, and player agency. The Midwest DnB & rave scene showed me atmosphere, energy, and socialization. Being able to move between both taught me empathy, communication, and how to design experiences that resonate with different kinds of people.

Those skills didn’t stay in the past. They followed me into music. They followed me into game development. They followed me into the military as I dealt with people from people of all walks of life. They follow me into my day gig as a CAD Designer and Project Manager for construction. They follow me now as I build a world meant to be lived in, not just played.

The Military Years: A Pause, Not an Ending

From 2005 to 2009, I served in the U.S. Navy. I was young, newly independent, and living at a breakneck pace. Gaming took a back seat- not because I stopped loving it, but because life was moving too fast to sit still with a controller. Living on a Frigate didn't help matters.

Years later, from 2015 to 2023, I served in the U.S. Army. Those years reshaped me through discipline, structure, leadership, adaptability. But they also created long stretches where gaming wasn’t a huge part of my daily life as I was constantly out in the field, deployed, and juggling all of that with family life.

And yet, every time I returned to games, the passion was still there. It never faded. It just waited.

The PvP Awakening

Right before I went back into the Army, I discovered something about myself: I was hardcore PvP player. I didn’t know it until I started diving into competitive games like League of Legends with my wife (if you're wondering, I'm a Jungle main and the wife is an ADC main), but once I did, it clicked instantly. The tension, the stakes, the unpredictability... it all resonated with me.

This is exactly why Ark hooked me so hard when I finally gave it a shot in 2019. It wasn’t just the dinosaurs or the survival mechanics. It was the pressure, the risk, the player‑driven chaos. It scratched an itch I didn’t know I had. And it planted another seed, one that would grow into the game I’m building now.

9,000 Hours of Ark PvP and the Infantry Mindset That Shaped It

Across more than 9,000 hours of Ark: Survival Evolved and Survival Ascended, all on PvP servers, I learned more about survival, strategy, and human behavior than any other game has ever taught me. Ark wasn’t just a pastime. It was a second life. A place where I made friends, built alliances, fought wars, rebuilt after wipes, and lived inside a constant cycle of tension and adaptation. But what made my experience different from most players was the lens I brought into it.

My background as an Infantryman shaped everything: how I scouted, how I planned, how I fought, and how my tribe operated. Ark PvP wasn’t about grinding or brute force, it was about reconnaissance, timing, discipline, and coordination. The same principles that win real battles translated perfectly into digital ones.

We didn’t raid blind.
We gathered intel, tracked patterns, and struck when the enemy was stretched thin.
We didn’t panic when things went sideways.
We adapted, reassessed, and executed.
We weren’t the biggest tribe, but we were one of the most effective as we were organized and team-oriented.

Those years taught me exactly what I loved about Ark: the tension, the unpredictability, the emergent stories players created together. But they also showed me everything the game failed to deliver: creatures that didn’t behave like animals, a world that didn’t react to itself, systems that didn’t talk to each other, and a survival loop that felt more like chores than ecosystem dynamics.

Somewhere in those thousands of hours, the realization hit me: I didn’t just want to play a better survival game- I wanted to build one. Ark gave me the battlefield. The Infantry gave me the mindset. Together, they gave me the blueprint for the game I’m now making where intelligence beats grind, where systems actually matter, and where survival feels alive instead of scripted.

The 25‑Year Flirtation With Game Development

While music was my main medium, I kept circling game development like a satellite that couldn’t quite break orbit.

Over the years, I messed with:
RPG Maker 95 + 2000: My first taste of building digital game worlds using variables and pixel art.
XNA Framework (Xbox 360 Indie Games): My first taste of real programming with C#, game loops, and rendering.
Unreal Engine: My first taste of scale, atmosphere, and cinematic tension.
Unity My first taste of rapid prototyping and iteration.

But there was always one thing holding me back: Programming. I’d learn some, forget some, relearn some, forget some again. I could never retain enough to build something meaningful. It was the gate I couldn’t get through- until last year...

The Breakthrough: Godot + GDScript

Everything changed when I got my hands on Godot. For the first time in my life, programming didn’t feel like a wall, but a language I could finally speak and retain. GDScript clicked, concepts stuck, and systems made sense. I wasn’t just learning code, but I was actually using it. Everything began to finally come together.

All the years of music.
All the years of D&D.
All the years of tinkering with engines.
All the years of PvP tension.
All the years of wanting to build a world that felt alive.

Suddenly, the door that had been locked since childhood… opened.

Why I’m Making This Game Now

When I finally stepped into game development fully, I wasn’t starting from zero. I was returning to something I’d been building toward my entire life.

Now I’m making the game I wished existed:
A survival world that actually behaves.
Creatures that hunt, stalk, migrate, and adapt.
Horror that emerges from systems, not scripts.
Tactical PvP with real purpose... or repercussion.
Sound design and music that are not just an after thought that's shoehorned.
A game where devs care about the craft- not just trying to make shareholders happy.
Based on humanity's future that is within scientific possibility.

Atmosphere shaped by decades of music production.
Systems shaped by years of D&D.
Independence shaped by Lifelink Music.
Emotional tone shaped by early gaming.
PvP tension shaped by my competitive awakening.
Discipline and drive shaped by the Navy and Army.
Vision sharpened by Ark’s missed potential.
And code finally made possible by Godot.

This isn’t a new dream. It’s an old one I finally stopped running from. And now I’m building on the dream I’ve been chasing since I was four years old.