Amateur game designers are finding themselves better equipped to succeed in the video game industry on their own terms. Two such creators tell us about their day-to-day work and their upcoming games.

It seems that just about every other week or so there is some news about a game raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter: Double Fine’s adventure game, that SpaceVenture game, Wasteland 2, Moebius, Carmageddon: Reincarnation–the list goes on and on. But there are also unknown game designers who are having smaller successes on the crowdfunding site and launching their game careers. The PC game Against the Wall accumulated $8,400 on Kickstarter. “It was mostly a way of marketing my game and telling people that it existed,” said Michael Consoli. “Just reaching out there and testing the marketplace to see whether you have a product that people want.”

Michael Consoli lives with his parents. He needs to because he has to keep costs down so that he can spend every waking hour working on Against the Wall. “I am working on it full time. I was working in the summer last year, but I had to quit that job because I wasn’t getting that much done on the game,” said Consoli. He has been working on the game by himself for a little over a year now. “This game is really important to me. It’s me reaching out there and trying to grab this crazy dream of mine and become a game designer.”

Read the full article at GameSpot.