Hi, my name is Kent Hudson and today I’m announcing my game The Novelist. After more than a decade of working on AAA games like Deus Ex: Invisible War, Thief: Deadly Shadows, BioShock 2, and others, I quit my job in late 2011 and took a leap of faith into indie development.

Aside from doing some consulting here and there, I’ve been working on The Novelist for 15 months now. It’s definitely a very strange feeling to put it out into the world after keeping it under wraps for so long; to be honest, in many ways this is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. In AAA development you’re part of a team, so you never feel like anything is 100% on you. If something goes wrong, it’s highly unlikely to be completely your fault.

But when you work on a game in your apartment for over a year, it’s all on you. The good stuff, the bad stuff, the weird stuff … the only fingers I can point are two thumbs, pointed squarely at my chest.

But as nerve-wracking as it is to share my game with the world, it’s also incredibly exciting. When I went indie, I did it solely because I’d gotten to a point in my career where I was creatively unfulfilled and just wanted to work on something I believed in with the smallest number of creative barriers possible. Indie development is definitely challenging in terms of scope and stretching your money, but the ability to make something you believe in for the sake of the creative challenge makes it more than worth it.

Anyway, enough about me. The trailer is live, the site is live, and hopefully you’re interested in what I’ve been working on for so long. If you’d like to keep up with my blog posts, just click the Follow button in the menu bar above. You can find me on Twitter at @KentInPublic, and if you want to get in touch just hit the About page and shoot me an email.

Thanks again for checking out my game, and I hope it connects with you in some way.