A late-night rant for you

I played our game for a while after coming back from the pub this evening, just in single-player mode, which isn’t really the most fully-developed aspect of Determinance, and I’m pleased to say I’m happy.

It’s hard to deal with the information that someone who had a part in making something is happy about it: it can mean literally nothing. That person might be an idiot; you simply don’t know until you see their product for yourself.

You should go and look at how Don Hertzfeldt does things. He’s passionate about something crazy that not many people want to buy, but his completely ineluctable drive to do that one thing makes him successful. It’s a success which extends beyond the validation attributed to something obscure when it begins to earn money; it’s a success he accrues because he simply continues to make dark, unusual cartoons in the face of every single obstacle which he encounters, and, by continuing, makes enough money to survive.

Gabe and Tycho have done it too. Introversion have done it. The hardcore musician Pete Richardson, who I’m interviewing as a component of my other existence, has done it. Cory Doctorow, bless his crooked soul, has done it. Gillen has done it. Survival and personal coherence together.

They’re not rich, but they’re alive and comfortable.

So many people spend time doing something they don’t want to do for the sake of security. Most people who don’t do that possess a considerable amount of luck – they either have a supportive family or some kind of situation which facilitates the pursuit of their “dreams”. Does that mean anything? No. If you have an opportunity there, then it is your duty to take it up.

What we’re doing isn’t always fun, and we have to be judged by the worth of our output. Hertzfeldt is a virtuoso animator; Gabe and Tycho make the best videogame comic in the world; Introversion dared to make two original games and market them effectively; Richardson is an amazing engineer and producer; Doctorow is a wiley and resourceful information-hound; Kieron Gillen is one of the world’s best journalists in his field. These guys haven’t always had fun either: I’m sure Gabe gets bored of drawing; I know Pete Richardson sometimes wants to throw his mixing desk out the window. But they’re relentless, they don’t care, and they match their drive to their need for security.

We want to take as many of the above-mentioned to the pub as possible. Maybe not Doctorow, because he’d probably refuse to go anywhere that doesn’t have wi-fi and keep making up words all evening, but certainly Kieron, Introversion, Pete and anyone else in the vicinity. Let us know. If you want to wait until our game is done because only then do you consider us worthy pub companions, go right ahead – you won’t have to wait too long.

I’m not trying to place us in some kind of abstract cadre or club here, I’m merely asserting that it’s this form of behaviour, no matter what the discipline, that we’re trying to emulate. We’re not going to stop until Determinance is good, out in public and seen by as many people as possible. The only reason we care about money and marketing is that those things will help Determinance and will enable us to make more games – we really don’t have time for anything else.

Do I hate people who make games and music for money? Not at all. I know why people need money and security: it’s completely fine. I’m just not going to be happy unless I put my full weight behind something which I think is worthwhile, and that means I have to align my career with my ambitions as fully as I can. This is personal to us, and to other people like the individuals I’ve mentioned – some people can balance their life up differently. Good for them; it’s just not me, and Ian is exactly the same.

We care that our game matches up to our own standards of worth, and we’re not easy people to please. There’s a lot of problems I have right now: the sound is clicking awfully and we both have no idea how to solve the problem; we have a real issue with our font; some of the organisation of the menu screens is way off-kilter; we haven’t even started testing yet; we need to optimize and Ian has to sort out the detail levels, which I’m aware is like a personal Tartarus for him. And this is just the stuff I can tell you off the top of my head. The game works, but it’s in a nightmarish netherworld between fully-realised concept and actual commercial product.

So it’s good that I’m happy with Determinance right now, otherwise my motivation would be low and I would literally go crazy. We have something like a whole mountain range to climb before we can get the game out, but I feel encouraged to know that I’m trying to do is worthwhile and in the correct spirit, and I believe that if we keep on like we’ve set out, we’ll get there and we’ll be sitting here posting smug retrospectives sometime soon, possibly from a pub where we’ve borrowed Doctorow’s wi-fi-enabled hat to post on.

We might not make money, you might not even like our game, but we’ll carry on anyway – it’s that simple.

I’m sorry about this emo nonsense, but every blog requires it, and I’m proud to christen ours. And now, good night.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 4th, 2006 at 5:21 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “A late-night rant for you”

1. Paul:

   § May 4th, 2006 at 12:25 pm

   Reviewing this post in the cold light of day, I would like to add the following postscript:

   http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3115213134814599261&pl=true

2. Kieron Gillen’s Workblog » Four Watchwords.:

   § May 4th, 2006 at 12:55 pm

   [...] Paul from Determinance’s latest post makes me drop him a line. [...]

3. Ian:

   § May 4th, 2006 at 1:27 pm

   

   You do realise that thanks to this post anyone searching for “emo” will find our blog right? That is NOT OUR TARGET MARKET.

   I have a lot of Tartaruses.

   Ian

4. Paul:

   § May 4th, 2006 at 1:40 pm

   

   Well in that case we should make an emo mod for the game where the characters just whine at each other.

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