Personal Reasons for Creating the Game + A Brief Reflection
It’s been about a month and a half since I started working on Space Zero with David and Sunghoon while winding down Disquiet. I haven’t been able to put in as much time as I’d like so far, which is a shame, but I expect to go full-time on it soon.
Last week’s post was all about the tech and business side of things, but this time, I wanted to share the personal reasons behind making this game. It’s not just about “the market’s big and it could make money.” For me, having a genuine answer to “why this?” is something I can’t live without—it’s a huge driver of my own motivation.
Back in 2022, after finishing my military service and joining Disquiet, I wrote about how the challenges I felt as a kid eventually led me to build it.
Future of Internet, Algorithm, Network
Here’s a quick one-paragraph summary (the photo is from when I was around 4, playing MapleStory, I think?):
I started using computers at age 3, diving into the internet and soaking up tons of information, which sparked my curiosity about history, exploration, and science. Stories like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Robinson Crusoe, Indiana Jones, and The Lord of the Rings fueled that interest, along with history and exploration games like Age of Discovery, Sid Meier’s Civilization, and Minecraft, where I loved discovering new worlds.
Over time, as social networks took off, I noticed the internet getting clogged with sensational content and algorithms that mess with independent thinking. In the real world, I saw growing gaps in access to networks, which limited information and locked in social and economic inequalities—reducing people’s freedom to choose. I felt it was critical to bring back the internet’s core values: networks of knowledge, people, and resources, giving everyone more options. That’s why I wanted to create Disquiet, a place where curious makers could come together, inspire each other, and build a better internet.
Honestly, the mindset behind Space Zero right now is pretty much the same. The main difference is that it’s shifted from a social/community platform to a game.
I see games as powerful tools for storytelling, connecting people, and learning about life. To me, the heart of a game is “experiencing and learning something through fun.”
I enjoy books, novels, webtoons, musicals, dramas, and movies not just for fun, but for how immersive they are. Stories let you face challenges, stumble through trials, overcome obstacles, peek into the raw depths of humanity and society, and imagine tales from the past or future. They take the experiences we can have in one lifetime and multiply them exponentially. The more real those experiences feel, the deeper we get pulled in—stepping out of daily life to connect with entirely different characters or situations. Games, especially, take that immersion to the next level.
Socially, games stand out from other media. Sure, you can chat about a book, movie, or drama after the fact, but games let you play together right from the start. That’s a big deal. It’s not just about crafting a story to share—it’s about building it together in the moment. Experiences like collaborating in sandbox or simulation games with others have left me with some really meaningful memories.
At its core, expanding experiences, storytelling, and the connection of creating together in real-time—these things tie back to what I valued about the internet as a kid. When life felt heavy or stuck, the internet and games were my go-to sources of knowledge, learning, and growth. Without them, I’m not sure where I’d be today.
That’s why I feel this urge to give back somehow. Maybe it’s to the writers who crafted the stories I love, the scientists and entrepreneurs who invented and spread computers and the internet, or the people who’ve shared their ideas and lessons online through words, videos, or code—or maybe it’s to all of them.
Space Zero is about building something out of nothing (a meaning I came up with myself, haha), like the birth of a person, a new perspective, or the internet itself. I’d love for people to have fun here, weave stories together, and create something new.
+ Thoughts on Games
Growing up, a lot of people around me saw games as addictive and pointless. There’s even that famous meme from the news where they tested “game addiction violence” by shutting off a PC cafe’s power, and everyone freaked out. (I mean, if someone wiped your GitHub while you were coding, you’d be mad too, right? Or if a company you invested in shut down overnight?)
I think that view is really unfortunate. Getting hooked on something and not enjoying it in a healthy way isn’t unique to games—anything can be an issue if you overdo it. Games are a beautiful, all-encompassing art form and, like I’ve said, they shape people’s lives in big and small ways. In South Korea, games make up about 60% of media content exports, outpacing music, movies, and dramas in economic impact. I wonder if more great games from more people could shift how they’re seen.
+ A Quick Look Back at the Space Zero Demo Launch
With this demo, I wanted to figure out, “Do people enjoy just collecting and crafting random items?” So I posted it on Product Hunt and Hacker News. I also shared it on game sites like itch.io, Kongregate, IndieDB, and IGDB, plus some indie dev subreddits and Discords, but most of the traffic came from PH and HN. Over four days, around 500 people signed up.
Product Hunt and Hacker News are full of early adopters and sharp tech folks, but not everyone there is a gamer. Still, some of the gamers among them left feedback and thoughts.
Looking at all the feedback together:
Wandering around, picking up stuff, and crafting—it seems almost no one felt like that was “playing a game,” probably because there were no rules or goals.
The AI-driven item-combining feature didn’t feel exciting enough yet either (all you can do with what you make is swing it around).
This time around, I really felt how high people’s expectations are when you put a game out there publicly. Even for a demo, they want a full experience, not just a couple of features.
I’ve played tons of games and absolutely love them, but I’ll be honest—I don’t know how to make them well. It’s like loving great food but not knowing how to cook. Truthfully, I barely understand game development, UX, visuals, or sound. I went into this thinking I’d need to unlearn everything from Disquiet and my past work, starting fresh from square one. Since this is my first stab at making a game, I had a lot of blind spots and wanted an objective sense of what was missing. This launch taught me a ton, and now my next steps are crystal clear. Launching early is the fastest way to spot what’s off. For the next few weeks, I’ll be quietly studying and building again.