Last week on Monday I had a plan. Which is never a good sign. I wanted to fix a couple of things and have an announcement of what the new version of the game was like. The first stumbling block I had was that the blog entry went off track. So today I am going to revisit the off track as I think it is interesting in and of itself. The start of it will become a separate entry which will focus on the UX (user experience) upgrades in Lords of Illic while here I will delve into:  

How did it come to this in the first place?

My Philosophy when making Lords of Illic has always been “take no shortcuts, do everything properly.” When working on code I would often come to junctions and say to myself “this is difficult I don’t want to…” and then remind myself “take no shortcuts.”

So why is my game scattered with such bad design?

It comes down to the way I felt while making the game more than my thoughts on how the game should be made. One thing I have started to appreciate is the gap between what you think is true and what you feel is true. For years I have frantically made my game as though at some imminent point in time I would no longer be able to work on it. I was frantic, despite the fact for a lot of that time I was not employed and had more time than I knew what to do with. In fact during those times I was even more frantic then. All of my fragile self worth was riding on this game, the only sliver of my game development dream left alive and well… If something broke it had to be fixed, right now. If it was broken I was broken. That sounds stupid and yes it is stupid, but that is how I felt. So I felt I had to make constant progress (by some vague poorly defined criteria). Worse still was if any problem cropped up I would blame myself and I would invest all of my energy into single mindedly trying to bandage the problem as quickly as possible. Now some of that negativity was founded by the real observation that my game wasn’t very fun but at the same time, wasn’t that a symptom of how I was developing the game? If you live in a cloud of negativity and avoid putting your game to the test well… How can it be fun? What I have noticed recently is… I can actually enjoy playing Lords of Illic. 

Let’s let that soak in for a moment. My base assumption about my game was that it wasn’t enjoyable to play and I was surprised to actually have any fun playing it.

But ah… wasn’t the point to make a fun strategy game? 

Evidently not, as for years that never seemed to factor into the equation. Even if I believed it, there was this implicit assumption or feeling that was the exact opposite. I think I just wanted to feel busy and feel like I was doing something useful in my life. I didn’t use those years to live my dream, I certainly improved my skills but my game was my shield against the crushing despair of absolute failure. Actually completing a fun video game was counterproductive to that aim. I mean what were the chances that I could actually sell it even if it was good? Someone who couldn’t even get a job? Someone who had completely and utterly failed at everything?

Except… Well wasn’t that just an unnecessary cloud of negativity?

I currently have a job making virtual and mixed reality simulations in Unity and that is actually as cool as it sounds. Really it is a dream come true and yet…

Even after I got this dream job, my experience with Illic didn’t really change. Even if I had decided I had made it and I should be happy the cloud of negativity persisted. Illic became a great burden on me, but I couldn’t help but pour time into it obsessively and use it as a way to fuel my engine of self hatred, except when I forgot I was supposed to be doing that and just enjoyed working on the game.

What has changed a lot of this thinking was listening to Stephen Zapata’s art videos. I do find it kind of funny that when it comes to art I have always done it for fun and not been too worried if it didn’t look professional. Even when it came to him talking about trying to reach this meditative state while doing that well… I have spent my life chasing being able to slip into this focused state of flow and meditation. During my years at school I would always try to finish up all my homework early so I could slip into games, books, drawing, writing, watching TV and exist within this state (that said the feeling of creating versus being swept up in someone else’s imagination are quite different). A state where I did not need to have thoughts at the fore-front, a way of living where I could just be. As I approached being an adult though, I started to feel pressure to become something. There was a path marked out in front of me and I could not perform well enough to walk that path. I ignored the simple truth that I needed to create to be happy and began to hate myself. It is funny (though actually not funny in the slightest) how you can become accustomed to living hating yourself like that. It is like this deep black sludge has wormed its way into you, but it is all under the surface. You can’t see it and you forget it is there but it affects everything you do. It reminds me of a documentary I was watching long ago about these lizards who fought all the time. The ones that won tended to keep winning and the ones that lost kept on losing. It was not about size or strength it was all about confidence. They got into this defensive defeatist mindset and that was that. No matter how grandiose we might feel in our castles of concrete and iron, how different are we to these fighting lizards? I feel like it really depends on how much you are willing to use what it is that makes it human, to be able to face up to yourself and reality and be able to accept both you are and what kind of life you can lead. Whether or not you admit it you can’t just decide who you are and how you live your life. It just doesn’t work. To bring it back to my favourite pet theory, you have to live your life in an agile manner. Whether you're writing code or the story of your life. You need small steps and quick feedback. No matter how tempting it is to make a waterfall diagram of your life well… it will never work and you wouldn’t even like it if it did! You want to be able to improve and to be able to take unexpected opportunities.

Just by being more positive with my game and by slowing down and doing things properly you get where you are going faster. There is this notice of fast vs cheap vs quality and the truth of that is… It is a myth in most cases. When it comes to manufacturing, maybe (I am not an expert), but when it comes to anything which requires creativity? Trying to cut corners and do things faster makes things slower. Defects and mistakes slow you down far more than the speed you appear to get by doing things faster. No one likes “saving” an hour only to be tripped up by a mistake which takes ten hours (in the best case) to fix the next day. Not to mention that it just feels so much better to work on my game in this positive mindset. I am happier, I take breaks when I need to, I feel more satisfied and happy working and I spent so much less time falling flat on my face after being tripped over by bugs. And you know what? Deciding to stop hating myself means I just don’t have to think about how much I hate myself and how much I am my own worst enemy. I can just think of you know… anything else! And once I can do that I feel myself returning to how I used to be before and the life I lived back then (though I still don’t miss school or feel nostalgic for school as certain people have told me I should. The great part of being a kid is literally every moment when you are not in class). Either way the point of making Illic is to feel the joy of creation and for no other reason. No matter what, as long as every so often (though with the way my life is at the moment it will be whenever I have time essentially) I can work on Illic and satisfy my creative urges I will have succeeded in  my goals whatever I work on. If you happen to be reading this and feel like you can relate you should just go watch Stephen Zapata’s videos on youtube, he is very good at talking about this stuff. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t draw, his videos have application for anyone who lives for creativity. 

Anyway I think I have spent enough time rambling on, so I will exit stage left chased by bear.