According to Wikipedia, Motivation is the driving force which helps us to achieve goals… Yet, my motivation lately has been a bit lacking; not only I haven’t updated this blog as often as I set myself to do when I started it, I haven’t worked in any of my game ideas for ages, even been lacking in my game-playing!
So, why’s that? Well, the first thing that pops to mind is that I’m lazy… but that’s only part of the truth, considering I don’t think making games is work, but a pleasure; yeah, of course it has its frustrating times, but no more than playing a game and being stuck in a boss fight (exhilarating when you finally kill it!), or when you watch a TV-series that ends on a cliffhanger (just makes the next week sweeter)…
So, what’s the source of my lack of motivation lately?
After some soul-searching, I’ve found 2 things that my games and my blog-writing have in common, and how that relates to my inertia:
Thinking too big
I think too big most of the time… My game concepts start simple enough, but they soon balloon in my mind until they reach the point that I can’t do them by myself (specially considering my graphic skills); most of my ideas are story-based, which don’t work without decent graphics for the exposition (even retro graphics with loads of text, etc, are beyond my grasp).
Some of my ideas are even doable with graphics made by me, without losing its core identity, but then I feel that I wouldn’t do that "great idea" any justice like that… A good example is a story I have in my mind (project codename is "Thanus Gray")… It started with a crossover idea between the game I did for the last Ludum Dare compo I’ve participated (Conquest) and a story I’ve been munching around for some months now… but I like the story so much, I don’t want to "waste" it on my graphics…
Same principle applies to this blog… I have a list of posts I want to make, with some development stuff, tutorials, pseudo-reviews, etc, but I don’t like to do stuff half-assed… so they sit there, and I continuously think "tomorrow I’ll definitely write this, so no point in writing anything today…"; and this has been my mindset for ages now…
Lack of awareness
Even as I write this, I know my blog is read by very few people in the world (not that I do that much effort in advertising it, but then again I think "why should people care, it’s not like this is very interesting"). This lack of exposure makes me cave in to the demotivation that’s the cornerstone of this blog post… After all, it’s not like many people will care if I write or not… 🙂
On the same page, my solo game development efforts will probably also pass under the radar, apart for some friends that will try it out (and not enjoy it much also!). That also doesn’t lead to motivation in creating a game (which is a medium that can’t serve just for itself for oneself, in my opinion).
So, what now?
I have to fight these two conditions, to be honest… I feel the need of expressing myself through the creation of a game, and being to demanding/megalomaniac isn’t helping my cause…
This will probably require some thought on how I can approach these two problems (although number 1 is way more important, in my opinion), but hopefully I’ll be able to start tackling solo game development in a different way, and I have material for some blog entries…
I really love the Wolfire blog in the way they have normally 2 weekly updates (one technical, one art), and that can also be a good idea for me: isolate the technical me from the artist me from the game designer me… Might help me reach my objective of actually finishing a good game that 3 people in the world might enjoy playing! 🙂
So stay tuned for more developments on this blog, I intend to really start working on it in the near future!