“I have no idea why I make games. I just know that I can’t not make them.”
That’s how Richard Danskey answers when asked why he makes games. The Escapist has an article, posted last week, about how the perception of the ‘gaming job’ is so vastly skewed from what the public opinion of it is. Entitled, “Making Games Ain’t Always Fun,” Wendy Despain writes about her experiences in the gaming industry, complete with doom-worthy citations from other industry veterans.
It’s always enlightening to read about how things actually work in the industry, but I can’t help but feel like she makes an effort to show the worst of the worst. Perhaps it’s just an attempted to keep the balance when everyone has such a rainbows and butterflies view of gaming, but I can’t help but think that the truth of making games is someplace in the middle – at times soulcrushing, and at others amazing enough to make you remember why you could never actually do anything else.
To read her account of working in the game industry, it’s a thankless job that no one in their right mind would want to, and is all horror and agony and disappointment, with the rare brief sunshine of success. I like to keep the pragmatism in full force and that game design, like every other job on the planet, is not all rainbows and sunshine, but at the same time neither is all agony and doom and gloom for a few meager scrapes of approval and vindication. BUT, regardless, a good read if you are interested in hearing the worst of what the world has to offer.
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