thread: 2012-03-27 : Indie POV pt 3: A Small Pep Talk
On 2012-04-13, Vincent wrote:
David: Oh, I think that's useless. Maybe worse than useless, if it lets you put off designing when you should be designing, or if it lets you blame your concept for failures of your design.
Bret: "What do you mean by successful and unsuccessful are in ongoing crisis in the indie rpg field?"
I've been thinking about how to talk about this, and I don't know if I can.
I don't think there's any live and let live between these two views of success. We can't arrive at a common view, we can't divide into coexisting camps, and we can't even settle it within ourselves.
Here's one reason why: financial success, popularity, and influence are visible to everyone, but personal creative fulfillment and happiness are fleeting, contingent, and invisible, let alone mutuality. People stop designing games over this stuff. My successes strain my friendships.
Here's another: when someone talks bad about a game, it's good for the game's success, and often good for future games' designs, but bad (we can only presume) for the creator's fulfillment and happiness. Consequently, undertake to criticize a game thoughtfully and you wind up all unexpectedly in a genuine fight with people sticking up for the creator's feelings.
So, yeah, I think it's an ongoing crisis. Every time we're confronted with it, it seems to me that it turns into fights and animosity, and we can't stop being confronted with it.
How does it seem to you?
