thread: 2005-06-16 : Craft and Innovation
On 2005-06-17, Eric Finley wrote:
Mike - Those are good points. Thing is, those are also points which are by no means unique to the game design field; anything that tries to teach a high degree of craft (which term I now use in a slightly different manner than is in Brand's screwdrivers thing, though they may be related) will have had the same roadblocks.About the only useful thing I can say about the first one is that more games should feature this balancing act within them. Might work really well in a multigenerational RPG, a Pendragon or Aria knockoff, where the master smith must choose between a commitment to his masterwork and a commitment to his students - with the latter half made real because in not too many sessions, those students are gonna be the PCs. Back out in the world of game design, about the only thing you can say to this is "Yup, dangit, that sucks." Or invoke (falsely and perniciously IMO) the old adage - those who can, do, and those who can't, teach.
The second horn you cite has a little better handle, I think. In other trades and historically, there are three things keeping the apprentices showing up to slog the trenches. Number one is the promise of reward. Master machinists make a silly wage, if they're being properly paid; those guys are wizards. Other areas may not quite have the same gleam, but nonetheless in context they're usually the promise of a good living - either a solid, reliable lifetime income (carpenter, electrician) or an unreliable but high-potential one (painter, sculptor). Number two, which requires number one to be in place first, is a financial commitment. Dunno how common this is these days; but in days gone, as I understand it, your father paid big money to apprentice you to the right master. As with paying for art up front, you're committed now, backing out has a price. And number three is the joy of craft, the commitment that we all have to our labours of love.
Working with just one out of three, I'm not surprised Paul's friend had trouble staying the course.
Now, we can hope that the Burgess shale model implies that in ten years, Vincent and Clinton and Paul can quit their day jobs and make huge bags of cash doing what they love. Which would address number one and enable access to number two. Until then, however, we're somewhat stuck. One lesson to take away from that, though - working to get indie games into the public eye and generally raise their profiles should be considered a service not only to those who currently love it, but to those who someday may want to stick it through an apprenticeship but for whom (as it is for most of us) love is just not enough. Kudos to Andy Kitkowski, for instance.
But let's turn the observation that these are not unique dilemmas around. So, given that every other trade in the history of man has had to work through these two impediments in its inception, can we find any good resources to tell us how they did it? Off to the library, perhaps...
- Eric
