Arruuugggghhhh! Back from the dead.

This has been the busiest month of my life… I’ve been crunching harder than I’ve ever crunched before since late August, I moved to a new apartment, and finally set a wedding date with Dea, my longtime fiancee.

By the way, all the archived posts to the side now work. Now you can read two years’ worth of my blathering and growth. :)

It’s weird living in a vortex where I’m so busy that my life can literally only revolve around one single thing at a time. I think of it as gradually becoming one-dimensional. All of my peripheral interests start flagging behind, I spend less time varying my activities, and I have fewer thoughts overall. I just can’t afford to.

I haven’t opened a book in weeks, I’ve barely been playing games, I haven’t gone and visited anyplace to take pictures of… nothing. I was either at work until the wee hours of morn, or carrying enormous boxes up the stairs of my new apartment.

Weirdly enough, even though I was so hyperfocused that I essentially became a monkey capable of only one single task at a time, having work AND the move to do helped me feel as though my soul wasn’t being forcibly and violently sucked out of my body and fed into a meat grinder like I have with other crunches. I guess that provided me with just enough “depth” to survive.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. I’ve never been happier, I wouldn’t give it up for anything, and this is the last company I ever intend to work for. Crunch just takes a lot out of you, and moment to moment, it can suck. But my net perkiness remains high. :)

But let me explain a little what I mean by dimensionality… I believe that my best thoughts and ideas come when I have varied activities. When I’m not crunching, I read all sorts of books, write, play games, travel around interesting local areas, play amateurishly with my digital camera, and try all sorts of new and interesting foods. And so on.

Varying up my activities keeps my mind rolling, and I never manage to get too bored of anything because there’s always something new and interesting to try.

In fact, I think the key to generating great ideas in the first place is being involved with more than one discipline. My Marketing for Artists article was the result of having been a contract artist and also having read the hell out of every marketing book I could get my hands on.

When those different mindsets exist in your head at the same time, thoughts collide, and you can see the connections between different subjects. Almost every good idea I can remember having had was the result of knowing just enough about two different subjects to see how one can apply to the other. Seeing these connections and understanding their importance is tremendously rewarding.

In the game industry, I’m starting to realize that there’s an infinitely interesting amount of depth to it that’s hampered by insular thinking. Thinking that the game industry is a unique little snowflake unlike any other, ever. Horse puckey and bullspit!

I believe that most of the widely acknowledged problems with the game industry would simply disappear with a little knowledge of other disciplines. Basic management, for one thing. Accepting that games are a product and not a heaving squirt of creativity unshackled by the evil forces of business and marketing is another.

Entire game companies have been brought to their knees and driven themselves out of business for lack of understanding this: The games you like are not necessarily the games your target market likes.

Very basic marketing. Think outside your head. Game developers tend to have very particular tastes existing around the fringe of the game industry, as far from the mass market as you can get. Many think games like The Sims have no value because they’re disgustingly low-brow and tailored to fit the tastes of the masses. They fail to comprehend that they should align their tastes with their target market, and develop a game for them.

There’s a long list of parallels the game industry could benefit from learning, if they could realize that every problem they’ve ever had has existed outside this industry before and has often even been solved by great minds.

I think the world of business is a fantastic place to start learning because it’s so broad. The ideas contained in modern business literature can apply to any industry, anywhere, and they’ve been churning hard on these problems over the last century. Too few people in the game industry seem to bother with this, though, which to me looks like a golden opportunity for someone to get educated, step in and kick an ass or two.

I guess what I’m really saying is, read a book!

More updates to come soon now that crunch is over. :)