I'll Make A Game of You

Man I really need to avoid certain "bearded" areas on the internet 'cause it gets me all riled up ahaha.

There has always been folks that make games that people can play for free, guys that give away their source code, guys that will even sit down with folks and explain to people how to do things and what the trick is and how to make stuff and all this other awesome junk like that.

That's how I learned how to do everything I know how to do, I mean, there isn't anything that has ever had to do with this stuff that you couldn't learn to do from the net, I learned how to program OpenGL from a sixteen year kid who had a website for it, I learned about UDP network games from the Silicon Graphics Game Contest guys, I learned about database stuff from the dudes that built that attachment to NWN for persistent worlds and the EQ emulator, I learned about bitshifts and logic optimization and Binary Space Partition Trees from the Quake dudes, I learned how to make maps for Quake and Unreal from the dudes that were awesome at doing that stuff.

I could go on and on forever like that, every little game thingie that I know about came from some kinda Techno-Johnny Appleseed guy that told me how to do it, somebody that just loved whatever he was up to and wanted to share it with folks who appreciated the art and craft of it all and wanted to learn how to do it too.

Not that I'm any good at that shit, but its fun to make shit on your own y'know.

There's nothing stopping you from being one of those guys, you coulda contributed code and tools to any of the MMO server emulators or open source games that are out there, you can just run your own servers without even needing to know how to program, and you could've made mods to just about anything that ever came from one of the Johnny Appleseed guys, who, even when they do sell something for money ('cause they do gotta eat and buy things like gasoline just like everybody else ahaha), always add hooks into the thing so that folks can play around with it and make their own things out of it (which is good for your game most of the time anyways, especially if you are selling an engine or something).

Companies are a helluvalot less creepy than the goddam beards when it comes right down to it, Nintendo is more than happy to have you learn how to use Blender, Microsoft is more than happy to show you how to use Direct X, the guys that ran UO were totally cool with the UO emulator guys.

And that's all there is to it, man, there really ain't no sense in talking about how there's Four Kinds of People That Listen to Rock and Roll, or how many fans it will take you to make 100k a year, or when you should announce your beta.

That's the other kind of folks.

That's the bad stuff.

Well, sorta.

I mean, at best its really just a bunch of people playing some kinda Game Company Tycoon Rockstar Simulation Game where you don't actually have to know anything about making music (or even LIKE music) and you can just magically pretend you have a hit record on your hands, y'know, How Will You Manage Your Millions.

Ain't nothing really wrong with that, that's just fun for those guys, even if its a little weird, y'know, 'cause of the way they never go Out of Character ahaha.

Somewhere in the middle its a bunch of guys trying to make a buck off a book or some college course or something while making excuses for their general lack of character.

Ain't really nothing wrong with that either but it is a little more depressing and less entertaining than the first thing heh.

The college stuff gives you good benefits, y'know, there's lots of tech dudes that do that kinda thing at the end of their usefulness 'cause its a pretty smart way to retire.

And at worst its the total opposite of the Johnny Appleseed thing, its just plain predatory, with no appreciation for the Art and Craft of it or the people who actually play and make games.

But I shouldn't get mad, 'cause those are the people who buy a guitar that ends up gathering dust in a closet a couple days later, those are the guys that might try to make something and then, just as they start to realize how goddam hard it actually is to make a model of a stupid-ass elf, they quit so that they can keep up their illusions, so they can keep pretending they could do it if they wanted to, y'know, if they had more time or whatever.

And then they go back to playing the Rockstar Game, that Game-Company-Tycoon Roleplaying Game, I mean, the hard thing is managing all your customer service people who get burned out from all the troublesome folks (like me AHAHA) in your fanbase and all this theoretical game design mumbo jumbo handwavium and unobtanium bullshit, right?

You guys just can't seem to stay away from that amatuer cult building stuff though sometimes seriously I mean I could spell it all out for you and name names and tell you guys exactly how your game works and who is the Gamemasters and everything but I think you already know and I just want you to quit doing the bad shit y'know taking advantage of all these poor unstable and misguided shmucks when you oughta know better 'cause the rest of that Game Company Tycoon crap is harmless I guess and it's prolly even flattering to Smed to see all you loonies worshipping guys like him heh.

And its probably even good for your brain to do all that Fantasy Football type stuff.

Well, y'know, as long as you guys don't start dressing up in creepy goth Game Developer Costumes and talking about "subscribers" in that weird "meta-this" and "meta-that" language of yours in public and shit ahaha.

"I wonder what your retention rate is for all these subscribers who just want to talk about shit and never make anything."

"Its all about cognitive dissonance, you see, the more time you spend here, blabbering, the more time you've wasted, unless it was all for some good reason."

"Once they get to the endgame they either quit or go totally insane. Cthulhu Ftagn!"

"There's three types of people that play the Game Company Tycoon Game, as any fool can plainly see on this graph."

"Dude this is like some sorta meta-meta-meta-game or something isn't it."