Creative Insanity and Video Game Creators!

Original Post: - http://www.anjelsyndicate.org/?p=335

Sometimes when you look over the well known personages of the video game industry, it leads one to scratch one’s head and wonder how these people escaped notice as being wildly insane. Well alright maybe that’s pushing it a little, but when you look over the games that are out in the world, it does seem fairly evident that there’s just something not quite right with the people whom create them.

Creative insanity, what else can you really call it? It’s an industry built around imaginary worlds, meant to entertain, sometimes educate, and generally just provide an escape for those whom play them. It can take only a handful of people or a massive team of people to build this incredible worlds that we all love to dive into. When you take stock of the number of people whom make games either for a living or even as a hobby, it’s mind boggling that there are that many people in the world whom look at reality and either shrug it off and build something different, or find ways to alter it and go off on some creative tangent from the known to the unknown.

I don’t know about you dear readers, but when I stop to consider all the things that go into the creation of a video game, it’s both scary and amusing that there are so many people involved in this kind of creative insanity that it’s no small wonder they come off strange or weird to those on the outside.

It takes a special breed of person to really build, define and shape worlds, from the original concept and vision holder, to the artists, programmers, musicians, and more whom give that concept life. I’d posed this thought earlier today on Twitter and it remains true. Everyone in the industry, myself included is just plain strange people.

The ironic thing is within this sub culture we find a home where we might otherwise not find the same kind of creative resonance anywhere else. The thing that amuses me along these lines is that we see stereotyping about gamers all the time in other media, and when I think about it, how are we any different from other people, and other industries where they are or can be just as passionate and just as creative.

Certainly we work in the “real world” to create our “virtual worlds” but we spend much of our time living inside our creations, either as we’re building them in our heads or exploring the various stages of creation and then the finished games. This ties into blogs made earlier by various people about avatars and personalities online being real or not to their users.

I found that conversation amusing, and really it is. Certainly our avatars and online creations are real to some and to others just a thing, a part of a game that isn’t relevant. But when you consider we build fantastical worlds, delve into our creations, just like an author grows fond or emotionally attached to their characters, so do we to our avatars either in our own games, or in other games we play and experience.

This innate longing to live in or explore worlds outside of our common reality is part of the puzzle that goes into video game makers. Is it rational and sane? Not bloody likely, but how is that a bad thing?

People cling to all manner of things to find meaning in their lives, to express themselves, or to escape their situations and find somewhere where they are free to express, create or socialize.

In the end, reality is a matter of perspective, what we see, what we feel, and what we feel is real to us, and for gamers and the game industry making worlds seem and feel real, to draw out emotional responses, a sense of awe and wonder, and just to create is the common goal.

Are we all inflicted with that delicious creative insanity as we build worlds, create characters, and make digital magic?

Hell yes, and personally I’m damn proud of it. I recognize most of the people in the video game industry are strange birds. That’s how we get away with creating the things we create, but something that seems to get lost in the translation is that while we do create these wondrous worlds, not only are we building them to see our creative visions come alive, we willingly share them.

The next time someone mentions to me that game makers are an exclusive group that ignores the world, I’m going to punch them in the shirt. Certainly we’re building our worlds in that dark place between our ears, but then we share those things with the world, not to exclude the mundanes, but to offer an open invitation to the world to join us in our creative visions!