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The Future Looms

6 years ago3,368 words

I'm recovering, gradually, but the future looms, and I don't know what to do with it. Should I make a game?

It's been just over two weeks since the brain surgery, and I'm... well, I'm recovering, I suppose. I'm up and able to move, I can eat, I'm almost as independent as I used to be. All my basic bodily functions have returned. Even some things that were of great concern to me - like a seeming inability to sleep - seem to have settled down. I'm not sleeping as much or as well as I used to - I'm getting maybe five hours a night - but I'm definitely on the mend. I'm surprised, actually, how quickly I've got to this point; I thought before the surgery that I'd still be bed-bound after two weeks.

It'd be wrong to say that all's well, though, since it's absolutely not. I still have a hard-to-describe visual impairment that might be permanent. It's sort of like double vision? It's not like a hole in my vision, or blurriness. More like the eyes can't properly focus in unison... in certain regions of my field of vision. Or something. My head also feels really strange, in a way that's also difficult to explain. I just feel off, wrong, lousy. I was told I'd feel "wiped out" for at least three months, and that the recovery would take a year, so I'm expecting to feel terrible for a while. My cognition might be impaired, too. While I can sit at my computer and do creative work, and I don't seem to be less intelligent, I seem more easily stressed or overwhelmed by even simple stimuli, like conversations, and watching TV shows and such feels vaguely, slightly confusing, or off, or odd, or some other thing I wish I could explain but it's so unusual that I suppose there are no words for it.

Depression - which seems to be common among people with brain damage - seems to have hit me hard too... So it seems that while on the surface I'm well enough to function, deeper down there's still a lot wrong with my head. It's not a great state to be in.

While I'll probably be like this for a while, and I've been told not to worry about the future as a result, the fact is that I will have to worry about the future sooner rather than later, and I really don't know what lies ahead for me.

I'm 30, I live at home, I've not had a relationship in years, and I've never had a job. Not a 'proper' one, anyway. I'd love to find some ideal job to spend my life on... but how many people actually get that luxury? I doubt the people stacking shelves in the supermarket spent their youth dreaming of such a fate, doodling themselves shelf-stacking and playing make-believe inventory checking sessions as children. Most people seem to find themselves in mundane jobs that they hate just to pay the bills. Maybe that's my fate too. Maybe I'm naive for thinking - hoping - otherwise, especially considering my pathetic circumstance.

I don't know what my options even are... I've been considering doing a Master's degree to follow up the Psychology undergrad, then moving on to a PhD after that, going in that direction, becoming an academic... but a Master's would cost money that I don't really have, and I can't get student finance to cover that as far as I'm aware. Even if cost wasn't an issue - and it really is - I don't know what Master's I'd do. It'd need to be something more specialised than just 'Psychology', but what? Neuroscience interests me, but that's vague, and it's all very technical to a degree that I don't know whether I could spend my life on it happily. Counselling's a possibility, but... eh. Clinical psychology? I don't know.

While lying in hospital, I gave some thought to this, to what I'd be most interested in a Master's for, and the thought of something relating to consciousness came up. It seems so bizarre to me that we are consciousness, but we understand so little about what that fact actually means. What even is consciousness? Can we define it? Test it? I think that the mind and consciousness are distinct; it's possible to imagine one without the other. The mind is likely brain-generated, and provides functions for the body and interactions with the world. It can be broken, fragmented. Consciousness, on the other hand, seems to be the singular 'pilot' of a body. The bit that, if you were face-to-face with an exact replica of yourself, identical down to the atom, would see from your eyes and not its. Consciousness uses - but isn't - the mind. I imagine consciousness perpetuates after death, but the mind might not.

When I was in the hospital, and later while recovering at home, I had some strange experiences while waking up from what little sleep I had that got me thinking about all this. I woke up confused about who or what I was, and I had this relatively elaborate narrative of some alternate life that for a moment I thought was mine. It happened a few times. It was likely just of the same nature of dreams, but the point is that I could easily imagine being in those other lives, not even necessarily human lives, living them with no memory or awareness of this one. There's nothing ego-pleasing about such a thought because the ego wouldn't survive, and old memories couldn't be used in new lives, but when I awoke into lives I thought were different to the one I left behind, I felt at peace with that, ineffably.

I'd love to work with professors researching consciousness, talk about all this with people who've devoted their lives to it. Do experiments to learn what we can. I've got an active interest in personally pursuing alternate states of consciousness, through things like lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences, and I'd be fascinated to hear the personal accounts of other people who've had such experiences. Learning what I could about this uncharted territory, which affects every one of us at our core, seems like it'd be an incredibly interesting and ultimately hopefully enlightening path through life.

Of course, it seems like such a dreamy ideal... In practice, while I'm interested in all this alternate states of consciousness stuff, I put far too little effort into, say, practising lucid dreams, and I've never had an OBE. I've read some books about consciousness, but I don't spend the vast majority of my time on it or anything. I've not even looked up whether there are any Master's degrees - or jobs - in this weirdly niche field. I'm 'passionate' about it, but it's not my passion, you know?

I do however spend the vast majority of my time making things, and this is what I'd do whatever else I had to do in life. If I had a job stacking shelves or whatever, or even doing neuroscience, I'd spend my off-time making things at my computer, I'm sure of it. It's what I retreat to, and what makes my existence feel worthwhile to me.

I'd love to continue doing that with my life and my time for that reason. Because I'll be doing it anyway. But I don't know how realistic that is. I've already had some minor success with MARDEK, but that was an eternity ago, and things are so different now.

MARDEK... It's frustrating to think that if people paid for Flash games, if that was the acceptable thing to do that people didn't rebel against because it'd never been any other way, and MARDEK got as many people playing it as it actually did, then I'd be a multi-millionaire and I'd never have to worry about money again. As it is, I imagine a big reason MARDEK was ever as popular as it was was because it didn't cost any money to play. A big chunk of the fan mail I've got - which I still get, though much more rarely these days - was from people who couldn't afford 'normal' games, and as such retreated into Flash games and appreciated MARDEK because it was more fully fleshed than most of those were.

I earned a pittance for all three MARDEK chapters, which is why I'm highly reluctant to do MARDEK 4. Well, that, and the tremendous stress I experienced from poorly running Fig Hunter alongside all that, dealing with trolls and difficult people and my own crippling issues. It was a nightmare, that, and I earned essentially nothing money-wise out of all of it. It feels like I did the jobs of several people, and endured the stresses of even more, for no significant gain.

Patreon didn't exist back then, but if it had, I wonder whether I'd have earned some money from that. Technically I've earned some money from Patreon since it was started, but understandably the amount is ever-dropping, and it was never all that high to begin with. The fact that a number of people do want to support me at all gives me hope that I can at some point create something that people will find valuable, but... I don't know.

I talked recently about telling the Taming Dreams story in the form of an interactable/video conversation-y thing, an example of which was in a recent post somewhere (though using the Miasmon characters). I'm still interested in doing that, as a long-term goal. I'm interested in the Taming Dreams story, I feel it has some interesting characters and intriguing things to say. I effectively made it as a game before uni, years ago, but there were so many issues there. I was making it in Flash, which is defunct now, and I released it for mobiles, which was an issue. More than that, though, it took forever to make; a month or two for each chapter, and there were planned to be loads of chapters. The wait between each one would have killed the interest that people had for it. People said as much in reviews.

I don't want to abandon that story, but to tell it effectively, in its entirety, I'd need to use a format other than a game. It's why I'm hoping that the conversation-y thing might work out, that people might develop gradual interest and support it via Patreon... I don't have anything to show off for that yet, but I'm planning to work on it while I recover from surgery. (I've done some 3D modelling already, but just practice, not something I'd want to show off. Good preparation for this, though.)

While recovering, I felt 'buzzed', energised, more motivated than I have in a while. When the depression hit, that was knocked out of me, but while it was there, I had renewed interest in making a game. I wrote down some ideas. I have my origins in game-making, and since then I've devoted years to ideas for games that I'd still like to explore.

I'm spending a considerable chunk of this period of my life on a mobile game called Marvel: Strike Force. Maybe I've talked about that before, I'm not sure. It's not something I'd recommend or which I'd call a 'good game' or anything - if anything, there's loads of drama surrounding its dubious business practises - but essentially it involves Marvel characters who take part in turn-based strategic battles, and I enjoy it because it reminds me of the JRPGs I grew up with. I've paid some money for its various (overpriced) in-app purchases, and apparently quite a number of players are doing the same thing to fund it in general. A game that it copied off - Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes - which is several years older and more developed, but which has essentially the same formula, is making something stupid like $500,000 a day, even now.




I played Galaxy of Heroes for months, but always felt like an alien in that game because I started so long after its conception, at a point where many other players had been building their character collections for literally years. With this one, I started almost at the very beginning, so I've been able to watch it develop, and other players aren't particularly ahead of me (I've been able to reach the #1 spot in my personal arena; what an amazing achievement that I should be proud of forever). It's largely that fortunate position that's kept me interested in checking it every day - I feel like I'm part of something, and it keeps me committed - though I do find the simple, repetitive, but adequately nuanced gameplay enjoyable as well.

Those two games are based on big intellectual properties, and I imagine most of their fans are 'pre-existing' in the sense that they already liked Star Wars or Marvel and just want something to help scratch that existing itch. By contrast, I also started playing a game with the same formula, but with a world and cast of characters of the creators' own design. It's (rather boringly) called Age of Magic, and I think it looks phenomenal, and plays as well as those other two games.




I didn't stick with it for very long, though. I originally envisioned it replacing Strike Force as the thing that gets me up in the mornings (one of the big parts of the appeal of that game for me is that I do wake up to do my daily chores in it, whereas without it I might just lie in), but it hasn't turned out that way. I like the game in theory, but I have no attachment to the characters, the world, or anything. They're really bland, as far as characters go, I think... The whole setting reeks of Generic Fantasy in a way that'd appeal to people who are already fans of the genre, while not actually saying anything new at all. Even the game's formula is a copy of others, as I already mentioned.

Those games - or at least the big Star Wars and Marvel ones - are profitable, and eat up a lot of time for a lot of people. I'm not mentioning them because I'd want to make such a thing myself; that'd be completely unreasonable! Even if I had the time and skill to actually make it, running it would be an ordeal I wouldn't at all be cut out for, especially not alone. I wouldn't want to make a game that's essentially all about gameplay, with any characterisation or story just thrown on top to give some sense to it all. It's just not something I could manage, or something that aligns with the kind of mind that I have. Plus I don't have access to an existing intellectual property like Star Wars or Marvel, obviously, and there's definitely less appeal if the setting isn't already familiar.

I mention these games though because of their JRPG-like mechanics, their battle systems, which seem to be appealing to people despite the idea I've often heard that that genre is dead these days. I also played Ni No Kuni II recently - I might write a post about that - entirely because it was a JPRG. The genre still appeals to me, at least on some level.

What I would want to do is to explore that familiar genre, considering that it still has some appeal, and that I have a history with it and have been developing ideas around it for years. I'd like to make a game with a turn-based 'combat' system based around emotions, like the ones I've been talking about for years... because I feel that saying something unfamiliar about something mechanically familiar might get people thinking in a way that's worth talking about. "It doesn't always have to be about violence!", or something.

I've been exploring this idea for a while, starting with the Clarence JRPG sequel and culminating in Taming Dreams, before evolving into something too esoteric for Divine Dreams which I started relatively recently. I've talked about it to death in other posts already. If I were to make a game to release - I've been talking about that for ages too, this is nothing new - then ideally I'd use pretty much the Taming Dreams 'battle' system, and build a game around that, just to show it off to the world.

Making a game based on a huge plot like Taming Dreams is unreasonable, but using a smaller plot and setting to tell a few-hours-long game which stands alone seems like my best bet. A long-stewing message finally told, through an easily digestible form that isn't too hostile to people's time. Something that says "here's something a little bit different and a little bit familiar!", has its moment, then disappears into memory, having hopefully left its mark. Not something that takes 50 hours to get through or demands time every day, definitely not! I could conceivably finish a shorter thing alone, release it alone, and while I wouldn't at all expect to earn millions from it or anything, it might get me enough attention to draw interest in my longer-lasting Taming Dreams project, which I could continue to devote my attentions to.

For that game idea to work would require a decent setting and cast of characters, though... It's why I was exploring concepts like Divine Dreams, with a cast of just four characters and a story that would take just a few hours. Maybe I'll return to that in some form, or maybe I'll play around with some new possibilities. I don't know.

"I don't know" describes my overall position at the moment... Does a mundane job I hate lie in my future, or would it be possible to follow my naive dreams and earn a living making things? While I recover, I'll work on things anyway, and we can see how that turns out. It's not as if I've got anything better to do with my time anyway. Then, when I'm well, I'll... I'll see where I am, what I can do from there.

I wish I'd been fortunate enough to walk the 'normal' path. To have met a loving partner who I lived with, and a reliable career that I could continue for the rest of my life. Most people have that, and they're lucky. I don't... Everything's a mess. I'm alone, and lost, and I'm having to think about all this because I don't know how I can get out of this pit.

I've also neglected to mention the severe anxiety and depression which make the very idea of getting a job horrifying. Honestly, I wish I'd died during the surgery so then I wouldn't have to worry about that at all. A part of me still thinks that I'd rather just choose to end my life than get some job I hate. I've been wondering whether I could claim benefits for my serious issues and live on government assistance... but that's the path my father walked, and it's not one I'd be at all happy walking myself. I want to contribute! I don't want to be a leech. I've never claimed benefits for that reason; I've gone years without making meaningful money instead. Relied on my parents. But what about when they're gone? It's such an awful place to be in.

Anyway... I suppose I shouldn't dwell too much on it, since I'm already feeling terrible enough from the surgery still. I just... It's something that I do need to think about now that I'm on the road to recovery. I just wish the path ahead of me was clearer, or that I at least I had someone beside me to make it less daunting.

I'm going to continue working on creative stuff for the time being anyway, as I said. It'll likely be slow while I'm still so incapacitated, though.