I wanted to talk about the AI Bubble and the pop that is imminent but instead, let me direct you to Ed Zitron’s “Where Is Your Ed At?”, a website that is much more critical (and much more connected to the industry than I am or hope to be). Yes, it’s 7 USD per month to get the premium news but I can assure you, it’s good. Especially if you hate AI like I do.

Instead I was thinking about something else, something that got the back of my mind… Ellen, The Cartographer is gonna be 10 years old this year, in October. And I like I posted in the last post in my portfolio/website, Old New Legacy:

It has been a real journey and I hope you had fun, but sometimes it’s best to move on with things.

In reality, I did have fun myself but the fun eventually stopped and I moved on… I wanted to continue to work on more Fallout 4 mods, even trying to get my hand on both gun mods (that are super popular) and more companions. I still have most of the work done on a second companion, who was going to be a doctor, with a different style, personal storyline and more integrated to the game itself, so it wasn’t just a mod, but something that was even more a part of the game.

But the real truth is this: Working on that burned me out.

Modding and Work

The relation of Working and having Hobbies are so that work doesn’t feel like it’s the only thing you do and you don’t go insane. Workaholics are a real thing, you need to have work-life balance in your life, everyone needs that, and I hope you have it too, if you have a job.

My hobby is to play videogames, as you might expect. Also messing around with technology and the like, which is also fun to me. I like to read, understand critical stuff related to technology, so on. Making a mod that big was never on my plans.

I was messing around with the Fallout 4 Creation Kit, which I did before the Skyrim, and got some companions (basically attractive followers that follow you around and stuff) done, and was trying to compare the difference between the Skyrim CK and the Fallout 4 CK. Things escalated quickly (no doubt!) and the end result was Ellen.

I wanted to make other stuff, but I worked on Ellen for like 6 months almost every day, that was also Saturdays and Sundays. If this was a job, I’d call it a crunch, but because it was a hobby, it was justified right?

There was a brief moment of pause when I had to wait for my voice actress (who I don’t have any contact since 2017) to get back to me to continue working but that didn’t take that long and so I was back again at it.

In the end, I launched the mod, got some recognition but ultimately wanted to work on something else, which was a big mistake.

I worked on the other companion for like 4 months straight in 2017, in secret. No one knew what I was doing. And that burned me out so badly, I stopped. Work was getting more annoying too, and whenever I could, I’d work on it a bit, or just play games to de-stress. Then I started working the night shift and that just burned me out completely, I had almost no mood to continued, and it ended in 2021, when I was let go. Sounds fine, right? Back to work on mods? Nope, I had to fix my sleep schedule and deal with getting my severance money since it was quite a mess (not worth mentioning but it was).

With a better job and a clearer mind, I decided that it would be better if I worked on creating games instead, but taking time to space out too much work on the hobby and actual work.

“Will you do mods again? Or finish what you started?”

Honestly, I have no idea, because Fallout 4 has changed a lot, I’d have to update all my stuff, and then update the mods to it, and perhaps add new things… The thought of it all makes me not want to do it, because it’ll burn me out, since it did to me once.

Significantly, I have more connections to other modders (that are still modding the game) that could help me out but everything is done by me, I run the show on my own things, and these people have been super helpful but ultimately, as I said, I run the show, for better or worse.

I’d love to just finish what I started, yes, so I can get rid of the thought of working it again. I’ve heard this saying from a few different people in different ways but it goes like this: “Things are either perfect or finished/abandoned”. No matter how many times anyone tries, they’ll never get everything perfect if they want to release it. And quite frankly, once it’s out there, it’s no longer my problem, I can’t control it.

This isn’t a recruitment post by the way, I’m just explaining my thought process as of February 2026. If you want to help, you’re welcome to, just know that it’ll be difficult for me to pick it up again, as much as I’d love to go back.

“When does your game come out then?”

Whenever it’ll be finished. I’m taking steps to work on it as much as possible but without burning me up from working it. This is a hobby first, something I wanted to do because I know other companies aren’t doing it, as I explained in my Project Redline FAQ (an internal document that you can now access if you like), and I don’t want to burn myself out.

And also, other than a fellow friend that is doing the programming side of things and some ideas, I’m doing literally everything else. Modelling, texturing, planning the artstyle, creating logos, backstories for the vehicles, the events, storyline, the characters there, their designs, the tracks themselves, so on. The asset for the HUD will be changed, as I want to design the speedometer and others too, the list goes on.

But I have no publisher or any obligation to finish on whatever time they would set me, so I can work as much as I want and take as long as I want. Obviously I want to launch it at some point, but with only 2 people working on it and I have to use many hats to get it done, as well deal with nonsense from my actual job, it’s not gonna be possible to get it out, like, this year.

So when I’m working on it, it’s a learning experience, a process that makes me be a better person than yesterday, as I have more and more knowledge of how making a game works, and frankly, I fully understand why some stuff doesn’t work out, people can’t account for everything.

Closing Words

If anyone can take my advice, please moderate yourself, even with your own hobbies. The absolute worst thing you want to do to yourself is to actually get burnt out of a hobby you actually enjoy, because what else are you gonna do? It’s good to have more than one hobby too, so you can balance doing this and that, but always be careful to never, ever, let it happen to any of them.

As for me, working on a game is fulfilling but ultimately much harder than Ellen was, since most of the systems were already pretty much made already and I only had to replicate most of them, and only create a few, but for the game, everything has to be made. That being said, maybe I want to go back into it, work on something, perhaps finish what I started so I can no longer think on it, and make sure I don’t burn myself in the process, otherwise, it’ll be all for naught.