Whenever I pick up my notebook and leaf through it, I often wonder whether I am a madman.

Each page is filled with earnest scribbling, slipshod sketches, or rambling prose. Every “chapter” of this misbegotten tome is an aborted scheme, a half-baked diagram, an idea which, while having completely captivated me at the moment of writing, now makes me look back and shake my head with untold amounts of rue*.

I wonder as I return it to its place in my backpack whether I, with my inhibitively intense erraticism (not to mention obtuseness), am even capable of creating something that stands on its own merits; something that can be appreciated as a whole and complete work, particularly within the realm of game development, which is an incredibly precise and demanding practice.

I don’t want this project to fade into non-existence with the rest of my attempted projects. But I also don’t want it to be only appreciable once the player understand me and who I am, and what I am attempting to achieve.

Enough procrastinating. I have a TODO list as long as my penis euphemism, and things need to get todone.

* I am talking many rues.

What is up with the proliferation of the phrase above (or variants of it) in game developer interviews? Is it part of some kind of media training? Do they teach you “always answer positive first, even if what you’re going to say is negative,” and is “absolutely” just the longest way you can say yes while you formulate a sentence?

Does it weird anyone else out to see these people saying “Absolutely. No, we’re not planning on doing that,” or is it just me?

In my brief stint thus far in the game industry, I’ve been to a few companies, and worked with a fairly large number of people. And at each company that I’ve been to, in each group of people I’ve worked or interacted with, one trend has remained the same.

There are always people who don’t want to be there.

Some of them are there because game development is just where they happened to fall in the multimedia spectrum. Some of them are there because they thought making games was going to be a cakewalk. Some of them are there because they enjoy making games, but they only enjoy making a specific type of game, a type which that company would never do. Or they used to enjoy making games, but have become jaded and cynical over the years and have all but lost interest in game development.

To those people I have a polite but firm request:

Leave.

If you don’t like making games any more, quit the pretensions and go find something that can get passionate about.

If you don’t like making that company’s style of game, find a company that does, or go make your own!

If you thought making games was easy, either face it and work your ass off, or go find a job that won’t challenge you every day.

And if you’re just there to make a wage, and would be as happy making ads or business software, then by all means go do those things.

In game development, we need people with passion. People who, after they discover the amount of money and effort that goes into their favourite games and that they’ll probably have to start out in the industry making a game that they wouldn’t naturally want to play, will still put their heads down and try to make the best damn game they can anyway, out of whatever resources have. People who can find the fun in any project. People who get excited by being challenged, and improve themselves whatever way they can. People who care.

There are plenty of people out there who want a shot at creating games, and some of them will be able to stick it out and make great and meaningful contributions to whatever game they work on.

But because of the glut of people who ultimately don’t care, the potentials have a far more difficult time getting their shot. I know plenty of these people, and there is a multitude of others out there, yearning for an opportunity.

I’ve dealt with a lot of negativity and blase attitudes in just one and a half years, but what drove this particular rant is what I heard a tester say today: “I’m looking forward to the weekend so much – cuz’ then we won’t be here.” This isn’t about this particular guy, but just against the general attitude that making games is worthless.

I don’t care how proficient you are, I don’t care how many years of experience you have, I don’t care how many degrees you have. If you don’t care about games, then please, leave.

Bob Dylan has successfully toured with the same repertoire for over 20 years.

When J.K. Rowling goes on a reading tour, a vast sea of people surround every bookstore she visits, even after they’ve read the book she’s reading from.

What is or could be the parallel to “touring” for games? Or are they more like film, where a director’s commentary on a DVD seems to be all a fan needs to feel a solid connection with its creators?