In late 2010, stuck, confused, and frustrated, I had the desperate inspiration to make my own handheld console. I talked to the Dingoo company, a Chinese handheld maker, and got them to agree to a $25 price point on a rebranded device with Gamecube-like controls, which I called the "nD."
At first I thought I would only scream the idea out to the world with an outrageous video, my last "battle cry" before my dreams were crushed, but then I realized I was in Silicon Valley- the heart of the tech investment industry. It was worth a shot!
In 2011, With some models, a website with pledged games, a flashy custom game loader, and my game ported to a hacked up Wiz prototype, I got the attention of some former toy company executives and then sought venture capital. Unfortunately, although I did get one meeting with one of the "big guys," I didn't get funding in time. Somehow, they had torn me apart almost immediately, leaving me confused and with no confidence. The investment industry was even more criminal than the game industry! In retrospect, that should have been obvious- it's all about money. I had no idea what I was doing, and I had run out of money and had no place to live.
In 2012, I moved into my friends' spare bedroom and decided to try and make a "portal" application for the prototype nD to connect to, a sort of online "hub world" where people could walk around and play games against each other. I called it "nDworld" and decided to make it in Java, so it would run on Mac, Linux, and PC without much work.
After six months, I was so excited by what I had made that I decided to make it the full game client, and put the nD on hold. Android devices were getting so cheap that it would make more sense as an Android handheld anyway, and I could use the same Java code on both!
