Something short today, as I need to get back on this project, and much of what I can say on this subject I’ve already said in other contexts. Nevertheless, it’s been on my mind lately, and I’ve arrived at a conclusion that may be of some use to others.

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself becoming increasingly impatient with the game industry’s ongoing “games as art” debate. Until recently, I was fascinated by the topic and would pursue the discussion at every opportunity, but eventually I began to notice a nagging doubt. I couldn’t identify it, but somehow I had the vague sensation that I was wasting my time. Not that the debate is pointless – far from it, in fact – but I began to suspect that I, personally, had no business entering the field to begin with. Then, last week, it hit me:

I don’t have the slightest effin’ clue what “art” is.

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Forgive the shameless Ayn Rand reference. I keep coming back to it, for reasons that I hope will become clear shortly.

Another gap in the ol’ updates, but now that I’ve finally settled into my new (temporary) home in Florida and begun classes at Full Sail, I hope to have fewer distractions to pull me away from writing. Indeed, now that I’m spending 40 hours a week acquiring the skills necessary to execute my ideas, developing the philosophy behind those ideas should be a top priority.

All creative work has a philosophy. Whether the creator is aware of it or not, everything he builds is a reflection of his worldview. Most often, when he is unaware, what he builds is a reflection of the worldview that surrounds him. This fact, I believe, is the reason that videogames have failed to realize their potential.

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One of the things that became clearer to me at GDC is the importance of inspiration. Or more specifically, the importance of personal inspiration as opposed to industrial inspiration. Game development being the creative medium that it is, everything hinges upon The All-Important Idea. With rare exceptions, if The Idea doesn’t come from an interesting place, crafting a compelling game is going to be an uphill battle.

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Hmm. It appears that I’m well on my way to crafting a persona out of this frantic rhetoric. This could be fortuitous, or it may blow up in my face. I’ll take the risk. I can only hope that there are enough of you out there with your eyes turned skyward. I would rather be burned by hubris than crippled by doubt any day of the week.

Many thanks to former IGDA executive director Jason Della Rocca for fueling the fire with his parting rant at GDC 2009. It turns out that my amateurish zeal is not misplaced after all.

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When it comes to videogames as a medium for storytelling, I often find myself at odds with other developers. The prevailing theory in gaming’s indie scene (whose members, by the way, are a fine group of gentlemen) is that videogames and narrative are inherently incompatible; that any attempt to tell a story through a game is antithetical to the medium’s greatest strengths and if you really want to tell a story you should just make a movie instead.

To which I say: bullshit.

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Polysyllabic thunderstorm inbound. Brace for impact.

Creativity is a fickle creature. It’s no wonder the ancient Greeks attributed inspiration to flighty, unpredictable muses; it often feels like a wholly separate organism living inside one’s brain, choosing to alternately bless and curse the craftsman according to its own unknowable whims (I insist on the term “craftsman” because “artist” has a lot of baggage attached to it). Days, months, years can pass with nary a glimmer of the muse’s enchanting smile, and yet the most insignificant thing can trigger a dizzying rush of hallucinatory madness that claws desperately at the inside of its cranial prison until one finds oneself scribbling frantically on year-old receipts at 4:30 on a weekday morning.

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Haven’t done any writing since October; I’d been too caught up in the momentum of my daily life to even remember why I made this site in the first place, but now seems like the right time to get back in the saddle.

When a man has the ambition to create something great, it behooves him to learn as much as he can from people whose job it is to evaluate such things. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have every intention of shaking the videogame industry to its core, even if my methods retain more linear storytelling influences than those of Rohrer and Blow. Naturally, I enjoy surrounding myself with people whose opinions on games are thoughtfully developed and clearly expressed, but as a result I ended up adrift in a vast stretch of gaming’s intellectual landscape that was never meant for me.

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On occasion, when I have some time to myself and want to be challenged, I click down the list of links to the right of this very page and read the articles found therein. The writers of these articles are perceptive and erudite, and I always come away with at least a handful of novel thoughts rampaging through my brainmeats. That’s good; it is, of course, the whole point of having that list. But on the other hand, there is no other time when I feel – if only for a moment – so utterly disoriented and out of my element.

Make no mistake; I fancy myself a pretty intelligent dude. At the very least I have a vocabulary rivaling that of Jerry Holkins, if not Gene Wolfe. Yet somehow there’s a part of my brain (probably the one devoted to recalling, word for word, the screenplays to Disney movies that I haven’t seen in ten years) that perhaps I should have cultivated more diligently. Most of these writers, by way of their superlative insight, make me feel like a 19th-century frontiersman wandering into a room full of astronauts. Fundamentally, we may be in the same line of work, but damn if I don’t feel left behind.

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In my previous post, I discussed Ernest Adams’s article concerning the distinction between the skills involved in game design and the philosophy (or lack thereof) that informs the use of those skills. Realizing that this distinction is rather vague without concrete examples, I went through some of the games in my library to find the ones that really exemplify this idea.

Valve’s Portal, as overexposed as it may be, is a perfect example of a game with a solid design philosophy. Since the game was developed by Valve – whose studio resides at the epicenter of a great Awesome Vortex within which nothing can ever suck – it’s clear that Portal was produced with the utmost skill and dedication. But I submit that this is not what makes it a great game.

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