I am a disabled queer trans masculine Chinese-American game developer with over a decade of experience in the hobbyist and indie scene. I started taking Testosterone on May 13, 2022 and I hope to continue transitioning.

Back in the days of my youth, I used to be a voracious reader and by 4th grade, I had read virtually every single fiction novel in my elementary school library, even the ones that were designated reading at a 12th grade level. Without anything left to read, I decided that I would have to become a traditionally published author myself when I grew up. In the meantime, I’d turn my reading habits towards video games.

Come freshman year of college, and the student store was doing a flash sale of assorted books and other merchandise for $1 each. I spied plenty of books about publishing and swiped them up quickly, and when I sat down to read them that evening… I realized that the odds were extremely stacked against me as a person of color.

But well, visual novels were already something I knew how to make since I’d been working on a few projects in high school. You didn’t need a literary agent to put your game out there into the world at that point, no prohibitively expensive red tape just to have people download your work. Wouldn’t that lower barrier to entry have a better chance for me than to run the gauntlet of racism and sexism in traditional publishing?

Oh, I was naive.