#11: Cathartic Burn
“There is nothing impossible to they who will try.”
Project update
Across my 3 principal source documents for Project Argeus, as I have now code-named my game while I pontificate over the strongest candidates for a name, I reached 45,000 words today. It kind of feels like an achievement, and it also kind of doesn’t. It’s a lot of material to have created in approximately 5 months (this includes my summary material for the story as a whole), but there really is still a long way to go. That 45,000 words represents the same underlying concept twice:
A summary of the story’s most important facts, meanings, objectives, plot and so on.
The literal script’s spoken dialogue.
So yes, there will be compression and reduction in the final “word count” figure when I’m talking exclusively about the script, which will then be made even smaller when I come back around to refine everything from start to finish during a second draft.
Personal reflections - Productivity, purpose and drive
I found myself saying to a friend yesterday “Why do I make myself so busy?“ and then before I knew it, I had drafted another message that said “I like doing the things I’m busy doing, but I just wish I had enough spare time to do more things.” and honestly, I kind of inadvertently shook myself with this. As the very author, I ask myself… What does this even mean, and why did I think it? Is this indicative of a mindset that creates a problem for itself which is also the solution? Is this deep and profound, or in the words of Sam Harris, have I “hit philosophical bedrock with the shovel of a stupid question”? Is this workaholism? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely something that I am now thinking about.
Why am I saying all this? I’m saying all this so that both you, and I, don’t mistake “50,000 words? Eh.” for conceit and ego, but rather understand it as an expression of the fact that while I am making progress in words, what is much more important to me is that I am making progress toward my vision.
“What’s the difference?” you might ask, “aren’t you only writing those words to bring your vision to life? Aren’t they the same thing?” And my answer would be: not really! If I wrote 45,000 words on an introduction, and hadn’t even written scene 1 yet, how close would would I be to sharing my vision with you, and the world? Not very. Here’s one of the incredibly important motivational factors that I have baked into my process - by writing my summarised, bullet-pointed version of the story, separated into scenes, chapters, acts, I have nice bite-sized chunks of work that IO can complete piecemeal on my way to ward completing the task as a whole. When I write, I’m not simply writing into the void and hoping that I will get from A to B, I am writing for a purpose and I know how to get from start to end. I am getting through scene 1, then scene 2, then scene 3, and so on, each of which represents objectives and purposes of the story.
So, where does that leave me? It leaves me with a lovely 50,000 words, which will get larger and larger before it gets smaller and smaller, but more importantly it leaves me on a clear path from where I am now to where the finish line is. I’m nowhere near it yet, but it’s a big coloured flag off in the distance that wherever I look, it stands out as clear as a guiding star. All I need to do now is to stay on track, and whenever I find myself wandering, I need only take a moment away from my keyboard, and look up.
I find it enormously comforting that my fluttering flag off in the distance is not just a means for me to get to the end of this project. It has become my guiding light to help me structure my own navigation of life as well, and my place amongst my fellow humans. How, why? Because this project is more to me than just a story for a game, it is, as I have said many times, my attempt to leave the world a better place than I found it. That’s one hell of a reason to come up for air regularly to make sure you’re on track, and to just keep pushing - every day, every word, brings the promise of a place that is better for all of us, together.
Games I played
For the first time in weeks I PLAYED SOMETHING FOR MYSELF! Kind of, because I still assessed it and evaluated its procs and cons while palying, rather than simply losing myself in the joy of play.
The Gap (“Driven by a rare neurological affliction plaguing his family, Joshua has to recover his memories by exploring parallel realities through déjà vu. Facing the innermost depths of his past – moments both joyous and painful – seems to be the only way to get his life and family back together.“)
In case you can’t tell from that blurb, this game is a powerful exercise in deliberately hurting your own feelings. To open up the game and press “Start” is to tacitly acknowledge that you’re about to undergo an emotional rollercoaster of twists and turns, ups and downs, and that things are going to move you. There are at least two endings (I think just two?) and when I picked one, I actually couldn’t bear to play it through - I reloaded the game to choose the alternative, because I just couldn’t continue to feel the feelings my choice was putting me through.
With that said, this game is a simple but clever execution of only a couple of different mechanics, mixed and matched to produce sufficient interactivity, which is both compelling in the context of the game and makes sense intuitively to a modern player (sliding to unlock touchpad devices, entering passcodes that you have to deduce from information in the scene, point and click combinations, etc.).
The music and sound effects were just fantastic, and went so well with the game that they more or less blended seamlessly into the experience, rather than feeling like a “layer” that was added on top. The scenes were full of props that produced an emotional connection to each space, and despite every environment being a static one, rather than dynamic with movement and fluidity, this set the tone and mood highly effectively; it produced an almost photographic effect to each place in the game that you visit, which is in keeping with the game being an exploration of memories and alternate histories / futures.
There was some classic sci-fi wibbly-wobbly stuff going on, both visually and also in the story, which is nice, but for some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, I didn’t feel that they were as seamlessly connected together as they could have been. This is possibly because the game is so still and motionless, and the effect of moving between memories and other realities is so fluid, liquid-like, that they contrast in a way that I wasn’t certain was in keeping with the overall aesthetic. It was nice to look at, but it felt like an effect from a different game, to me.
The Gap is very much in the same sort of vein as the game I plan to make, and so I learnt a number of things (similar to Fire Watch) about incredible ways to tell stories like this. One of these is that there is absolutely no problem at all with grabbing your player by the heart on the first screen, in the first frame, with the very first words. In fact, for me personally, I will be the most invested if you psychically attack me immediately with some powerful emotional concept.
Both The Gap and Fire Watch broke my heart in the first… 90 seconds? And that is why I continued playing them. I will say that I cried twice playing this one, and it did put me in an emotional slump of depressive mood for a few hours afterward. Play, but play when you are ready to have your heartstrings tugged.
Extracurricular game dev update
I haven’t looked at my online course in a week or so because I’ve been so focused on trying to keep the actual content of my story moving as I continue writing my draft script. If there were more to say other than “I’ll get back to this soon!” I would, but alas.
Love you all.
