Mittwoch, 28. Dezember 2011

to whom it may concern

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.  -Scott Adams

I recently opened a blog where I want to write about the daily progress of my little videogame projects and, well, I didn't really know how to start such a blog...where to roll on from. Should I introduce myself? Post a summary of my videogame projects? So I decided to write a retrospective about my past 6 years of Hobby-Gamedevelopment and how it evolved around me in this rather long period of time.


6 years___ a lot changed since then man. I started as a kid and I am a grown, working man now. So why do I keep doing it, do I find so much joy in it? Well... no, its just part of my creative activitys. I write... thats what I do mainly, I write short storys waiting for the spark to get my first novel going. Not in english of course and nobody ever red one of my storys yet but I really think that one day I might make a living of it. Maybe... A man can dream. However, videogames where always special for me, so was art. As a kid, I was sometimes playing with my action figurines in the garden imagining it being a playstation game. Later on I immediately started to create as soon as I got my first PC. With RPGMaker back then.
Videogames just seem to be an underdeveloped, underappreciated art form. There is so much big studios could do...just don't because there is too much money in the business for people to try and too much of these designers are too afraid to loose their jobs to attempt getting it in. Everytime I see an independent or lesser budget flick with a great storyline or artsy layout I'm immediately thinking about getting that concept in a videogame. I don't ...of course not...I lack the skill. I just toy around. Thats what I do. Thats what we do. (I know we have some fools here that think what they do on their home PC's is big business... you think of the same dude as I think of now, I bet you do ;)) But lets just get that straight: We aren't developing here, we make games for fun. We come home from our live sit down behind our PC's and escape into our own little creations. Like a musician or an artist. If you just so happen to be one (a lot of us here are) you just know what I'm talking about.

So I toy around with FPSC, with UDK, with Milskhape or whatever tool I please. And after some time it ends up being a game. (rarely; It ends up being a game that gets released). A few years ago I was still thinking that maybe one day I would get discovered by a bigname studio and I would work on the next big release but now, as an adult, would I really want that? No sir! Sitting behind a computer all day at work? No... Developing what the dude above me wants me to? No... Risking of loosing my job after a game is done? No! Getting paid for making games instead of actually working...doing something constructive and intellectual? Nope. Its just not happening, I lack the education, I can't code and I'm really not even that good... who would employ me? :) So I just got it down a little, I make games for fun now and period. I dont sit there I make games for fun the way people expect them to be from me like I used to. Thats just over.

Over the time I just realize that there are different categories of fellow gamemakers in the scene.

We have the coders which amaze me... raising up an entire software, engine, artificial intelligence with nothing but code... man! Thats just creating. Thats humanity at its best.
We have the artists which is my group... same as the coders, just a different approach and a different medium. I think we both are the same kind of people...its just a matter of which brainhemisphere is more dominant. But thats just me
We have the musicians that somehow slided into gamemaking aswell... their games usually dont look or play very well...but they have some serious soundtrack ;)
We have the jacks of all trade. Which I can be if you concider my synthesizer noise music
We have the gamers which are just trying badly to copy call of duty in fpsc and fail.
The pseudo developers that roleplay gamedesignstudio and are just fun to laugh about.
The generous type that develop [b]for[/b] other people. (you are probably thinking about the same prophet as I do)
These wierd guys which just collect the most professional software, do a box in it and pretend to be "skilled" trying to get us amateurs to make a game for them they can release under their name
The folks that believe gamedeveloping is the same as making a game and are probably still looking for the "generate awesome graphical game" button in dark basic professional.
...and the writers which want to tell their storys in this new and fascinating medium.
Folks, if your red this far, you certainly do not mind me telling you something about myself. If people ask me why I do create games, why I paint... why do I write? I do usually give the same answer a lot of you give. To create! To let of some inventive steam. To combine art skills. For fun. Or just....: better than watching tv. Which is all true. But I do it for a completely other reason aswell. It allows me to forget. You see, I'm always jolly on the forums... having a dry joke somewhere under my sleeve to everything. But I'm bitter, my youth wasn't exactly great and my life isn't easy so I just need this. I need art, not to express myself (I'm not going emo on your behind now, relax, mate ;)) but just to forget everything around me for an hour. Just create my game on my computer without anybody bothering me. I just need that...like other people need sportschannel or firstpersonshooters to vent. Thats why after 6 years, I haven't been taking a vacation from it for one month. ;)

But its likely...I'm in my 20's now... checking citys for my own place, the best jobs. Looking for a woman. Not for sex, not because I'm lonely but for a relationship....I just know that the day is coming within the next 2 to 3 years I'm going to stop making games. Like everything else, this time will end sooner or later. But until then, I just hope to have some fun times with this...
Now that was a bunch of rambling nonsense wasn't it? :) But what I saw...within the last couple of years is a lot of people trying to make games...like the large publishers. We haven't had that in the independent community earlier on. Maybe because I didn't overlook as much forums as I do now and maybe because I was mainly playing with a tool that didnt exactly work well bet then. But still, people where just doing some games on their own. Now we get one call of duty clone being pumped out after another one. Same with this sheer flood of manga mmorpg's. Just give us a break dudes, thats not what hobby gamedevelopment was ment to be as it got founded ;)

You see.. I'm getting tired of art. Because high art nowadays? I was in the museum of modern art in luxemburg once... and the moment as the tour lady tried to explain to me how fantastic that giant canvas with the redline on it and the few thousand euro valuetag on it was, I just immediately wiped out all my daydreaming about being a well known artist. Thats just over. A lot of famous artists nowadays just do crap. Thats my honest opinion about it. If you glue together giant pieces of scrap, draw a red line on a black canvas, sing "baby,oh" to a generated computer beat or write one useless novel about vampire/teenage girl love you are not an artist. You can call me stuck up, arrogant or snobby now, but thats how I think about it. I know that real artists are out there...starving =P Now I'm just kidding. I just have so much faith in us and I find new, amazing artworks and music almost daily...and... to be honest. That mainstream music/art industry is only there to hold us back as a species. Yeah, conspiracy theory guy is taking over I better stop this rant right now.
 I didn't end up writing the text I wanted to write...take this instead. To whom it may concern...

-A.

1 Kommentar:

  1. good thinking dude, i realy like your style...and i agreed with your opinions.

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