The Indiepinion

Today i’ve had some time to think more about Passion. My girlfriend and i were cleaning up the house, throwing out old stuff to make room for less old stuff. A couple of things popped into my head here and there. One being that i need more exercise. I’m exhausted.

I also remembered this one time i’ve actually asked for a raise because i wasn’t satisfied with my pay. You see, you can make more money if you’re not in the game business. Ah, oh, you knew? Well, i hadn’t gotten a raise for years, so …. Alarm! Alarm! Isn’t that a warning sign of having lost passion for making games if you’re asking for more money? Not that i was making not enough. Not that money makes you happier, or more motivated. Not that it would have made any difference for me personally.

I also had to think about a friend and former coworker of mine. A brazilian guy who was so not cliché, meaning he didn’t play soccer at all – except on the Playstation. He was a great asset to the team, i believe, not because of the work he did or the knowledge he had. No, because of his character. He was a very friendly, honest and approachable guy and truely cared for everyone around him. But most of all he showed passion for what he did. My opinion now is, if i had the chance to hire someone like him for my team, i would – it wouldn’t matter if there were better candidates with more experience or knowledge. People like him are great facilitators, and great facilitators are important for building great teams. And with enough passion you can make up for almost any lack of knowledge or experience.

Some embarrassing feelings came up, too. Should i delete what i wrote yesterday? I don’t like it anymore. Maybe i should add someting, clarify, add more details? But no … i shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t because what’s said is said and only needs to be done. Follow up on what i say, i should say. If i don’t, then there goes credibility. Also, i shouldn’t be afraid of lecturing if i have the passion. But doubt kills passion in an instant. However, if i do hold that lecture i should strife for two things: no slides and involving the audience. Entertaining them as much as educating them. The best way to do that is to involve the audience. Not sure if that’s possible, it’s been maybe 4 years since my last talk during a GCDC and that was in front of 20-30 people in a very small room. I’m not sure what to expect from GDC Cologne.

I’ve been a Manager, too. I almost forgot. Probably because i wasn’t. It was just a title. I was eager to learn but had no passion for all the managerial things. You know, if you know that you’re not heading off a cliff, isn’t that enough? No, you gotta make plans and deliver documents for 3rd parties and what not. Too bad i didn’t know about Scrum back then. Probably wouldn’t have mattered though, since you need strong backbone to actually implement it. I wanted to remain connected with the team but not knowing what i got myself into the connection was already on the decline. It wasn’t at all like my experiences at NEON as Lead Level Designer and for the most part, i blamed it on me. At the same time, i did not connect with the rest of the management team either. It remained a foreign world for me. It became especially noticeable in meetings where only those talked who got to start talking before the other person had fully finished his/her last sentence, strictly kept talking and/or raising the voice if two or more people started talking at the same time, or blatantly interrupted others. This type of conversational behavior remains foreign to me to this date. Actually, it’s nothing but rude and offensive, period.

On a positive note i remember that i once wanted to make a game with Physics. At that time my tool of choice for making hobby games was Game Maker which hadn’t any support for Physics. So i took the Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) and wrote a DLL wrapper for Game Maker. I didn’t actually make any games with it, just some fun demos and testlevels. However it eventually spawned the “physics movement” in the Game Maker community, culminating in such excellent titles like Ragdoll Matrix. I certainly had fun porting ODE, even more fun seeing it in action and playing around with it. In addition i learned a great deal about ODE and extending Game Maker via DLLs. Unfortunately the code was rather sloppy, as it was initially intended to be only for my personal use (what a lame excuse, i know) and i don’t think i ever released the source code – probably out of shame but it’s a shame in itself because i’m sure someone would have picked it up, fixed the bugs, added new features and maintained it to make use of newer ODE version features. Still i remember fondly working on GM_ODE and most of all, that it gave the community the ability to create games that weren’t possible before (with Game Maker).

Oh my … is it 1000 words already? Again? Damn i keep writing such long-winded posts … if only there were someone reading them and eventually leaving a comment.

Nah, don’t worry, just read. No pressure. Just come back for more updates … or else!