This line really spoke to me because I actually happen to be an independent video game developer… Well, sort of.

I’m a part of a very small team of people who, for two years, have been literally slaving away 12-14 hours a day on our game called “Divergence”. What bothers me most is that there isn’t a single aspect in ANY of the videos shown for Duke Nukem Forever that our game isn’t capable of, and guess how much money and time we have invested in it…

(Drum Roll)

1 and a half years and less than $200,000.00

We’ve been desperately trying to get some outside investment so that we can actually afford an actual studio front and not just our various living rooms and garages, while these guys have been doing God knows what pissing away over a decade and millions of dollars all while sitting comfortably in their 30,000 square foot air-conditioned megaplex (I don’t know that, it’s just a guess) and essentially doing nothing.

Because no one on my team has had dinner with John Carmack…

Now, let that sink in for just a tick, the fact that this is more than likely accurate.

The saddest part is the realization that our amateurish little product is somewhere in the vicinity of 3-4x more technologically advanced, and on a much grander scheme than Duke Nukem forever. You can play as over a dozen different species of aliens and breeds of humans in a futuristic and gritty world fans of such franchises as Firefly and Blade Runner will relate to immediately.

It encompasses several different planets, each at least 14km x 14km of playable space in size.

The game can even support over 5000 simultaneous connections per server, more than twice the number World of Warcraft server can hold.

All this, but we can’t even get a single major investment firm to return our calls.

My father told me last month “…I bet that has to feel pretty good… to have something like that out there that’s yours that’s worth that much money…”,

To which I replied, “Yeah it does… So can I maybe borrow some money for rent next month so my landlord doesn’t kick me out?”

The moral of the story is this: In my experience, getting anywhere in any industry that matters is at least 75% who you know, and who you know is infinitely more important than what you can do.