Evening. Downtown. It’s hoodie weather. I park my hatchback on a big street where I know there’s going to be ample space, and I head to the bar we always meet at. I step in and I discover I’m the first one there…except I see someone who stands out, and I realize he’s with our group. A group of game developers.
We introduce ourselves. Awkwardly. It’s always awkward. We handle common social cues bluntly and numbly. There are pauses, missed eye contact, somehow this makes me want to differentiate myself from the other guy, so I order a drink, he does not.
He’s a student game developer, he’s in his second year but wants to transfer to a game design school. I introduce myself as an “independent developer” or whatever that means. I want to show the regulars at the meetup my latest projects, but one of them is in Iowa and the other has a doctor’s appointment.
Two others show up. A quiet man, his shirt has a NES controller on the front, and another man who’s well dressed but he’s wearing an elf hat, not unlike Link from The Legend of Zelda series. They come as a pair. One is a computer science major, the man in the Link Hat.
We wait for a table to come up, paramount is access to a power outlet so the student game developer (who’s a graphics arts major, i come to find) can charge his laptop. We exchange pleasantries while I’m desperately looking for a familiar face to ground the group, and suddenly realize I’m the only one that is organizing everything because I’ve Been Here Before.
We get a table, I order a burger I always get. I pretend I’m not unemployed and that this meal is going to be over %50 of my weekly food budget. I ask for Medium Rare. We take over the table and get out our laptops.
The Student developer opens his laptop and boots it, his desktop pattern features the character Rainbowdash from the cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship is magic. With his social characteristics, demeanor, interests all considered, this background image should come as no surprise. Of course he’s a brony. I try to ignore it. I get my laptop out.
Soon we’re joined by an actual regular, but not someone I want to see. I’m going to call him Henry. Henry is a 3D modeler but I feel like he is constantly hedging himself on bullshit when it comes to everything. He injects himself loudly into every conversation, especially when he knows nothing about the subject. It’s difficult having him around.
The student developer starts talking about his project. The initial description is “Skyrim meets Mass Effect meets Assassin’s Creed” and I close my eyes and while my eyes are closed I roll my eyes with such force I could pull a muscle. He has a game design document, the rest of the group nods about the Game Design Document and how Important a Game Design Document is. The Student Developer shows us a website that generates fantasy names for the NPCs in his game, and a world map that the same site generates. I want to stop him and tell him he’s written a Pathfinder game, and the Sound Designer, Creative Director, and Writer he has on the team should just make some player characters and he could run a fucking campaign and have some fun. But no, he (they?) wants to make “Skyrim meets Mass Effect meets Assassin’s Creed"
In between loud conversations I show my projects. One of them is a game I made for a Game Jam, a woefully buggy mech simulator called "Dog In A Mech”. In the game you break into a large walking tank, and you have to turn it on and pilot it, and make it shoot at things. You have to start up the mech by pressing buttons in the right order to turn on the mech’s “systems” and “turn the engines on” by pressing buttons in the cockpit. It even has a functioning ejection seat that you have to *arm* first before firing. I’m not super proud of it, I made it in a week, I can’t gauge their reactions very well.
Henry takes over the conversation they were having again, and soon they’re talking about Skyrim again. They talk about having an infinite procedural world, with computer made text “Like the cleverbot site” so that all adventures and dialog aren’t scripted, but made “organically”.
The computer science guy brings up his project, it’s a puzzle game that doesn’t tell you how to solve it, or what you’re trying to accomplish, but it looks like it was done in javascript with simple tools. It’s simple but effective, could maybe use some design fixes, but it’s pretty good.
I bring up my next project. It’s a model I made. After Dog In A Mech I wanted to learn 3D art, so I took one of my sketches of a robot and turned it into a 3D character. The demo was of him walking around on a flat plane, but he had an idle animation and a walking animation. Henry offers to model stuff for me, but I decline.
They spend the rest of the time talking about immersion and gameplay from the perspective of people who have only played AAA video games. They haven’t played Kentucky Route Zero, Gravity Bone, Twine games. Indie Games to them are probably Minecraft, Super Meatboy, and Braid. I don’t ask.
I want to talk about…making things. The process of making things.
I met Ben last year when I moved back to the city. He said he was a game developer, so I sent him an email for a meetup. We both played Gravity Bone, we both played Escape Velocity: Nova. We both showed each other everything we ever made. Ben had been nominated in the IGF and was working on a long term project. We lamented the loss of the Super Friend’s Club forums. We were both in the same Denny’s in San Francisco during the Game Developers Conference and we didn’t even know it.
I was greedy, I wanted to talk about graphic styles, I wanted to talk about how Isn’t It Great Unity has Pathfinding in the Free Version Now? I wanted to talk about how Ambient Occlusion makes everything look great and how you can bake it right into your UV map. I wanted to talk about how hard it is to make a game, how the long hours in the night make you question everything, the desolation, the creative blocks. I wanted Ben to be there, I wanted a room full of Bens and Bettys to talk to.
But all I had were Henrys, talking about Skyrim again. It felt so shallow. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to hear about people’s 50 page Game Design Documents, I don’t want people asking me if I’ll program their game for them for free. I don’t want to talk about Skyrim. I know a person who worked on Skyrim, and Fallout 3, and Elder Scrolls, I have never brought the subject up once in conversation with him.
I am so sick of this. I do not call myself an Indie Game Developer because I feel it’s an empty label. Emptiness. I wonder if I should stop calling myself a Developer. Artist? Person? My twitter bio reads “Disorganized Self-Starter” because it is the truth. I am up until 2am writing a game’s script, and I don’t think I’m an Indie game developer.
I’m not sure what I am.
The beer I had was $8.
zaynmalks liked this artlessbystander posted this