#18: Programmer, Create Thyself
“Every person you have ever met, every person you will pass on the street today, is going to die.
Living long enough, each of us will suffer the loss of our friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?”
Project update
This week I spoke with Nico King of Chaos Theory Games, from Sydney, which was not only informative but potentially course-changing for my project. The purpose of this meeting was, overall, for me to gather information about whether or not there might be some mutual value in working together on my game. The takeaway is that I believe there definitely could be.
The team at Chaos Games and I have something fundamental in common: We both want to make transformational games that change the world for our shared social good. The difference between us is that they already have a proven track record of doing so, making games which ‘inspire, educate, entertain, transform’. Their products are super high polish and it’s a foregone conclusion that they have an incredibly talented team at their business.
Nico and I spoke about the expertise and history of Chaos Games, I shared where my project is at right now, where I plan for it to be next, and what I have in store. It’s worth noting that my game hinges on its story and the way that unfolds as an interactive experience, and that’s the spine of most story-driven adventures (mine may end up fitting into the walking simulator genre as well). Chaos Games have experience with story-driven interactivity, and my ears pricked up the second I realised that such a service was something I could engage them for.
I’m no slouch when it comes to writing and some of you may even have read some of them, though it’s a pretty small group as the widest audience of readers are those I’ve played tabletop roleplaying games with. I studied creative writing every year I was at school between grades 1 and 12, and I’ve undertaken courses through the Australian Writers’ Centre as well. The script, the text itself, is an enormous body of work but it isn’t actually my biggest challenge, risk and opportunity - that honour goes to turning the script into an experience which you, the player, finds life-changing for the better.
There are infinite ways in which I could turn a script into a playable experience, and I will find a good one on my own, with enough time and effort. With that said, why would I not engage professionally with experts who have precisely the skills and knowledge I need? Who have already made the mistakes that I am absolutely guaranteed to make very shortly, and learnt from them? I see the opportunity to make my own mistakes as a great and important one, however, believe me when I say that having the time, money and opportunity to indulge myself in making all those mistakes is a luxury., to me I love making mistakes and then fixing them, there’s something deep, personal and satisfying about it. To me, learning from my failures is what learning is. However, it’s also time-consuming, costly, stressful, and sometimes unnecessarily hard-fought to learn from. I’m not so hubristic as to claim that I can out-design, out-innovate and out-build a team of experts. More than that, it’s not a competition - I’m in this to build bridges, extend hands, repair cracks and heal wounds wherever I can, for whoever I can.
Personal reflections - Happiness
This week’s blog post title is reflective of the fact that I’ve been thinking about the way in which everything in my life is better since I came out, and took up the considerable gauntlet that was choosing to live my life, fully, in my trans identity. Until that moment, for most of my life, I had been sick in mind and body in a way that is difficult for me to articulate, and even if I could in this moment, I don’t much feel like ruining your day - believe it or not, this is a spectacularly happy moment. I had been languishing, deteriorating, fading for 15 years into my own outline in such a way that when there was inevitably nothing left, what remained behind after I was gone would not even have been a charcoal rubbing of who I really was. I was dying.
Now, though. Now, I go to bed every night with a smile on my face, and energy still in my limbs. Not just because of my project, but because of who I am, who I feel myself to be, and who I see in my mirror. My grant applications are nearly complete, I feel like I’m crushing it in Unreal for only just having started learning it, and things really just feel… right. Everything feels like it’s in its place. The mountains of work I have in front of me fill me with excitement because I’m driven relentlessly toward doing them. I’m rolling up my sleeves to do the work, and I’m so excited to do it.
Ironically, I don’t have a lot else to say for personal reflections this week. I’m feeling content. It’s lovely. I’m so glad to be here, and every moment that I have is a moment I might not otherwise have had. I want to take every moment to live, to take every moment to shape myself into who I become next, and I want that to be the best version of myself. I want you to be the best version of you, too. I hope you take a moment to stop, close your eyes, relax your shoulders, take a big breath, and tell yourself: I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.
Games I played
Nothing this week, but check it out! A video of my first Unreal Project!
Unreal Project 1: Computer Graphics Demo
All right, that’s it for this week, cherubs. All of my love to you all. That’s right, that means you.
