Hello, World!
Like any major piece of writing, the introduction to a weblog can be excruciatingly difficult to write. One must capture the interest of the reader with both style and substance - promising that the future will find updates that are intelligent, intriguing, and immediate; striking the proper balance between reverent and irreverent, but always relevant.
“Oh look. A first post about first posts,” the sarcastic inner voice monotones, “How very meta. This guy’s just writing for his own enjoyment.”
And you’d be right, but we’ll get back to you and your snarky comments later.
Doing so for a weblog about games is doubly difficult. You can’t try to approach as a radical new voice with a gleefully odd, smartass attitude, because among those that thrive on scrutinizing the games industry, from within and without, that sort of radical is de rigueur. Even in the most professional, elder voices of the industry, there is a gleaming core of polished oddity.
“And damn if they haven’t been doing it longer and better than you.”
Yes, indeed, and I don’t mean any of that as disrespect. That sort of thing is at the very heart of our industry: Playfulness.
We are fueled by that playfulness, creativity, and readiness to examine the rules and try to twist them a bit. The same thing that makes a playful gamer think, “How fast can I run through this game?” is the same thing that drives playful designers to think, “Could I make a game about home life be enjoyable?” By embracing that playful creativity, we end up with Quake Done Quick, or The Sims, or so many other things the rest of the world enjoys, even as it finds them absurd.
“Congratulations, you’ve brilliantly pointed out that gamers enjoy playing,” it sneers, “I can’t wait for the next penetrating insight. Perhaps the sun, it could be said to be warm.”
It’s the first post, dude. Gotta set up the basics before building up to the revelations. That holds for everything from storytelling to scientific advancement to, well, setting up a really good combo in Lumines.
We’re hardly the only creative industry out there - entertainment media on all sides alternate between treating us a foolish younger brother and trying to get a hand into our suddenly bulging pockets. And every field has its own vital uses for playfulness, from re-imagining product lines to creating elegant solutions for complex problems. But only in games does it seem like our image of professionalism is eclipsed by our embrace of creativity.
“And this column is going to change that view, is it? Your insights will make it all better?”
Well, no. But I hope they’ll make things make a bit more sense to others.
And ultimately, I’m writing this for my own entertainment and as a space to indulge my own curiosity. What was originally going to be a resume website is becoming a space to record my various game-related musings, both about games and about the experience of being in the industry itself.
It’s a place with equal measures of oddity, absurdity, and creativity.