David Ream It's 9pm and my phone is ringing. It’s my girlfriend. I realise I am going to have to explain why I am not on a train home in time for dinner and I wonder how many strikes I get until I'm out. It's already gone way past number three. I guess I have been working late a lot recently. It’s a familiar story in videogames really: late nights, too many pizzas, not enough sleep.

Starting out working in games was my dream job. I arrived enthusiastically the first day at a big company with a notebook full of scribbles and ideas, ready to get my code on. What I didn’t realise then was that I was but a small cog in a much larger machine.

Also, I think I was some sort of angel of death. In the first three or four years I poured everything I had into a half dozen or so projects, but not one actually made it to release. Watching a game teeter close to the edge, you can’t just let it fall so you work twice as hard, trying to rescue it, often only to see it slip from your grasp. That’s normally the point where ‘us versus them’ battles started developing between the team, the management and the publishers. And I found myself struggling to justify to anyone outside the industry why I was working so hard on games that never even got announced. It did make for some fun bitching with workmates down the pub though.

So anyway, why am I on the last train home again? Have I learned nothing? What's that saying about jumping from frying pans into fires? Making the leap to start our little independent studio was definitely hard in the beginning, when the idea of leaving a steady job and going it alone seemed crazy.

At least I wasn’t naive enough to think that it was going to get any easier, even while my girlfriend was warning me against becoming some kind of beardy hermit that slept under my desk and ate spicy pot noodle. Wait. Actually, that may have happened. Ultimately though, my gut feeling was that going independent with a bunch of my talented mates had ‘good times’ written all over it.

To explain why it is worth the effort now, the best way I’ve found is to tell people that Hello Games is my hobby as well as my job. I can finally make use of that notebook full of scribbles. It’s like studying at an evening class or spending your free evenings training for a marathon. It's understandable that someone would give up their time for something that they love doing, or for a dream they very much want to achieve.

I guess even people who never play games can relate to this, although when I explain it to them they still seem to mark me as a computer geek. Their next question usually starts with, “I have this problem with my laptop...”

Anyway, motivation now comes easily, and I have never been so productive. Instead of grudgingly slogging to someone else’s deadlines, it’s all about what is best for our baby, the game. Instead, I have to make sure I schedule enough time for real life. All of a sudden it’s not enthusiasm that’s the problem, it's finding a way to make sure I log off every night.

I still struggle to justify why I need to give up all that time and can't make it to the pub tonight, sorry. It was particularly difficult when we first started. Most of my friends are not exactly massive gamers, my girlfriend has never heard of Halo, and I now know for a fact that she is not impressed by interactive physics demos. And since we built everything from scratch, it was months before we had anything that properly resembled a game. There is only so far you can get with wild gesticulations and shouting excitedly about Evil Knievel stunt cycle toys.

It all became a whole lot easier when we announced Joe Danger, and first started to get publicity. Starting to get magazine features and online previews was amazing and changed everything. We had something to show people, links to send them, actual evidence that we had been doing anything all this time. Our @hellogames followers grew to be much more than just old workmates and Sean's extensive Irish family. My girlfriend bought her first (and probably last) ever games magazine, although only to make sure there weren't any embarrassing pictures. I started carrying a copy around in my bag at all times, shamelessly whipping it out whenever the topic of conversation strayed to how my start-up venture was going. The Edge inside covers which showed Joe leaping an E made of buses, got torn off and framed.

In other words, all of us finally had the ability to connect with those non-gaming people who never really had a grasp of what we were doing. Suddenly they could see the evidence behind all those no-shows, late nights or impromptu blissful snoozes in the corner of a club. Even my mum, who wouldn't know a PlayStation from a DVD player, understands big colourful pictures printed in a magazine. Finally people realise where all those lost nights are going. Course, we still haven’t released a game yet...

Now it’s really late and I have 3 missed calls on my phone. She may be understanding, but I need to catch that last train home or I am a dead man.