Jonathan S. Fox just graduated from a Game Design college course, with a Bachelor's degree in same. Now, I don't have any more faith in a degree like that counting for anything in an industry more than an Art degree would land a job painting masterpieces, but I greatly respect Fox and his skills. His talent is evident in all of his projects and his writing, and my disdain for "game schools" is no reflect on his real ability. He has a lot of good things to say about it, and he would certainly know better.
GlyphGryph, forsaken1111, and Iituem (that I know of) have embarked on making a genuine game that they intend to genuinely release and charge genuine money for, and (I think believably) actually have code to show for it. They even have enough confidence in their process to post an open want-ad for content-generation on the Internet of all places.
I don't know any of these people well, but I am familiar with all of them, and I've been around long enough to have some idea of what they can do and how they progressed over just a couple years. I first started playing around with making "games" over a decade ago, and that's just in terms of actual computerized stuff that can be played; not even counting stuff that's explicitly supposed to be analogue. Most of that time was either jotting ideas in the abstract (when I bother to write stuff down at all), and a constant search for DIY programs; any sort of tool to automate all the hard work of actually learning how to program. And what do I have to show for it? Some vestigial knowledge of Java and a toybox full of tutorials and napkin sketches.
I have the utmost respect for people who pursue their interests and come out with something to show for it; even if its still in the ephemeral, at those guys up there are doing something. Meanwhile, all my passion for game design has earned me is the ability to chase after Glyph's project, shouting in my best nine-year-old voice "hey guys, wait up, I can help too".
I don't care about success or money or fame or even recognition. All I've ever really wanted was to make something that can live up to my ideas. But I've spent all the time and resources I could have ever applied to learning anything related to creativity, games or otherwise, in favor of "smart" choices that have landed me nowhere anyway. And I've never had the work ethic, let alone the talent or aptitude, to learn any real skill to produce something on my own, let alone the effort to actually follow through. The easier things seem, the less likely I am to even start, while at the same time, I sabotage any attempt I make to do something ambitious until I lose interest and give up. Why does "following your dreams" have to be hard?
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9489009 times)