How has AGS helped you in the long run?

[Dave Gilbert]

Well gosh. Where do I begin.

Through my work in AGS (and games in general) I've...

- launched a successful and creatively satisfying career
- met almost all of my childhood heroes
- met my wife (a fellow game dev)
- actually made enough money to start a retirement account (surprisingly important when you're pushing 40)

... and so much more. Basically, I owe my livelihood, my family, and most of my friendships to my work in this engine and in the industry in general.

[AprilSkies]

Without dwelling too much:

AGS has filled a little void in my life.

Everyday life absorbs most of my energy and, until recently, even all of my creativity.
Since I was a child I've been loving to play video games, to draw and paint and to write stories.
Before starting using AGS, I did all these things without a purpose.
AGS has combined all the things I love, giving them a sense, and gave me back my creativity (stolen by everyday life).

So it filled a little void, but for me it's a lot.

[qptain Nemo]

Well, wow. Even though the wording "So, How has AGS helped you in the long run?" seemed comedic to me at first due to the implied extent of the answer, as irony would have it, such extent is actually present in the answers. And even though I don't particularly regret my silly and (hopefully) harmless joke, I'd like to point out that I certainly don't intend it to mock e.g. Myinah's and Dave Gilbert's stories that demonstrate genuinely serious, touching and impressive impact. To reinforce that I offer you my serious answer.

For a very long time the AGS community and its creative output served as a huge inspiration to me. I've always been a daring optimistic enthusiast but games like Apprentice and Ben Jordan really helped that seed of faith in independent hobbyist gamemaking grow. It's nice to firmly believe in things because of your own reasoning, but seeing stuff that actually shows you that yup, amateur games really can be pretty damn awesome, makes a huge difference still. I've been looking up to AGS games for years and it inspired and fueled my own humble beginnings and developments a lot.

And then I became an active participant of the community. And I found some amazing friends and just indeed plenty of amazing people. There is simply no way to describe in full the impact that had without writing a novel. But you probably can imagine. Constantly interacting with more likeminded people really changed my life and my attitude towards many things. I'm just utterly happy to have had gone through that.

And last but not least, I've been a part of a handful of AGS projects myself. Considering being a game developer is my biggest desire in life, it's hard to overstate the positive effect of this. It's been fun, it's been amazing, it's been priceless in terms of experience. I'll always look back with joy at those projects and people I worked with. And the nice reception of mine and Pablo's game made a lot of difference for me. I assure you I wasn't even remotely expecting it. And while it didn't make me feel like a superstar of course, it helped a lot with alleviating the utter terror of possible reception of my work, which many of you creative people can probably understand and relate to. And that makes a huge difference too.

So, while AGS itself has never directly been my own tool of choice, the community and lots of things associated with it are a big deal to me. And I'm certainly better off because of it all.

[Grim]

AGS has made me feel like someone.

Coming from a town in the middle of nowhere, with no higher education to maybe at least dream of a good job some day, I came to England and started a new life here with my girlfriend. That was almost 12 years ago. I've done all sorts of jobs in that time. I washed dishes in greasy kitchens of Yorkshire. I scrubbed toilets in run-down hotels of Devon . I delivered newspapers in London. I put piles of horseshit on wheelbarrows during my brief countryside adventure. I looked after crazy people. I've been bitten, spat on, bled on and scratched (only once by a horse though). And at the same time, I was there for a some good folks when their journey in this world came to an end because no one should ever die alone. And I made some people happy by just being kind to them, and yeah, those were times when I felt like I was someone, but it wasn't really someone I wanted to be, just someone I thought everyone should be in certain moments in life.

All through those years, I have pretty much felt small and insignificant, a cog in the machine, or even a part that this machine could easily work without. I've always had this person with a whip, standing above me, patronising, better than me. I've always had the rules to stick to, the good ones and the bad. The unfair rules- the ones that punish me if I get sick and won't think of me as a person because all I am is a number.

But... I don't feel any worse. I'm someone.

I've won a story of the year award.

I'm a Steam-published developer.

How cool is that?!:)

Now I know that one day I can be free from the man, break his goddamn whip and be my own person. The person I want to be.

Thanks AGS;)

[Stacy Davidson]

Making adventure games is something I have dreamed of since I was a kid. I tried adapting other engines, I tried starting from scratch, but the hill has always seemed insurmountable. When I found AGS, at first I had it confused it with SCI Studio, which I had played around with a few years earlier and concluded that, although it was fun to tinker with, it was severely lacking and not much more than a novelty. However, after watching a few of Densming's videos (he was still producing them regularly at the time), I realized I had stumbled onto something... amazing. It was everything I had wanted in an adventure game engine, right there in my hands. Furthermore, it was an elaborate and complex system that actually made sense and was remarkably well thought out.

Now, after working with it for several years, I can honestly say I believe there is probably a way to make it do just about anything I could ever want out of an adventure game. Especially now that we've broken the "HD" barrier. Of all the languages and engines out there, I've never found a more enjoyable environment to work in.

Some people play with Legos, some live inside Minecraft. My sandbox is AGS.

[milkanannan]

I used to draw elaborate adventure games in notebooks when I was around 10 years old. I knew from that early age that making adventure style games would be a part of my life. I was really happy to find this community back in...2005 I think? To this day, I feel like the community here is more 'my people' than any other group I have been apart of, both in the real world and online. I don't have the luxury of working on games much now given the demands of family and my profession, but I have plans to make it a very central part of my life when I'm a bit older, my kids off to uni, and I'm able to have a bit more time to myself. 

[CaptainD]

My experience of beta testing AGS games and knowledge of the development process itself through making my own games was useful for getting a new job as it involves a lot of testing new systems and interacting with both end users, IT services and development teams.