Sonic Toad 2.0 has kicked off! A pad for indie developers, creatives, and more

Greetings, Toadlets!

The day I have been waiting for for a long time has finally arrived: I have a shiny brand new website complete with this whole new blog. Because it was about time I shared my random rants with the world whether you find them helpful or entertaining.

That, and have a brand new place to show off the 10,000 pictures of my toad.

When you want to go off the beaten path, it can be hard to find people you relate to, especially when you’re just beginning that transition. For creative ventures, indie game developers in particular, it’s got a whole other layer of difficulty and stigma compared to almost any other field. People will tell you you’re stupid for quitting your job or not wanting to climb the corporate ladder. They’ll also say you’ll never make money. Your worst fears– that these people are right– will be confirmed when you go for a long time with little or no income and start to feel like a failure reading about someone who went from zero to seven figures in less than a year after starting up or that 20-something making six figures who’s making your 30 or 40 something self die a little inside because you are struggling. I want this blog to be a place where we can foster business growth without any of the flowery New Agey BS I see “consultants” pepper their promises with. To be a place where hard-working indie devs, entrepreneurs, and creative people who work for themselves and would rather die than go back to the 9-5 world can go to inspire and learn from one another, and to commiserate when times are bad.

If you’re not a game developer, you’re totally welcome and will probably like it at Sonic Toad if you’re a freethinker or tired of the same old and want to consider entrepreneurship. While this isn’t a fully game development centric space like Gamasutra, there will be lots of content specially for my fellow indie devs as well as tailored consulting available. But with all that said:

With Sonic Toad, I not only want to inspire people and help keep them going but also challenge the ideas we’ve been force-fed a better part of our lives. To defy convention. I want to use all the business and financial knowledge I gained in a career path I honestly didn’t want for good, instead of evil. I want to break taboos around things like financial opacity in both business and personal finance, particularly when it comes to the freelance life. Personal and business lives bleed together whether we like it or not as well, and I also want to address these things particularly when it comes to mental health and interpersonal relationships: what’s going on with them often WILL affect your financial health, despite all the naysayers thinking you can really forget about these problems by just diving into work.

So let’s see where this crazy journey goes. Let’s hop to our goals and decimate lots of bugs in our games and our lives.

-Rachel and Yael