Hello Complicated Nonsense 2024
Complicated Nonsense is 3 years old in October 2023. It's been a good ride so far. The primary work we've done is playful XR for clients, and a few web projects among which our own Museum Monsters. We've worked primarily in Unity, but also experimenting with Unreal Engine 5, Godot Engine, and web technologies such as WebXR, Vue.js and Nuxt.
I haven't been great at documenting every project, but the last project of 2023 is the website you are reading, complicatednonsense.com, and it's all about showcasing nice projects and setting up a platform to share more.
This article is here to celebrate my ~10 years of professional experience, ~3 years of the studio, and to say hello to the next chapter in my creative pursuits, as the founder and current sole employee of Complicated Nonsense. That's why I'm using pronoun 'we' for the studio and 'I' for myself.
First years of Complicated Nonsense
Thinking back at 2020-2021, I realize I did the best I could but I had sooo much to learn. I started doing serious freelancing in early 2020 after releasing Zestrea. I thought I had learned enough lessons from that project and the previous work I did as lead developer in VRUnicorns for 5 years that I could build a studio myself.
Turns out, it just takes a lot of time and money to grow a game studio, and I wanted to do it safely and sustainably while living a good chill life. I had enough near-burnout and crunch before, and it's a huge issue in the creative industry, especially in games, so I wanted to avoid overworking and see if I can do it better.
Client work and original IP
Some clients of Complicated Nonsense are Triband, Marionette, Phenomenal Viborg, Cozy Games Studio, AKQA, and Manyone. We did nice work together and look forward to do more, but the projects we did are not documented here, which is a shame and I need to fix that. I just wanted to mention some of this work somewhere, until I get around to writing proper articles about them.
Apart from client work, we worked on original ideas, either at game jams, or just as technical or artistic explorations, to see if there is something that can grow out of a stray idea. One of the game jams we did led to a really nice collaboration with the Leibniz Research Museums for a game called Museum Monsters, while other game jams didn't result in anything more than a jam game. But so it goes - sometimes you have to do a lot of stuff until you find the real thing you are meant to be working on.
Some friends reminded me of projects that I didn't think twice about, and it's interesting to see how every project has something about it that can blossom in the right circumstances. I finally realized how important it is to document and showcase each project, and that's why I am building this website.
Doing more by doing less
In 2022 I started working part-time at Manyone after working well together on a freelance project (GuardKnox 2021), and continued at Complicated Nonsense part-time as well.
Complicated Nonsense collaborated with Phenomenal Viborg multiple times between 2021 - 2022, helping them setup the core technology for their multi-user virtual reality experience suite and creating fun, wacky prototypes with them (which I still need to document).
On a personal level, I also started working on music more seriously, which resulted in publishing my first album and a few subsequent releases in 2023.
The process of working part-time for me was to split it mainly on a weekly basis: two weeks at Manyone, two at Complicated Nonsense. This is a great way to split things, and I also applied it to my freelance work. Projects take a number of weeks rather than days or hours, which helped me focus on each task, give it the attention it deserves, while keeping the inspiration fresh between projects and reducing transition costs. Parking longer projects between weekly sprints led to better technical documentation (less so the process documentation and project showcase) and led to more inspiration when delving back in, and I think resulted in better quality and getting more done. In some way the method is similar to Agile/Scrum sprints but without the overhead.
Another thing I'm proud of in 2023 is getting a better hold of my financial situation and being more proactive with savings, which paradoxically allowed me to spend more on things I care about and worry less about it. Not swimming in projects means you actually have time to deal with life, and it can do wonders to your mental health. I recommend it.
The future
The beginning of a new year is a great time to reflect on the future. For me, a lot of this year has been about housekeeping in my head, learning from the past and applying the lessons to my daily life and process, settling into a more secure life, in a tumultuous world (that became more and more unstable, by the way), and making sure both myself personally and the business are in a place where we can start to grow.
Complicated Nonsense will continue to do creative work at the forefront of technology, be it AI, XR and whatever the new thing is. We aim to keep developing playful interactive media projects for (and with) clients, as well as original IP.
A big improvement however will be to document and share the process and the thoughts that go into this work, and building the platform for doing so via this website.
If you have an interesting project and want to collaborate, reach out to me at horatiuromantic (at) gmail dot com and let's have a conversation.
Thanks for reading, and happy 2024!
Horațiu Roman